Cymfony's Influence 2.0

Is Prediction Even the Point of Social Media?

On his personal blog, Forrester's Peter Kim writes, "Many [brand monitoring] vendors say they can predict future events based on chatter levels." Everyone wants a crystal ball to ensure correct decisions, but is that a realistic expectation when we are dealing with fundamentally unpredictable entities like human beings? Or is the point to be able to follow more closely the erratic path they invariably take?

I read Peter's post early this morning, then the question of predictability came up on a Blog Council webinar where I presented with David Rabjohns of Motivequest and Ann Green of Millward Brown. David had shown their Cooper Mini case study, and the work he had done with the Kellog School of Management which statistically correlated levels of advocacy detected in social media to sales of the cute little cars. He mentioned his experience across product categories that predictability is only reliable out to about 1 month in the future.

Why 1 month I wondered....

It is well known that the impact of a marketing event has a short half-life. Recall of TV ads decays quickly, and even the increased awareness from an 8-week flight wanes in a short period of time when the campaign is over. Competitors' messages come to the fore, economic conditions change, the seasons change...all sorts of things crowd the brand out of the consumer's mind.

So the benefit of social media is not so much in its predictive ability -- with this complex environment and consumers' serendipitous reaction to events, predictability is virtually impossible.

Social media's benefit is more in its ability to keep the marketer in tune with consumer moods in real-time, or, as I like to say, "at the speed of the market." 

Social Networks' 2008 Tightrope Walk

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble....

My musings on whether social media has become a bubble has stirred up a bit of buzz.

But here's the real issue: in order to develop a solid revenue model, social networks must walk a very thin line between pleasing marketers without alienating their users. The models and examples exist today; the question is: will media companies and marketers resist the urge for the quick hit and exercise the retraint, wisdom, and patience to build a mutually beneficial relationship with their audience?

Paul LaMonica at CNN Money picked up on it earlier this week and so when I was in New York we had a wide-ranging discussion which he wrote up here.

The blog Socialized, took it the wrong way, and thought I was an idiot. I corrected her interpretation and she kindly put up a new post to draw attention to my comments.

To save you all the trouble of wading through all the various links and comments, here is a succinct summary of my key points.

1. The bubble is in VC funding and start up companies, not in consumer behavior. I elaborated on this in this post and as I told Paul the trend of consumers using social media is "unequivocal, inexorable, and irreversible." Just as consumers kept using the Internet after the 2000 bubble burst, they will keep using social media no matter how much money the VCs lose or how much doom-and-gloom comes from the media. Smart marketers will keep their eyes on their audience.
2. The social media business model creates greater tension than other media businesses. Any media business has to manage the tension between editorial and advertising. But here the tension is especially acute. One of the drivers of social media's growth is that consumers are sick of the ad clutter in other media. In addition, the value of social media is personal relationship, not information. Ads that are relevant to the editorial are more accepted (think cosmetics ads in Cosmo or shotgun ads in Field & Stream. What kind of ad is relevant to insert between two people building a personal rapport?
3. Marketers are likely to push the model the wrong way. In marketers' embryonic understanding of the social media ethos, they will ask -- and push for -- what they know: guaranteed placements and impressions/GRPs or some other measure or audience size. Banner ads everywhere....lists of members they can ping to invite to friend their brand profile. Facebook is facing a mini-rebellion from their members with a 50,000-strong group called "Petition: Facebook, stop invading my privacy." (As an aside I was invited to join this group -- by a friend who is a senior marketer at a CPG company!)

To me this is reminiscent of the pop-up ad phase of online advertising: advertisers wanted more intrusive units than 468x60 banners, sites obliged them, felt huge backlash from their audience, and dialed down, or even eliminated pop-ups altogether. Kudos to Facebook for listening to their users and rapidly amending policies that meet resistance, as they have done with the Beacon Opt-out policy.

But social networks have a better alternative than retreat: educate marketers on the right way to become part of the social media environment. The panel I did at AdTech this month had great case studies from Coke, Digitas (representing Delta), MySpace and YouTube that begin to provide models other advertisers can follow to be successful.

And, thanks to MySpace, Isobar, and Carat, there is great research that has defined the "Momentum Effect" as the ROI driver in social media. This is a MUST READ report for marketers entering this space (get it here) (Disclosure/mini-plug: my colleagues at TNS were one of three partners is executing the research, along with TRU and Marketing Evolution).

Will social networks have the backbone to turn down revenue is marketers demand types of placements that will alienat users? Will marketers learn to give up control and learn to become the kind of friend that social network users will welcome?

This will be the real story of 2008, not Bubble 2.0.

Memo to Bob Parsons: You are so wrong!

Dear Bob:

I read that you have decided that it is not worth it to promote GoDaddy's Super Bowl ad ahead of the game as you have in the past. I say, the strategy of promoting early isn't wrong -- your execution last year was flawed! Tune in to my webinar tomorrow with the Advertising Research Foundation and I'll show you the proof!

Bob,

A recent Brandweek article, quoted you as saying that you won't promote GoDaddy's ad as aggressively before the game as in year's past:

What we learned is that doesn’t really pay off because people are going to watch anyhow. So while that might work for other occasions, that doesn’t work for the Super Bowl.

Our analysis (to be published in the December Journal of Advertising Research) shows that advertisers who promote their ad aggressively before the game (whom we dubbed "Play Action Advertisers") got 10 times the coverage and consumer discussion as those who didn't.

10 times!!

We calculated that Doritos got a minimum of 40 million impressions even before the coin toss. That's almost half of the audience that the game gets. Stick that in your ROI calculator!

And those who showed their ad online before the game got 4 times the coverage of those who announced early, but did not show their ad. You can download an abstract of this (and some other analysis we did at our site

Bob: The lesson you should take away from last year is that you can't do the same thing two years in a row. It was boring and seemed a lot more contrived than the 2006 effort. (see my 2006 post in which I awarded you the "They Really Get It" Award). Scroll down to the bottom of this post to read my review of your brilliant strategy.

So promote your ad aggressively ahead of the game -- if your really have something new to say!

PS. I take back what I said about questioning your reason for being on the Super Bowl at all, both in last year's and my 2005 review (where I gave you the "Load up the Cannon with Gerbils" Award). I recently started a blog about my other obssession -- LED lighting -- at http://ledlightsathome.com . When I decided to do it, GoDaddy was top of mind and you got my $14 to register the domain (actually more like $80 because I also registered a few variations thereof).

(cross-posted at www.superbowladvertisers.com )

The Road to Super Bowl XLII

With the Patriots steamrolling through the NFL this season, many people here in the Boston area are thinking a lot about the Super Bowl coming up this February.  But here at Cymfony, the Super Bowl has become a year-round obsession – but for a different reason:  It is the perfect example of Influence 2.0.

We tracked discussion of last year’s game and conducted several studies on the audience impact of the media coverage and consumer discussion of last year’s Super Bowl advertisers. Over the past month, these studies have been published in a variety of publications.

• Visibility vs Surprise: Which Drives the Greatest Discussion of Super Bowl Ads?  To be published in the 12/07 issue of the “Journal of Advertising Research” from the ARF.

• What This Year’s Super Bowl Advertisers Can Learn from Doritos. Published in the 11/07 issue of Media Magazine

• Is There No Such Thing as Bad News? - How controversy drives word-of-mouth around Super Bowl advertising and how it can bite the brand. Published in 11/07 “Measuring Word of Mouth Vol. 3” from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association

I encourage you to buy the WOMMA and JAR publications for the full story (and other great research as well).  We've also compiled some of the insights from each of these studies in a brief informational abstract that is available for download on our site now.   

The gist of our findings: Last year's success of advertisers like Doritos and Nationwide changes Super Bowl advertising -- it's no longer about great buzz after the game, pre-game media coverage is just as important, maybe more so.

(Disclosure: shameless plug coming) In response to this change, we are stepping up our analysis and launching a new product: the Super Bowl Advertising Audience Impact Report. Check it out at www.cymfony.com/superbowl.asp Clients will get a timely, in-depth analysis of the media coverage and consumer discussion of Super Bowl advertisers each week leading up to and immediately following the game on February 3.

This report will address:

• How much coverage is each advertiser generating? 
• Which ads are consumers discussing online? What are they saying?
• What is the quality and tone of the coverage?
• How is the event impacting consumer engagement with the brand?
• How are pre-game promotional strategies influencing coverage?

After the post-game coverage peaks on Monday after the game, our Super Bowl analysts will lead a detailed online briefing Tuesday afternoon to discuss the ad winners and losers as reported by consumers and the media. This will all get wrapped up in a comprehensive report a couple weeks later when the coverage is complete.

Some of us around here are as excited about this new report as we are about the steamrolling Patriots.  (OK, we admit it, we're social media geeks!)

Some Sanity Comes to the Hype Cycle

The PQ Media forecast of the size of Word Of Mouth Marketing injects some needed discipline into the crazy projections floating around about the growth of WOM. Putting this study side-by-side with some other reports and it becomes clear that social media is about a $1 billion industry.

My post about whether social media is climbing the hype curve brought Paul Chaney by who wanted to stir up more discussion about the state of adoption of these new tools.

There have been a plethora of studies on how much money marketers are spending in these emerging areas which are zeroing in on the billion-dollar number.

There may be some definitional differences between "word of mouth", "social media" and "conversational" marketing in these studies. But let's set those aside for the moment and try to triangulate these different data points to get close to a real number.

• PQ Media says marketers will spend $1.35 billion on WOM this year. Disclosure: I'm on the Board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association which participated in the PQ Media study.
• An eMarketer report quoted by Jim Tobin on his Ignite Social Media blog says that "social media marketing" is 7.8% of online marketing spending. eMarketer's online advertising report pegs spending at $21.4 billion -- so social media's 7.8% share of this equals $1.67 billion.
• Forrester pegs online advertising at $18.4 billion and social media at $600 million.

While the range from $600 million to $1.6 billion might drive the statistical purists crazy, as an ex-analyst I look at it and say it's all in the same ballpark. The differences are likely due to 1) the different definitions that I set aside 2) the emerging nature of the market which makes it devilshly hard to come up with any numbers 3) different assumption each analyst necessarily makes. 

So, let's call the size of social media marketing spending a billion. As Everett Dirksen was famous for saying, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money."

Social media is reaching the point of being a real item in the marketing mix. I'm willing to accept this wide range of numbers because that high-level conclusion jibes perfectly with my experience in talking to our clients and sales prospects.

And as I said in this post, marketers need to keep their eyes on consumers, not the VC world, and gear their spending accordingly.

I'm not the only one thinking Bubble 2.0...

Maurice Levy, Chairman of Publicis echoed my concern that social media is gaining the inflated expectations we saw in Bubble 1.0. Am I worried? Actually, no.

While one lesson of Bubble 1.0 was that zillions of start-ups cannot live by hype alone, the other lesson was that while investors and even marketers may get disillusioned, consumers pay no attention to the trials and tribulations of the VC community. People look for tools and things that bring value to their lives.

Just as consumer adoption of the internet was unfazed by the bust of 2001 - 2002, adoption of social media will be equally unaffected should we see a social media bust take place. They'll just keep connecting to one another, creating videos, making virtual friends....

What should marketers do if the bloom comes off the social media rose? Ignore the anguished cries of VCs and even the doomsday blather that the media may put out. Keep your eye on the people who buy and use your brands. Stay involved with social media because your consumers will be involved with it.

More on Conversational Marketing

My blog post last week about whether social media is scaling the Hype Curve hit a nerve last week and spawned two podcasts. So I faced off with Joseph Jaffe and Pete Blackshaw....

...but don't expect a smackdown. While we disagree on a number of points, we all agree on the inexorable transition from the mass marketing world to one that is much more dynamic and engaged.

Joseph and Jen McClure of the Society for New Communications Research started a good conversation on the post, and we decided to take it live. We quickly get beyond quibbling over the timing and the research to tackle the much bigger issue of what Conversational Marketing (or whatever you want to call it) will mean to the practice of marketing in the future. Catch it at the New Communications Review here .

The debate also caught the eye of Ann Handley of Marketing Profs who recruited Paul Dunay of Buzz Marketing for Technology and Pete Blackshaw (who needs no introduction!). We dissect the barriers between marketing today and where it needs to evolve to be truly responsive and conversational with consumers. And, I hope, shed some light on how to make the transition. Give it a listen here.

Has the Web 2.0 Hype Cycle Kicked In?

I'm as bullish as anybody about the growth of social media and the impact it will have on the relationship between brands and consumers. But this study makes me think "Bubble 2.0" with its conclusion that 81% of marketers will spend as much or more on Conversational Marketing than traditional marketing by 2012. This suggests an order-of-magnitude faster growth than Interactive marketing and TV advertising has seen in the last decade...

Let me start by saying Cymfony is a member of SNCR and fully support their work. And I'm friends with Joseph Jaffe and think he is one of the leading thinkers in the dramatic changes marketing is experiencing.

That said, this study smacks of the hype cycle "peak of inflated expectations". I use these as reference points:

• Interactive marketing has been around for over 13 years, and it is $18.4 billion this year, according to Forrester's latest interactive marketing sizing report and will be only $61 billion by 2012. (I say "only" because Bob Coen at Universal McCann pegs 2006 advertising spending at $285 billion.)
• If you date DVR's to TiVo's launch in 1999, they have been around 8 years, and the penetration is only 17%, with only about 5% of viewing is on DVR (don't remember where I saw that stat...). Sure, the TV business is quaking in their boots but the 2007 Upfront was stronger than ever -- about a 5% overall increase and CPM increases up to 8 - 9%, despite repeated predictions that it must collapse in the face of declining audiences and rising CPMs.

In other words, if after 13 years, interactive marketing is less than 10% of total marketing, how is conversational marketing going to get to 50% in 5 years? Same question if DVRs haven't demolished the TV advertising business after 7 years?

As an ex-analyst, I sympathize with anyone trying to predict the future of radical changes like this. I've had my share of "irrational exuberance" reports like the December 1998 "1999 will be the year of rich media ads" and my wish-to-be-forgotten January 2001 classic "Online Advertising Eclipsed" (which predicted rapid growth for online ads but even more rapid growth for a broader definition of interactive marketing just as we entered the collapse of Bubble 1.0; I quickly revised it in October 2001 with "Online Advertising Retrenches"). I fear Joseph may have fallen into the trap I fell into of 1) believing what the marketers he interviewed told him and that 2) he only spoke to early adopter conversational/social media/Web 2.0 marketers who have all good intentions that haven't yet hit the reality of corporate conservatism.

The one thing I learned is that no matter how fast technology changes, consumers and marketers don't change nearly as quickly.

My fear is that numbers like this strain the credibility of the industry such that they may do more to reinforce reluctant execs' view that this is another bubble than they do to galvanize them to change.

Is there an irreversible change that will shift money out of traditional, one-way, broadcast marketing? Yes.

Is the future of marketing conversing with customers, listening to their needs/complaints/suggestions and adapting products and messages to align with them? Absolutely.

Will marketers learn to love giving control to their brand advocates and increase their use of widgets and allow consumers to take and spread an array of brand assets as they see fit? No doubt in my mind.

But none of this will happen overnight. Living through one "Trough of Disillusionment" is enough for my career. Let's all try to skip it and keep the marketing world climbing the "Slope of Enlightenment".

Blu-Ray vs HD DVD Update: And the winner is....

Just about a year ago, we published a report on the social media discussions surrounding these next generation video formats, concluding that HD DVD had an edge. Much has changed. Now, the leader is....

...indifference. Media Magazine recently published our analysis, but here is a quick summary.

In the analysis we classified authors by their prevailing attitude: advocates for one or the other format, simply observing that one or the other is likely to win (but without any strong endorsement), or simply indifferent to the outcome.

The Indifferent segment is larger than the advocates for both formats combined. As we dug deeper, Blu-ray has a slight edge in technical features and movies available on the format, but HD DVD has a huge price advantage. It wouldn't take much to nudge the advantage back to HD DVD.

But the article didn't have enough space for two interesting, though less frequently expressed viewpoints:

1. A number of authors didn't see much advantage of these formats over the current generation of DVD's.
2. Others stated that in a few years we'll all be downloading all our content on demand in HD, so they were going to sit out this format war entirely.

Consumers are telling both formats that they have failed to provide a compelling reason for consumers to upgrade. Will they listen and change their strategies before technology moves on and these technologies follow digital audio tape recorders as too little, too late?

New White Paper Addresses Regulatory Issues in Social Media for Pharma Marketers

I'm pleased to announce the newest Cymfony Influence 2.0 White Paper: "Connecting with Patients, Overcoming Uncertainty". We've collaborated with other industry experts to help pharmaceutical companies navigate the complexities of launching social media initiatives within the restrictions of DTC promotion regulations.

We're often asked by our pharma clients and prospects how to engage in social media given the strict FDA regulations around direct-to-consumer marketing. The FDA hasn't issued any guidance (in fact, they haven't issued guidance for Internet marketing). For a long time we looked for others who had made suggestions or analyzed the issues involved, to no avail.

So we've put a stake in the ground -- you can download the paper here. I had two great co-authors on this project: John Serio, a lawyer with Seyfarth Shaw LLP who specializes in food and drug law and regulations, and Fard Johnmar of Envision Solutions, a healthcare marketing communications consultant.

In the paper, we propose a framework for identifying the key issues across the entire spectrum of social media types. We review the core principles that are the foundation of DTC promotion regulation and discuss how they should be viewed in light of social media's unique characteristics. We zero in to show how to assess adverse event reporting requirements, off-label promotion risks, and fair balance when designing a social media initiative.    

Of course, nothing substitues for detailed FDA guidance. But we believe drug companies can participate in many types of social media without undue risk. We hope this paper will give marketers, regulatory compliance, and legal professionals in healthcare companies a common understanding of the issues, and ideas on how to mitigate the risks and become part of the active conversation that patients are having every day. 

My co-authors and I will also present these ideas in a webinar on September 11 at 1:00 eastern time. I hope you will register and join us on the call.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first paper of its kind. I hope it will stimulate a lot of discussion and that you'll share your thoughts with me here.

Paid blog posts -- still the wrong model, one year later.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: paying bloggers to write about you isn't blogging, it's copywriting. Unfortunately, today's Wall Street Journal article doesn't appreciate the difference.

Last year I wished that we would all help the paid blogging model fail quickly. Instead it appears to be gaining momentum. Some may mistake this as a sign of the growth of importance of blogging; in fact, this is a sign that marketers are still thinking in 1.0 marketing ways: whom do I pay to put the message I want in the place I want it?

This is the wrong model for blogging because it contradicts the essence that makes blogging different from other media: blogs are supposed to be the unvarnished thoughts, experiences, and opinions of We, the People. Blogs have attracted people because we no longer trust that the products in TV shows -- even the stories on the news -- are the result of impartial editorial judgment. We turn away from other media because we suspect it is all bought and paid for one way or another. If blogs don't offer a distinctly different alternative, they don't have a reason to exist.

But I'm no purist. If we must have paid blogging, let's all agree that the standard for disclosure should be no lower than the standard for traditional journalists: state that you're being paid at the beginning of the post. If a traditional publication or writer have a conflict, they state it upfront in the article, not buried somewhere in fine print, the masthead, camouflaged with some cutesy name or hidden in some disclosure document in a file drawer somewhere. And this disclosure isn't at the discretion of each writer: it is enforced by the organization writing the check to her.

(Does anyone else appreciate the irony that everyone's all up in arms that Rupert Murdoch will surreptitiously slant the WSJ's editorial approach, but the WSJ seems to think it is OK for bloggers to surreptitiously take money to slant what they write?)

The pro-pay advocates will say, "But if bloggers say upfront that they're being paid, people won't believe the post."

My point exactly. If readers will only believe it when you withhold material information about the motivation of the author, then it should only be published with the disclosure of that motivation.

Or better yet, don't waste everyone's time. 

Social Media Forecast: Looks a lot like online advertising 1994 - 2000

Mediaweek, citing an eMarketer report, states, "User-generated content on the Web is set to rapidly shift from a budding consumer trend to a serious business over the next five years." For those of us who have watched the adoption of online advertising, we are seeing history repeat itself.

This eMarketer report states that UCG sites will earn $1 billion in ad revenues this year, and $4.3 billion by 2011. Mediaweek goes on to state, "Plus, users have shown no indication that creating their own Web content for others to consume is a passing fad, found eMarketer. By 2011, the researcher estimates there will be 95 million Web users creating content online, up from 64 million last year."

The analogy to Web 1.0 online advertising is this: 1994 is usually cited as the birth of online advertising, and in 1997, the medium's fourth year, the IAB reported $900 million in ad revenue. Arguably, 2005 was the first year of social media, so 2007, the third year of its existence, will see $1 billion. Very similar growth curve. Online advertising hit $4 billion in 1999, its sixth year; UGC will hit this landmark in its 7th year. Since UGC growth isn't being propelled by a bubble that was starting to inflate in 1999, the curve again looks similar.

At the same time eMarketer also published an article "UGC not Critical for Many Marketers" in which only 12% of survey respondents said UGC was "very important" to their marketing efforts. The top reasons according to eMarketer "lack of clear ROI was often named as an objection. Other reasons listed included "management doesn't embrace it yet," "we simply haven't given it enough priority to consider it at this point" and "we've had difficulty in getting the establishment to understand it."

Nonetheless, over 40% are either using it already or considering it for next year. emarketer explains, "respondents understood the benefits of using UGC. A third of respondents said UGC was cost-efficient compared with traditional marketing and advertising, and 31% said it was useful because the credibility of traditional advertising and marketing was declining."

This is really deja vu for me: I wrote the following in an October 2001 Forrester Report titled "Online Advertising Retrenches":

"Marketers wrestle with opposing forces that alternatively urge them forward and hold them back from adopting Web site display advertising. They sense the Web's potential but recoil from the risks of being a pioneer and so wait for proven metrics and ad formats to appear."

In a nutshell, consumer media consumption habits are changing faster than marketers can learn and adapt. But year by year, from dipping a toe in the water, to pilot tests, to full adoption, the shift is on an inexorable course. The only question is whether the shift will be faster or slower than the prognosicators think.

I have an obvious bias, but my money is on it growing faster. Being a former prognosicator, here is how I would think about it:

1. There is no VC-fueled dotcom spending here, so the growth is unlikely to be interrupted for 3 years as happend to online advertising.
2. Senior marketing executives and industry observers like Bob Garfield have woken up to the reality that the age of mass marketing is in decline and they no longer need to be convinced to move beyond the tried-and-true tactics of the past. Traditional advertising spending is slowing and "below-the line" (I've always hated that phrase) on CRM, interactive, direct mail, etc. is growing.
3. Social media represents a bigger change than online advertising was. Banners were another format to push messages through; blogs and social networks require a much more dynamic relationship with consumers.

IMHO, the biggest drag on the growth of online ads in the '90's was lack of urgency because marketers still had total confidence in TV and mass marketing. Without that comfort, marketers will be much more willing to invest in the necessary learning to add new social media tools to their marketing arsenal.

iPods, Pacemakers, and a brewing crisis for Apple

A storm of coverage has erupted in the last 24 hours over reports that an iPod can cause a pacemaker to malfunction. Both the traditional media and social media are buzzing....

Mickey Khan of DMNews tipped me off to this story.

The first report appears to be in the Pioneer Press and then was quickly picked up by blog Ars Technica and is spreading globally to the UK, Germany, Australia, India. There are about 165 traditional media stories (as of noon eastern time) and about the same number of blog posts. And it is starting to rise on Digg, with 26 votes.

So far, no response on the Apple site (in fact the last press release about the iPod celebrates selling 100 million of the devices), either in the media info section or the support section.

I'll let you check out these stories and assess the facts behind it for yourself. This event raises some interesting questions that will play out in the next hours....

• Will this become the next example of the Influence 2.0 world damaging an iconic brand before it can organize a response?
• Or, as many bloggers suggest, is this no big deal because any electrical device can interfere with a pacemaker?
• Will Apple be forced to respond? If so, will their response make matters worse or reassure iPod lovers?

Stay tuned...

Before the kickoff, Doritos scores a touchdown

In the REAL contest (the battle of the Super Bowl ads to see which advertisers will get the most for their money), Doritos has already put a big lead on the board. From January 1 - February 2, coverage of their contest to have consumers create their Super Bowl ad has generated over 40 million impressions -- almost half the number the game will deliver.

Cymfony has been tracking coverage of Super Bowl advertising in television (thanks to our friends at Critical Mention!), Internet traditional media sites (sites like reuters.com, abcnews.com, msnbc.com and thousands of others) and social media sites (blogs, discussion boards, social network sites, etc.).

Here's one other stat: the social media sources deliver less than 5% of all the impressions generated. While the blogs and social networks are undeniably important, they still have a long way to go to match traditional media's impact. But this shouldn't be a surprise: according to Quantcast, Engadget gets between 30,000 - 40,000 unique visits per day. A broadcast on a local TV station like ABC 9 in Cincinnati delivers an audience of 65,653 while the online version of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper delivers 66,416 readers.

Beyond just the raw amount of exposure, Doritos wins on another dimension: almost half of the discussions of the Doritos ads are positive and almost none are negative. At Cymfony, we almost never see this strong of positive reaction for any brand.

    

By contrast, Nationwide's Kevin Federline ad also shows strong favorability, but in a more typical pattern, almost 17% of the discussion is negative (you can't please all the people all the time).

 

But while Nationwide also got a fair amount of coverage and discussion, K-Fed really can't please the blogosphere: just under 30% of discussion in the social media world is negative.

   

Read my picks of the best and worst of Super Bowl ads: First Quarter, Second Quarter, Third Quarter, Fourth Quarter.

Superbowl advertisers are missing the real game

Ad Age reports that many Superbowl advertisers are staying quiet about buying the expensive spots. This is exactly the wrong strategy.

At $2.6 million per spot, even with 100,000,000 people watching, this works out to a $26 cost per thousand, high by any standards. Add the fact that this is a very untargeted audience and any specific advertiser's cost per target audience thousand escalates rapidly. There's no way to get a return on just the 30 seconds of the game alone.

Last year, I posted my thoughts about the right Superbowl ad strategy:

"The only way to rationalize this expense is to use it as a platform for public relations, word of mouth, and other exposure for your spot. Just as the ads have come to almost overshadow the game, the value from exposure before and after the game overshadows the 30 seconds the brand is paying for. "

Ad Age attributes companies' reluctance to promote their Superbowl ads to "accountants and procurement types breath[ing] down CMO necks."

In other words, the bean counters, trying to squeeze more efficiency out of marketing budgets, are accomplishing exactly the opposite of what they intend.

I have expected that the buzz about the Superbowl ads this year would focus on Doritos, the NFL, and Chevrolet who are conducting a contest for consumer-generated ads. It looks like the other advertisers are making this a reality by leaving the field wide open (pun intended)...

Doritos Ads -- More evaluation

Yesterday, I ranked the five final ads in the Doritos "Crash the Superbowl" contest based on my gut reaction. Today I ask more rigorous questions -- and change my ranking slightly...

The first question: Do these ads meet the standards of a "real" agency? To answer this question, I had to travel back in time to put myself in the mindset of my ad agency days, ie, if I were the management supervisor on the Doritos account, would I feel confident presenting these ideas to the client? The answer is a definite yes. In fact, at times I had to present much worse work and try to sell it to my client!

But I don't believe agencies are in danger of being put out of business by Ad Age's "Agency of the Year" -- the consumer. If every brand were to run a contest like this for every new campaign, the novelty would quickly wear off and they would receive no submissions. I do wonder if networks of freelancers will crop up to compete for assignments at a fraction of a Madison Avenue fee.

But agencies will face tough questions about why they need to spend $350,000 or more to shoot an ad when these consumers delivered quite good production values on a shoestring.

The second question: How good are these ads, really? How well do they accomplish Doritos' branding and sales objectives? To answer this, I evaluated the ideas by five criteria; definitions of these criteria and their weightings are below. Here are the grades (click to enlarge):

   

These grades confirm my rating of "Live the Flavor" and "Checkout Girl" as the top two ads, "Duct Tape" and "Chip Lover's Dream" move up but "Mousetrap" drops to the bottom.

In my next installment, I'll do my best to channel Bob Garfield and review each ad.

Here are the definitions and weighting of the criteria:

Strategic fit: 40%. Call me a stickler, I don't care who creates the ad I insist that it fits the brand's strategy. I've made the assumption that their target audience is young men; the rules of the contest allude to attributes like boldness, flavor, and the action the attributes drive.

Quality of idea: 30%. I'm also a believer in the Big Idea: is the fundamental idea driving the ad compelling and engaging?

Art Direction: 10%. Art Directors are responsible for casting, sets, props, and the grapic design of the spot. Grades are based on the quality of these elements.

Copywriting: 10%. Interestingly, only two ads --"Checkout Girl" and "Duct Tape" -- have a spoken script. But copywriters are also responsible for the storyline of the ad. The stronger, tighter, and more complete the story, the higher the grade.

Production: 10%. This criterion includes the quality of the finished video, the acting and direction, and additional special effects included.

Doritos announces final five consumer-created ads

As if on cue following Ad Age's naming of the consumer as Agency of the Year, Doritos unveiled the final five candidates in their contest for consumers to create the brand's Superbowl commercial. Here is my ranking....

Doritos launched their "Crash the Superbowl" contest back in October and consumers have submitted over 1000 ads. After a couple of "playoff" rounds, Doritos announced the final five.

I took at quick look at them, and I rank them as follows:

1. Live the Flavor
2. Checkout Girl
3. Mousetrap
4. Duct Tape
5. Chip Lovers Dream

As an ex agency guy, I can't resist commenting on whether they actually live up to what a real agency would produce. But it's late tonight.

Watch this space for more discussion over the next few days...

Ad Age misses the point of consumer control

First, Time Magazine named "You" as Person of the Year. Now Ad Age names the consumer as Agency of the Year. Time got it right. Ad Age got it wrong....

Time put their finger on the pulse of this change when they said, "It's about the many wresting power from the few...and how that will not only change the world, but change the way the world changes."

In other words, "you" have the power, and society and its institutions must get ready for the changes that "you" will demand.

But Ad Age says, "The question for 2007 will be whether marketers and agencies find ways to harness that consumer-bred creativity...and deploy it to the service of brands."

In other words, big corporations and brands still have the power, they only let the consumer have the illusion they have the power. The marketer may not be able to give the consumer a creative brief and tell them what to do, but if they are wiley enough, they can still manipulate, cajole, fool, and bribe the consumer to do what they want.

I'll concede that you may be able to get a bunch of consumers to suck up to the brand for a couple of months to win the bragging right of having their commercial picked for the Superbowl. But what happens on February 5? There are a lot of other conversations out there about the brand -- praising, damning, complaining, and advising -- that won't be so easily whitewashed by a chance at short-term fame.

Ad Age has been seduced by the lure of the big YouTube pop, and is leading its readers astray with the mirage of viewership numbers that are as ephermeral as the next email.

The lesson Ad Age missed -- and that marketers should focus on -- is how to harness consumer-bred creativity and deploy it to the service of those consumers, by listening and learning what the consumer says makes for a great brand, then delivering it in real, differentiated, meaningful features and benefits. 

The next great marketers will see the real benefits brands can gain in this consumer-controlled world: deriving superior consumer insight to drive sustainable competitive advantage.* They will shape the experience consumers have with the brand to the desires and needs that consumers now spontaneously and directly express. These brands will build a longer-term, stronger bond with consumers based on real value consumers receive, and give up the illusion that the slick sell can make up for the lack of real benefits.

*Thanks to Prof. Robert Lauterborn for sharing his marketing mantra with me!

2007 Prognostications

I've been speculating on what 2007 will hold. Here are links to some of the places I've been quoted. Check them out, plus some bonus thoughts....

Heidi Cohen published my thoughts on how marketers will embrace online video in new ways on ClickZ.

Mickey Alam Khan wrote an excellent recap of a long conversation he and I had at AdTech about what all the changes in the media landscape mean for advertisers and media companies in his recent DM News editorial.

Then, ADOTAS tapped me for an article of crystal-ball gazing, based on the Time Magazine Person of the Year, which should appear soon....

Now, for a couple of other thoughts:

Bubble 2.0 ? -- I don't think so. Earlier this fall David Pogue worried that AOL's switch to a totally free ad-supported service signals the return of the late '90's Internet bubble. I agree, we have some froth in the market, but there is one big difference: online advertising is heading toward $16 billion this year, and it is real money, not VC cash that sloshed through Bubble 1.0. But an even more telling example is YouTube suing TechCrunch to protect their business model. This is the anti-bubble -- content may want to be free (in the popular Bubble 1.0 era phrase), but content owners/creators/distributors are not charitable institutions. For there to be content worth watching, somebody has to make some money somewhere along the line.

Web 2.0 is growing up. Reuters investing in Pluck is a strong signal that the worlds of "traditional" and "social" media continue to converge, bringing blogs to a wider, less tech-happy audience. Moves like this advance the case for Influence 2.0, the intersection and interaction of both mainstream and traditional media. With YouTube safely entrenced in the Google world and striking deals with NBC Universal, Vivendi's Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, the NHL, and others, it is clear that real companies are starting to work Web 2.0 into their business models. Contrary to Steve Rubel's thoughts, there is still a long way to go, but the trend will accelerate in 2007.

The post-TiVo era begins. TiVo taught consumers they could break the control network programming bosses had over scheduling. Then the networks completely gave control over by putting popular shows on iTunes, and consumers learned they could have their video content not only whenever but wherever they wanted it. In 2007 as video-enabled mobile phones become a reality, consumers will have even more freedom to view what they want, when they want, wherever they want. Ads will spread but the real change will come as marketers create more product demonstrations and segments with expert advice. Someone wondering what to make their family for dinner will dial up a 5-minute segment with Rachel Ray sponsored by Kraft.

Beyond MySpace. Marketers will seek sites that are “not your teenager’s social network”. MySpace still grabs all the attention, but social networks have begun to spread, popping up to serve different segments of consumers. Though sites like Gather.com and eons.com don’t have the raw numbers of MySpace, they have the buying power of aging Boomers and the NPR audience. Marketers will discover that novelties like a brand character page on these sites won’t cut it. Instead, brands will engage with consumers on how to fulfill their LifeDreams on eons.com while resurrecting the concept of “cause-related marketing” to support issues the Gather.com audience cares about.

More fake blogs. As a member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Board of Directors, it pains me to say this. But we will see more examples where marketers try to take shortcuts to create buzz by pretending to be someone they are not. Sony launched AllIWantforXmasIsAPSP.com, having missed the lessons of the “Walmarting across America” fake blog controversy that gave the retailer and their PR firm, Edelman, such a black eye just a month before. Pardon the slightly commercial message, but there is still time to establish a New Year's Resolution of engaging in ethical marketing practices: join WOMMA, embrace the Honesty ROI principles, and institute the practical ethics steps that will help you engage in authentic, valuable conversation with consumers.

I've been tagged!

Peter Kim at Forrester jumped on the "five things you don't know about me" meme; he tagged his new Forrester colleague David Frankland who tagged me. I generally keep this blog focused on business issues. But what the heck. In the holiday spirit, here are five things you don't know about me...

1. I play the Scottish bagpipes. I started in college, played competitively for many years, achieving Grade 2 status in the Eastern United States Pipe Band Association (yes, there is such a thing).
2. I was a geology major at William College. How did it get from there into the advertising/marketing world? Buy me a drink sometime and I'll give you the whole long, convoluted story!
3. I sing in my church choir. I'm more of a bass, though I'm trying to stretch my range into baritone. Our organist/choirmaster is amazing -- I have an OK voice but I've never had any prior voice training. In the past few years I've learned a lot and he has had us sing some amazing pieces.
4. I'm a alternative energy nut: I drive a Toyota Prius, (which I bought in 2002, long before the recent run-up in gas prices) and put solar photovoltaic panels on my roof a year ago. Next, I'll probably put a solar hot water system on the roof, especially if I can track down the Swedish system I read about recently that uses hot water for air conditioning.
5. 5. I'm a dog nut. But I've had a really tough year. Two of my beloved girls went to doggie heaven this year: Sadie, age 16, last February and Gina (at left) age 13 this past Monday (I'm in deep mourning this week). We're down to one dog right now, but we'll add to the pack soon! (see the whole pack at petcentric -- Sadie is the little Sheltie mix next to Gina in the background; DeeDee the black lab in the foreground is now the lone dog in the household).

I would have tagged Pete Blackshaw, but someone got to him first! So my tags go to Jackie Huba at the Church of the Customer, Bob Liodice at the Association of National Advertisers, and Todd Defren at Shift Communications.

Our Blu-ray/HD DVD report triggers skepticism...and we reply

It's been about two weeks since Cymfony published its finding that the next generation video format HD-DVD is taking an early edge over Blu-ray.  The findings themselves were interesting - which you can download here: but the truly interesting aspect of the study was the response to the analysis itself! 

A Blue Christmas for Blu-Ray has caused quite a stir in the blogosphere, industry forums and message boards. The report was picked up from coast to coast -- from the Washington Post to the San Jose Mercury News and in top-tier blogs like Engadget and arstechnica. Then it truly started to get interesting!

As the story evolved, some skeptics bashed the report, wondering who paid for /sponsored the research. We quickly updated the report with this disclaimer (which we should have included more prominently in the initial release):

Cymfony conducted this research as an independent study to evauate and measure the influence of online social media in the high definition video market. The research was not sponsored by any manufacturer or other ognazination affiliated with either HD DVD or Blu-ray products.

We went into the study with no preconceived notions or agendas. We picked the topic expecting it to capture attention due to the heightened awareness of the holiday high-tech consumer season and the importance of these new formats to their respective supporters. The depth of skepticism about Sony's ability to succeed in launching a new format and the perception of the company's "arrogance" surprised us.

We hit a nerve, spurred debate, and that's exciting -- that's what analyzing social media to discover unexpected insights is all about.

I can certainly understand that Blu-ray supporters wouldn't like our findings. And I can even understand their initial reaction to try to cast doubt on the findings.

But I hope on reflection they will begin to understand the bigger lesson we were trying to illustrate with this study: the value of listening. In today's market, consumers are in control and expressing their views; Cymfony is just the messenger. The real question is: are companies and brands ready to listen?  Can they learn to face criticism, respond positively then engage in the conversation productively?

Now that the initial shock has receded, I hope these companies and brand will ask themselves:

• Could this information have helped shape the product development and marketing strategies?
• Can these insights be incorporated into a mid-course correction, to address the doubts and concerns expresssed and make a more compelling story for Blu-ray's benefits?
• Should we create a forum on blu-raydisc.com and ecnourage these consumers to come directly to us to express themselves?
• What should we do to prove to the skeptics that we have heard them, taken action on their concerns, and are committed to making Blu-ray a must-have product?

These aren't questions just for Sony, the Blu-ray consortium, or their rivals backing HD DVD. These are questions all marketers must begin to wrestle with.

We welcome the conversation to continue. As such, we plan on conducting similar research on other topics next year, capturing the opinions of the consumer base within traditional and CGM forums.

What are your thoughts? What issues, brand, and areas of interest would you like to hear about?

Post a comment for me with your suggestions.

A Blue Christmas for Blu-ray

Consumers are talking about next generation video formats: Blu-ray and HD DVD. This new Cymfony report gives the edge to HD DVD, but not for the reasons you may think.

Here are a few highlights of the study, which you can download here:

• Talk is evenly divided between the two formats, but postive comments about HD DVD are 46% higher than positives about Blu-ray.
• Over twice as many post authors say they are impressed by HD DVD than are impressed with Blu-ray.
• Sony, a leader of the Blu-ray consortium, inspires skepticism and resentment among a significant segment of post authors. They cite a string of Sony-led formats (such as Betamax) that have failed and accuse the company of arrogance.

This was a surprise to me. Much of the mainstsream media coverage of these high-def formats talks about the "format wars", drawing the analogy to the videotape format battle between VHS and Betamax. Our research shows there's more going on with consumers: it's not that consumers are waiting for one format to win before they purchase, but they actively doubt Sony's ability to win the battle. Here's my favorite post:

"Sony, on the other hand, has a track record of starting format wars, and losing them too...but they just don't seem to learn their lesson because they're so greedy."

A key point is that most conversation is still among early adopter videophiles and gamers. So far, both audiences have similar downbeat assessments. This doesn't bode well for the word-of-mouth that is likely to guide mainstream consumers.

One point also came through clearly: people don't see much difference between these two formats, and don't discuss the higher storage capacity or "next generation interactivity" that Sony touts as Blu-ray advantages.

In the report we steered away from making recommendations, but let me make this suggestion to Sony here: issue a movie that really struts Blu-ray's stuff. The few movies out on Blu-ray have the usual extras: added scenes, director interviews, etc. and in some cases post authors note that the Blu-ray version has fewer extras than a standard DVD! This hardly provides a reason to throw out my DVD player that is only 3 years old...

Disclosure: Jon Fortt at Business 2.0 blogged about the report, expressing concern about who was behind it. The answer: nobody. We did this as an independent research project, none of the companies involved in either format paid for it, had any input to it, or even were aware we were doing it. None of the lead companies for either format are clients of Cymfony.

I think this is a good example of the insight companies can and should be tapping into to understand what is truly driving the success or failure of their marketing.

Great Ideas I learned in October -- Part 3

Conversational Marketing

With all this talk of "the consumer in control", the waning effectiveness of traditional advertising, and the new models of Web 2.0, most marketing models haven't really changed, witness the growth of regular banner ads and Google AdWords appearing on blogs.

But social media are about conversations. Putting Web 1.0 banner and search ads in social media is like putting a radio ad on TV and leaving the screen blank. It probably works to some extent, but it doesn't really use the unique qualities of the medium to their fullest.

I've had the good fortune to work closely with Tom Hespos of Underscore Marketing and Tom Troja of Pajamas Media this month, helping them flesh out the implementation of their concept of Conversational Marketing. The insight driving the idea is deceptively simple: if consumers go to blogs to be part of a conversation, the ads should invite them to enter a conversation with the marketer.

Tom Troja conceived of an advertising concept he calls "Can We Talk?" which uses ads not to push messages at the target audience, but invites individuals to begin a dialogue with a brand. To make this a practical program, we've combined Cymfony's tools to monitor and analyze topics discussed in the blogosphere, with the Pajamas Media blog network, and the strategy and creative skills of Underscore. Together, we've created a process to identify relevant topics, pose these topics to consumers on sites where they are in conversation mode, and give them an immediate opportunity to begin a conversation with the company.

Stay tuned for more on this innovative model!

The real story of the State of the Blogosphere

David Sifry's latest State of the Blogosphere report notes that the blogosphere is maturing. Forget the 57 million total blogs. The interesting number is that there are more authoritative blogs than there are traditional outlets in any single medium.

It's time to stop citing that there are 57 million blogs -- it is a pretty meaningless number. Since 26 million are spam or abandoned, they don't count. I'm not even sure the 31 million active blogs (that have been updated at least once in the past 3 months) is a very meaningful number -- in the blog world this isn't very active. At best these numbers serve as a proxy for the growth of CGM. But with comScore and NetRatings traffic numbers for YouTube and MySpace, I think this number has outlived its usefulness.

The number that really caught my eye is:

• 30,488 high authority and very high authority blogs

For context there are about 13,000 radio stations, 9,000 TV stations, and 17,000 magazines in the US. (source: Forrester Research, "Left Brain Marketing")

In other words, authoritative blogs are  more numerous than any other single traditional medium. That alone is a number a marketer or public relations person needs to take seriously.

blogosphere CGM media

The REALLY BIG story of the Wal-Mart/Edelman fake blog situation

Plenty of people have been criticizing Edelman, so I've been sitting it out. It is now time to take a step back and look at the big implication: The PR and marketing professions must commit themselves to changing course now, or they will crash into the mountain of consumer control.

Let's face it, this could probably have happened to any big PR firm or company that is blogging these days. The fact that it happened at Edelman, one of the self-declared leaders in using social media with some of the highest-profile bloggers out there, says as much or more about the chasm the profession will have to cross as it does about any one individual company.

For a generation or more, PR has been about spin. Finding a clever story angle is what PR people are trained to do. Marketing is the same, except they call it "positioning". Each new strategy starts from the basic premise of how to magnify the positives and deny any potential negatives. Exaggeration, careful selection of facts, and creating enticing ways to present the messages are not only accepted, but the fabric of every day work. In advertising, they are limited only by truth in advertising laws.

But consumer mistrust of advertising and media make these unspoken assumptions obsolete and dangerous to the health of companies and their marketing/PR partners. Before we launch a campaign, we must begin to put its concept through a new filter. After we ask "Is it on strategy" and "Is it compelling to the audience?", we must now ask "Is it ethical?". And we must train everyone in our organizations, down to the entry level assistant account executive, media relations manager, and marketing associate to ask this question.

The WOMMA Ethics code is a great start on specific areas of honesty in relationship, opinion, and identity. (Disclosure: I am a member of the Board of Directors of WOMMA). Now it -- or some similar guidelines -- must be incorporated into the curricula, training programs, and OJT learning that takes place every day.

Marketing and PR have been on autopilot for decades. The collision warning system just alarmed us that we're heading straight into the side of a mountain.

What are you doing to change the course of your organization?

edelman walmart micropersuasion richard+edelman flog public+relations wal-marting+across+america

Facebook's Quick About Face

I'll give CEO Mark Zuckerberg a B- for his response to the situation. Read on to see how I think he could improve his grade.

I've been out of the loop due to traveling (my godson received his wings as a Naval aviator on Friday -- a great day!). So I'm just catching up on all that happened.

Here are the components of the grade:

Initial response: C.

Mr. Zuckerberg's 9/5 blog post acknowledges that "many of you aren't immediate fans of the new features" but first highlights that some consider the new features "overwhelming and cluttered". Hmmm. I didn't see any protest groups popping up about the clutter. He goes on to defend the features and invites feedback, but the general tone is defensive and doesn't reassure readers that Facebook will incorporate the feedback into the product.

Ultimate Response: A

"Coding nonstop for two days" to bring out features to correct the deficiencies was exactly the right thing to do. Mr. Zuckerberg's 9/8 post hits exactly the right tone: Admitting where Facebook messed up and that the company missed key principles that they believed in is the kind of honesty that always disarms critics.

Speed of Response: A

Getting the initial response up on 9/5 as the protests grew was exactly right. Fixing it within 3 days was even better.

Learning the bigger lesson: B-

That lesson is: involve your customers in your development process. Mr. Zuckerberg took one good step in inviting members to a group called the "Free Flow of Information on the Internet" to talk to him and other Facebook executives. Basically this is the right thing to do but 1) the name sounds more like a lobbying group than a customer feedback group. Also, it sounds like he will be pushing his view of what Free Flow means. 2) He gives no indication that this is more than a one time event meant to address one specific problem.

Remedial action

To raise future grades, Facebook needs a permanent way to gather member feedback, an internal process that proactively seeks it, assesses it , then incorporates it into development. Study  QuickBooks community section, especially Better Because of You to see how Intuit solicits and uses their customer suggestions. For extra credit, get tutoring from a company like Communispace that specializes in building and managing customer communities.

Lots of Unhappy Faces at Facebook

In case anyone had any doubts about the power of the social web, the controversy about Facebook's plan to send RSS updates of members' updates should put it to rest. Here are some initial issues the incident raises....

290,000 members joining a protest group demanding a change of this policy...a promised boycott of Facebook next week...and no Cesar Chavez leading it. This is truly a grass roots reaction. (For those of you too young to remember Cesar Chavez and the Grape Boycott of the '60's and '70's, check out Wikipedia.)

This controversy will likely continue to grow and evolve over the next few days and I'll update my thoughts about it. But here are some initial thoughts and questions that I hope to explore more over the coming days.

• Is this about poor communications on Facebook's part or the boundaries of privacy? From my read, the RSS feeds only go to a small circle of friends, the people who most likely come to  the friend's site on a regular basis anyway. Mark explains this pretty clearly in his post. Is RSS so cutting edge that even these presumably sophisticated users don't fully understand it? Or did this cross some line which even these people who live their lives very publicly don't want to cross?
• What was Facebook's product development process? Did they get any user input before hand? Or are they developing these features in an engineering silo because they are "cool" as Ruchi Sangvhi says in her blog post announcing them.
• And why didn't Facebook have a blog long ago? They just started their blog on August 22; thank goodness they did so they have a platform to respond to the uproar. Mark Zuckerberg did a nice job on jumping on it with his Tuesday post. But nothing since. I think the members would like to know what his thinking is two days later, even if it is just to stay "we understand concern is growing and we're looking at some options." But they probably could have avoided this whole issue if their blog had been active during the development process and they pinged their members for feedback.
• Why didn't Facebook learn from eBay's mistakes? Several years ago, eBay had similar user backlash to changes in policies and fees. eBay has since developed a philosophy that while they own the platform, the community should be empowered in large part to govern itself.