Paul Gillin's Blog - Social Media and the Open Enterprise
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Daily Reading 07/03/2008
LoyaltyMatch - Rewarding Yourself
Cool new service that lets frequent travelers barter their loyalty points for goods and services. This may be especially timely as airlines cut back further on reward options and increase fees.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Lessons From the Campaign Trail
Political campaigns have long been about the 30-second television spot. Candidates staked their reputations and their success on a series of carefully crafted (and very expensive) image ads that ran in key markets. The high cost of this approach forced campaigns to bet everything on strategic media buys.
The Obama campaign has challenged this conventional wisdom. While the 30-second spot still has its place, it isn't with the emerging population of young voters. When young people do watch TV, it's rarely in prime time and they are usually fast-forwarding through the commercials. Perhaps one reason this group has become so politically disenfranchised in recent elections is that no one is reaching them on their terms.
The Obama campaign, however, has figured it out. Its innovation has been in understanding that mainstream media is no longer the bottleneck of communication. When candidates -- or marketers -- use all the media channels available, they can create significant impact without relying on traditional media or advertising at all.
The numbers cited by BusinessWeek are impressive. The Obama campaign decided at the outset to leverage every possible channel to reach its audience and to take every possible opportunity to drive home its message. The candidate is essentially broadcasting every waking minute. When Obama gives a speech, a staffer videotapes it and uploads it to YouTube. When the candidate is in the car, aides are delivering messages on Twitter. Between campaign stops, the candidate conducts chats on MySpace or distributes position papers on his own social network.
The cost of these activities is next to nothing and the young audience they reach has been almost completely ignored by other campaigns. Perhaps more importantly, the Obama strategy has centered on frequent repetition, which is a classic marketing best practice. Instead of waiting for the media gods to bestow attention upon the candidate, the candidate chooses to become the media.
What can marketers learn from this? For one thing, you are no longer a prisoner of the media. You can become the media. Secondly, if you choose a strategic combination of channels and then deliver messages consistently and frequently, you can get better results than by renting a half minute on TV once a week.
Finally, the Obama campaign has demonstrated the beauty of small markets. When you aggregate the candidate’s 43,000 Twitter followers, 60,000 YouTube subscribers, 1.1 million Facebook friends, 21,000 MySpace friends and 850,000 members of MyBarackObama.com, you're quickly over 2 million followers, each of whom has volunteered for that status. If you can convince each one of those people to spread the word to three others, well, you do the math.
Four years ago, the Howard Dean campaign tried to leverage the Internet to run a grass-roots campaign and fell short. There were several reasons for that, but lack of tools was one of them. Today, the problem is how to choose from the bounty of tools that are available. The Obama campaign demonstrates that word-of-mouth campaigns can open a whole new world of possibilities.
From my weekly newsletter. Subscribe using the sign-up box to the right.
Businessweek’s Catherine Holahan writes this week about the big lead Barack Obama has built against John McCain in online visibility. While I’m not going to declare a preference for either candidate, I do think it’s worth noting the lessons marketers can learn from the Obama campaign’s success.Political campaigns have long been about the 30-second television spot. Candidates staked their reputations and their success on a series of carefully crafted (and very expensive) image ads that ran in key markets. The high cost of this approach forced campaigns to bet everything on strategic media buys.
The Obama campaign has challenged this conventional wisdom. While the 30-second spot still has its place, it isn't with the emerging population of young voters. When young people do watch TV, it's rarely in prime time and they are usually fast-forwarding through the commercials. Perhaps one reason this group has become so politically disenfranchised in recent elections is that no one is reaching them on their terms.
The Obama campaign, however, has figured it out. Its innovation has been in understanding that mainstream media is no longer the bottleneck of communication. When candidates -- or marketers -- use all the media channels available, they can create significant impact without relying on traditional media or advertising at all.
The numbers cited by BusinessWeek are impressive. The Obama campaign decided at the outset to leverage every possible channel to reach its audience and to take every possible opportunity to drive home its message. The candidate is essentially broadcasting every waking minute. When Obama gives a speech, a staffer videotapes it and uploads it to YouTube. When the candidate is in the car, aides are delivering messages on Twitter. Between campaign stops, the candidate conducts chats on MySpace or distributes position papers on his own social network.
The cost of these activities is next to nothing and the young audience they reach has been almost completely ignored by other campaigns. Perhaps more importantly, the Obama strategy has centered on frequent repetition, which is a classic marketing best practice. Instead of waiting for the media gods to bestow attention upon the candidate, the candidate chooses to become the media.
What can marketers learn from this? For one thing, you are no longer a prisoner of the media. You can become the media. Secondly, if you choose a strategic combination of channels and then deliver messages consistently and frequently, you can get better results than by renting a half minute on TV once a week.
Finally, the Obama campaign has demonstrated the beauty of small markets. When you aggregate the candidate’s 43,000 Twitter followers, 60,000 YouTube subscribers, 1.1 million Facebook friends, 21,000 MySpace friends and 850,000 members of MyBarackObama.com, you're quickly over 2 million followers, each of whom has volunteered for that status. If you can convince each one of those people to spread the word to three others, well, you do the math.
Four years ago, the Howard Dean campaign tried to leverage the Internet to run a grass-roots campaign and fell short. There were several reasons for that, but lack of tools was one of them. Today, the problem is how to choose from the bounty of tools that are available. The Obama campaign demonstrates that word-of-mouth campaigns can open a whole new world of possibilities.
Labels: barackobama, marketing, politics, socialmedia, socialnetworks
¶ 7:57 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Groundswell is an Intelligent Approach to Social Media Marketing
Some of the books that have been published about social media over the last couple of years have undermined their own message by yelling at their audience.The authors believe that Web 2.0 is a hammer and every marketing problem is a nail. Marketers who aren't getting on board with social media are either in denial or stupid.
This attitude ultimately works against these enthusiasts. Social media isn't a panacea for anything and it isn't even appropriate for some companies and markets. The challenge for marketers is to figure out what makes sense and how to build social campaigns into broader marketing programs.
Groundswell takes a constructive approach to the task. Written by Forrester Research analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, it's the first social media book I've read that attempts to define an analytical and quantitative approach to evaluating and applying social media . While the authors' bias is clear, their approach is dispassionate enough to make their message all the more persuasive. In that respect, this is a breakthrough book.
You would expect nothing less than a quality job from two Forrester analysts. Li and Bernoff propose an innovative model for online adult behavior at the outset and apply it consistently throughout. Their "Social Technographics Profile" is a breakdown of US adults into six categories spanning the spectrum of online participation ranging from uninvolved to active creator. The authors apply the profile to a variety of audience segments, demonstrating that not all markets adopt Web 2.0 the same way. They've also made a limited version of the profiling tool available on the book's website.
Importantly, Groundswell takes pains to point out that social media isn't for everyone. Companies with undifferentiated or commodity products that don't inspire customer enthusiasm are going to be hard pressed to build word-of-mouth momentum or brand advocacy. For them, a support forum or thought-leadership blog may be the best value they'll get. It's all about matching the customer base to the appropriate online behavior profile, and the authors drive home that message again and again. This book is all about understanding Social Technographics.
Groundswell is rich in case studies, many of which were evidently gleaned from client interactions and reflect solid understanding of the business issues at hand. The book also takes the best shot I've seen at defining an ROI model for blogs and social networks. The story of how one customre enthusiast has saved Dell more than $1 million in customer support costs is particularly compelling.
I was somewhat chagrined to find that some of the case studies I write about in my forthcoming book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, are also covered in Groundswell. Fortunately, the two books have very different objectives. Secrets is applied practice while Groundswell is more strategic. The fact that we both landed on so many of the same examples is perhaps proof that this market still has a lot of growing up to do. ¶ 6:12 AM 1 Comments Links to this post
Some of the books that have been published about social media over the last couple of years have undermined their own message by yelling at their audience.The authors believe that Web 2.0 is a hammer and every marketing problem is a nail. Marketers who aren't getting on board with social media are either in denial or stupid.This attitude ultimately works against these enthusiasts. Social media isn't a panacea for anything and it isn't even appropriate for some companies and markets. The challenge for marketers is to figure out what makes sense and how to build social campaigns into broader marketing programs.
Groundswell takes a constructive approach to the task. Written by Forrester Research analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, it's the first social media book I've read that attempts to define an analytical and quantitative approach to evaluating and applying social media . While the authors' bias is clear, their approach is dispassionate enough to make their message all the more persuasive. In that respect, this is a breakthrough book.
You would expect nothing less than a quality job from two Forrester analysts. Li and Bernoff propose an innovative model for online adult behavior at the outset and apply it consistently throughout. Their "Social Technographics Profile" is a breakdown of US adults into six categories spanning the spectrum of online participation ranging from uninvolved to active creator. The authors apply the profile to a variety of audience segments, demonstrating that not all markets adopt Web 2.0 the same way. They've also made a limited version of the profiling tool available on the book's website.
Importantly, Groundswell takes pains to point out that social media isn't for everyone. Companies with undifferentiated or commodity products that don't inspire customer enthusiasm are going to be hard pressed to build word-of-mouth momentum or brand advocacy. For them, a support forum or thought-leadership blog may be the best value they'll get. It's all about matching the customer base to the appropriate online behavior profile, and the authors drive home that message again and again. This book is all about understanding Social Technographics.
Groundswell is rich in case studies, many of which were evidently gleaned from client interactions and reflect solid understanding of the business issues at hand. The book also takes the best shot I've seen at defining an ROI model for blogs and social networks. The story of how one customre enthusiast has saved Dell more than $1 million in customer support costs is particularly compelling.
I was somewhat chagrined to find that some of the case studies I write about in my forthcoming book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, are also covered in Groundswell. Fortunately, the two books have very different objectives. Secrets is applied practice while Groundswell is more strategic. The fact that we both landed on so many of the same examples is perhaps proof that this market still has a lot of growing up to do. ¶ 6:12 AM 1 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Lessons From the Campaign Trail
Political campaigns have long been about the 30-second television spot. Candidates staked their reputations and their success on a series of carefully crafted (and very expensive) image ads that ran in key markets. The high cost of this approach forced campaigns to bet everything on strategic media buys.
The Obama campaign has challenged this conventional wisdom. While the 30-second spot still has its place, it isn't with the emerging population of young voters. When young people do watch TV, it's rarely in prime time and they are usually fast-forwarding through the commercials. Perhaps one reason this group has become so politically disenfranchised in recent elections is that no one is reaching them on their terms.
The Obama campaign, however, has figured it out. Its innovation has been in understanding that mainstream media is no longer the bottleneck of communication. When candidates -- or marketers -- use all the media channels available, they can create significant impact without relying on traditional media or advertising at all.
The numbers cited by BusinessWeek are impressive. The Obama campaign decided at the outset to leverage every possible channel to reach its audience and to take every possible opportunity to drive home its message. The candidate is essentially broadcasting every waking minute. When Obama gives a speech, a staffer videotapes it and uploads it to YouTube. When the candidate is in the car, aides are delivering messages on Twitter. Between campaign stops, the candidate conducts chats on MySpace or distributes position papers on his own social network.
The cost of these activities is next to nothing and the young audience they reach has been almost completely ignored by other campaigns. Perhaps more importantly, the Obama strategy has centered on frequent repetition, which is a classic marketing best practice. Instead of waiting for the media gods to bestow attention upon the candidate, the candidate chooses to become the media.
What can marketers learn from this? For one thing, you are no longer a prisoner of the media. You can become the media. Secondly, if you choose a strategic combination of channels and then deliver messages consistently and frequently, you can get better results than by renting a half minute on TV once a week.
Finally, the Obama campaign has demonstrated the beauty of small markets. When you aggregate the candidate’s 43,000 Twitter followers, 60,000 YouTube subscribers, 1.1 million Facebook friends, 21,000 MySpace friends and 850,000 members of MyBarackObama.com, you're quickly over 2 million followers, each of whom has volunteered for that status. If you can convince each one of those people to spread the word to three others, well, you do the math.
Four years ago, the Howard Dean campaign tried to leverage the Internet to run a grass-roots campaign and fell short. There were several reasons for that, but lack of tools was one of them. Today, the problem is how to choose from the bounty of tools that are available. The Obama campaign demonstrates that word-of-mouth campaigns can open a whole new world of possibilities.
From my weekly newsletter. Subscribe using the sign-up box to the right.
Businessweek’s Catherine Holahan writes this week about the big lead Barack Obama has built against John McCain in online visibility. While I’m not going to declare a preference for either candidate, I do think it’s worth noting the lessons marketers can learn from the Obama campaign’s success.Political campaigns have long been about the 30-second television spot. Candidates staked their reputations and their success on a series of carefully crafted (and very expensive) image ads that ran in key markets. The high cost of this approach forced campaigns to bet everything on strategic media buys.
The Obama campaign has challenged this conventional wisdom. While the 30-second spot still has its place, it isn't with the emerging population of young voters. When young people do watch TV, it's rarely in prime time and they are usually fast-forwarding through the commercials. Perhaps one reason this group has become so politically disenfranchised in recent elections is that no one is reaching them on their terms.
The Obama campaign, however, has figured it out. Its innovation has been in understanding that mainstream media is no longer the bottleneck of communication. When candidates -- or marketers -- use all the media channels available, they can create significant impact without relying on traditional media or advertising at all.
The numbers cited by BusinessWeek are impressive. The Obama campaign decided at the outset to leverage every possible channel to reach its audience and to take every possible opportunity to drive home its message. The candidate is essentially broadcasting every waking minute. When Obama gives a speech, a staffer videotapes it and uploads it to YouTube. When the candidate is in the car, aides are delivering messages on Twitter. Between campaign stops, the candidate conducts chats on MySpace or distributes position papers on his own social network.
The cost of these activities is next to nothing and the young audience they reach has been almost completely ignored by other campaigns. Perhaps more importantly, the Obama strategy has centered on frequent repetition, which is a classic marketing best practice. Instead of waiting for the media gods to bestow attention upon the candidate, the candidate chooses to become the media.
What can marketers learn from this? For one thing, you are no longer a prisoner of the media. You can become the media. Secondly, if you choose a strategic combination of channels and then deliver messages consistently and frequently, you can get better results than by renting a half minute on TV once a week.
Finally, the Obama campaign has demonstrated the beauty of small markets. When you aggregate the candidate’s 43,000 Twitter followers, 60,000 YouTube subscribers, 1.1 million Facebook friends, 21,000 MySpace friends and 850,000 members of MyBarackObama.com, you're quickly over 2 million followers, each of whom has volunteered for that status. If you can convince each one of those people to spread the word to three others, well, you do the math.
Four years ago, the Howard Dean campaign tried to leverage the Internet to run a grass-roots campaign and fell short. There were several reasons for that, but lack of tools was one of them. Today, the problem is how to choose from the bounty of tools that are available. The Obama campaign demonstrates that word-of-mouth campaigns can open a whole new world of possibilities.
Labels: marketing, socialmedia
¶ 10:26 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Monday, June 30, 2008
Daily Reading 06/30/2008
Telling statistic of our times
Jeff Jarvis is writing a piece on George Carlin and so looked up the frequency with which Carlin's famous seven words you can't say on TV show up in Google. He finds a striking equivalency. You have to click to see.
Google Docs now appears to be an official Microsoft Office competitor
Among an impressive list of recent enhancements is offline access. Google says you can now edit any word processing, spreadsheet or presentation document when disconnected from the Internet and then synch with your online account when you reconnect. At this point, what's the difference between Docs and Office?
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Daily Reading 06/29/2008
A lot of people have been buzzing about Nicholas Carr's brief opinion piece in the Atlantic in which he argues that information overload is making us less able to think in any kind of depth. Are we becoming "pancake people?" I don't agree, but his views are worth considering.
What it takes for an ad to go viral
There's no secret formula for "going viral," but Tom Hespos draws some interesting conclusions about why some campaigns work.
- Humor in an ad needs to be comparable to that in other content you might find online. In other words, a funny commercial is still a commercial. If you're hoping humor value will spur a significant viral effect, the content better be funny. It's not just competing with other commercials
- Someone high up at Apple understands the value exchange that occurs when a brand fan is among the first to find out about a new Apple product.
- This incentivizes the insider to tell everybody and their grandmother that they were among the first to see the new iPhone.
This Ad Stinks: Let Readers Vote
Advertisers increasingly are paying to have website visitors render judgments on their ads in public for all to see.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Daily Reading 06/27/2008
Meet a blogger: Run up the Score | By Daniel Victor
Run Up the Score is a successful football blog focused on Penn State. In this interview, the bloggers offers practical advice for positioning a blog as well as driving traffic. He also comments on some important tactics to avoid.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Daily Reading 06/25/2008
Ongoing list of Social Media Efforts from Banks, Credit Card, Financial Institutions and Lenders
Jeremiah Owyang has a nice list of the Web 2.0 activities being pursued by financial institutions in the name of serving existing customers and finding new ones.
