Get Shouty

In Australia, we know. We know we’re going to run out of fresh US TV content as a result of the writer’s strike. We have between 3 and six month grace. And then all those expensive spots simply dry up. Disappear.

So what advice are you giving brands as a result? What alternatives are you giving client for when people really can’t find anything interesting/new to watch on the box? When the TV spend doesn’t have a stranglehold on the budget?

People, of course, still want to be entertained. And brands have an amazing opportunity to show they understand people. Brilliant. Opportunity.

My ‘why not?’ recommendations right now:

• Create family moments for family meals: provide gift with purchase value adds such as DVD’s and board games. Let your packaging point to online to sign up for the latest content offer news.
• Storytelling and narratives can be interactive and engaging- and non linear and prompt discussion. Check out the recent work for Lost http://www.flyoceanicair.com for the precursor and then go to http://www.find815.com. Think about where soap operas came from in the first place.
•  Use the time to listen. Use this time to learn. Who knows….perhaps once the audience turns away it might just not come back.

I’ve recently come into a great new term: ‘the present future’. What I think it means is that our world is changing so rapidly that you really can only plan for the next 10 minutes. What you can conjure up is only informed by what you can see right now and that it’s very likely subject to change, possibly next week. But hey- it’s traditional at this time of year to look forward. 

Social Networking was certainly the J curve to beat in Australia for digital uptake. I really don’t think that the behaviour going to change, though I believe that participants will have growing needs as the ecosystem expands. I’m feeling alliterative as I look into my crystal ball for 2008, so this is the future for it that I’m seeing right now:

• Filtering
  • We’re all suffering from information overload, even in our personal digital spaces. Too many Facebook friends. Too many emails in too many accounts. Too much content from people that we never wanted to know quite that well preventing us from getting updates from the people that we started social networking to keep in contact with.
  •  2008 will be the year the we set up filters so that not every one can see after-hours photos or information about career successes. We will choose who can see what aspects of our lives. We will value  our own individual micro-networks  over the exposure of a totally open platform.
• Fetching and Feeding
  • Remember when you couldn’t send an SMS between carriers- that you had to be on the same network? Seems mad now, eh?
  • Isn’t it amazing how quiet the whole Open Social thing has become? One of it’s greatest promises was for you to be able to be social networking platform agnostic…..unless you were on Facebook of course…
  • 2008 will be the year when you’ll be able to fetch and feed any information about your mates from anywhere, and to any device.
• Facilitation
  • No I really don’t want to be bitten, I don’t want to bid for you in an auction and I can’t be arsed finding out my “whatever” name.
  • 2008 will find applications that provide a whole lot more utility than merely prompting interaction, particularly as brand find out that they can provide real value in facilitating great experiences for people who use social networking.
  • Facilitation could mean providing real world events and opportunities for people to meet like minds, or fetching me content that it is known that I like (provided by my filter), or group feeding me and my friends information on a subject that we want to grow our knowledge about….

 However you look at it, for Social Networks it will be two thousand and great.
(I promise I won’t do that again!)

Brilliant, Russell brilliant.

In the book  Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay wrote about tulip mania. The term originally came from the period in the history of the Netherlands during which demand for tulip bulbs reached such a peak that enormous prices were charged for a single bulb. It took place in the first part of the 17th century, especially in 1636–37.

In 1623, a single bulb of a famous tulip variety could cost as much as a thousand Dutch florins (the average yearly income at the time was 150 florins).

By 1635, a sale of 40 bulbs for 100,000 florins was recorded. By way of comparison, a ton of butter cost around 100 florins and “eight fat swine” 240 florins.

In February 1637 tulip traders could no longer get inflated prices for their bulbs, and they began to sell. The bubble burst. 

I’m sure that you’ve seen or heard  of (or even experienced) many economic manias like this- llamas, emu eggs and about a hundred thousand websites.

So much a part of educating clients is helping them navigate an essentially manic environment: ‘build me and internet’, ‘get me a Facebook’, Second Life the creation of Linden Labs…or Lewis PR?

We can get terribly focused on the bulb- on the device that will deliver the results that we are after.  As strategic guardians of brands we need to remember the heart of what it is that we are trying to deliver- to plant a seed so that a flower will grow.

This is my current best explanation for what I do without using the words ‘advertising’ or ‘consumer’:

Identify stories and experiences that will  help connect brands with the people that will increase the brand’s value.

I first used ‘create’ to describe the stories and experiences, but in our content creation environment it is much more accurate and flexible to describe how those stories and experiences can be identified without necessarily being proscriptive about who actually makes them. This also means that you’re not limited by what you can produce, and can actively seek what fits the brand messaging best.

I’m also enjoying exploring the increased territory of ‘the people that will increase the brand’s value’. So often there are messages that need to be created for internal and external stakeholders that might not necessarily be people who buy your product at a cash register.

One of the fundamentals of connections planning is that all audiences are not the same. For maximum effectiveness messages and experiences should be tailored to cater to the needs and expectations of different types of people. 

The Roundtable

I’ve been asked to contribute to a Marketing Magazine roundtable discussion. The question is: “Should there be one standard measure for online audiences?”

But if all audiences are unique and granular can any interaction measurement be standardised? And would this build any actionable business intelligence for a brand?

The Knights

I have my own roundtable: Facebook, Twitter and this blog. And in the spirit of ‘it’s not what you know it’s who you know to ask’ I sent out an invitation to participate and a few of my favourite knights got back to me straight away:

Mike (via Facebook): Do you mean quantitative or qualitative? Surely you can’t have a standard with out knowing who you are measuring first? Also, not all traffic is created equal…..
http://publishing2.com/2007/01/25/not-all-traffic-is-created-equal/

Todd: Sure. There should also be a Unified Theory of Everything but they haven’t cracked it yet either. Web is complex, can’t over simplify it.

katiechatfield @Todd: better questions might be :What is important to measure? What does success look like? What’s your answer then?

Todd: Depends what the problem is. Do you ask a doctor to give you a single answer re your wellbeing? Success can mean many things depending on your market position

servantofchaos @katiechatfield you may want to achieve different things with different niches

Sara The Bargain Queen (via Facebook) :Absolutely not! 100,000 one-time readers is worth far less than 10,000 devoted regulars…

Ian (via Facebook):  Online tends to mean interactive so it’s magnitudes more difficult to measure than views/impressions/clicks. We’d have to create a set of engagement metrics – perhaps weighted to the context of the interaction & value of the individual participating

bh_Todd It’s in the interests of media / content owners to do so, but it might not mean too much for marketers.

The Holy Grail 

And that’s the sticking point of the question really- what is the value offering of online publishers? As Doug Anderson  from Neilsen  so neatly puts it:

In order for the marketplace between advertisers and sellers of media to function, both sides must agree on the key metrics that are used to measure and value audiences

So my answer is that we don’t need one standard measure, we need a matrix of measures that maps needs, goals and audiences to outcomes.