My fellow AdVikings wrote a few days ago about the great MS launching their defense of the display advertising model. Unsurprising bit of timing: just as recession bites, and marketers flee from the gloss of ‘brand building’ in favour of actually closing business.
Is it a dog? Is it a shame? No, it's G1
Of course, as AdViking points out, the whole point of brand building was supposed to be about closing sales as well. And therefore I find it hard to disagree MS and their attempts to map the various touch points between the brand and the consumer in an attempt to allocate values to the various touchpoints.
But – and it’s a decent sized but – let’s not forget that marketing is an unholy balance between art and science… the numbers alone don’t tell the full story.
So, if you consider that T-Mobile’s current advertising campaign:
- their radio spots are (to these ears at least) a major disincentive to buy from them (hate them!)
- poster treatments work substantially better
Now I happen to be interested in getting the new G1 Android phone, which is only available from T-Mobile. (OK – I know it’s ugly, but this is an illustration, work with me here). The negative impact of the radio advertising is cancelled out by other things. But is there any way Microsoft’s Engagement Mapping can measure that successfully? Or, by buying a G1, do I tell the marketers that their awful radio ads had the desired affect?
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… in Ireland, it seems.
Or at least, the tax system for business is a lot more attractive, or so thinks Sir Martin Sorrell, as he moves his WPP business headquarters across to the other side of the Irish Sea, as a fellow Brand Republic blogger discusses today…
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Those ARE real people down there... just click and see!
Sandlines is idly pondering his No. 1 FAQ, namely “what happens next”?
I wrote a few weeks back about buzzword inflation in the form of Web 3.0, as a framework for speculation. For me, one of the key elements is going to be the increase in relevance online. And a key driver for relevance is location.
Location has long been a tricky beast to observe on the web. Local IP addresses (especially outside the US) are difficult to get right, leaving declared location (via registration data) the nearest thing we often have for an answer.
But people are pesky things, They’ve an irritating tendency (at least, irritating in this context) to move about – i.e. changing their location, therefore their criteria for relevance shifts with them…. pub vs office vs coffee shop vs living room etc.
That said, they’re pretty ingenious too. Witness the invention of devices such as the iPod Touch (on which I wrote this post) or the iPhone – or other (gasp) smartphones, PDAs, laptops, UMPCs or even the Asus EeePC. All with internet capabilities of varying levels of usefulness and usability.
And guess what? They are terrific at pinpointing location. If I use my iPod Touch with WiFi and go to Google Maps, it puts me within 500m of my actual location. And not a cellular transmitter in sight. So, an opportunity for better (ie more relevant) search results for web users; better targeting options for advertisers… a better online experience all round.
That still creates challenges: how do you generate the content that provides relevance online? It’s easy enough to get macro level local content, but the more granular stuff is much harder to obtain. Businesses old (Yell.com) and new (UpMyStreet, KnoWhere.co.uk) try, but I think it’s unrealistic to expect traditional approaches to editorial to fill the gap. You need to generate community - for communities. In other words, user generated content: reviews, listings, groups etcetera. It is happening, but there’s still a way to go.
Location is going to be critical to the Web 3.0 future. Watch this (local) space.
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text goes ... er...
The more observant amongst Sandlines’ readership may have noticed that I’ve mentioned a band from Glasgow, called Glasvegas, a couple of times. You may not be amazed to learn, then, that I signed up for their email communications.
I think there must be something about music companies and their approach to email that just misses the point: this email is from Sony subsidiary, Columbia Records, but shows many of the same problems I saw a few years back from one of the other majors (who’ll remain nameless… for now).
In common with a lot of emails from this industry, there is a lot of reliance on images to convey the message of the email. This is fine until you realise that the default for so many email accounts to keep images turned off by default.
Never mind, I turned images on – after all, I want to see what they have to say.
Oh.
They’ve done the old black-text-on-a-black-background trick. I suspect they planned to do white text on black, but of course testing the outcome in the various email clients is just such a lot of work…
As Nate Elliott from JupiterResearch (before being swallowed by Forrester) said at my Advanced Email Strategies conference last year, “… (email marketers)… are Marketers without Images”. Seems Columbia went one better – marketers without images OR words.
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Sandlines has learnt that epitaphs are being drafted at Ad:Tech London for the traditional campaign timetable for marketing activity as we are urged to build direct and enduring relationships with consumers.
Wow. This is breaking news. I refer you to my ‘manifesto’ post a while back.
But in all seriousness, it’s great to hear a top flight agency – Brooklyn Brothers in this case – talking about unlocking the value of online relationships – a strapline I’ve been using for the last year or so in presentations for my company, Silverpop.
It’s the heart of why, in Sandlines’ view, Digital Marketing is in grave danger of ‘coming of age’ during the current recession. And looking at Brooklyn Brothers’ mission statement, I can’t help but think that they ‘get it’.
Digital marketing will thrive because:
- it can be hugely (cost) effective
- it’s fast
- it can be optimised quickly to what works best
- it allows you to really develop relationships, rather than a series of episodic broadcasts.
But to really get your money’s worth from the medium, you’ll need to break the ‘acquisition’ habit. Digital marketing works best when it’s a programme, not an event.
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I was twittered a few days back with a link to someone, literally, drawing marketing lines in the sand. Obviously it amused me.
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My copy of New Media Age hit the doormat at last this morning, complete with a cover story about Amazon’s imminent opening of an MP3 store here in Blighty. How long has this been open in the States???
Anyway, alongside 7Digital and Play.com, iTunes is at last getting some serious competition. I like it!
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Credit crunch
It’s a scary world out there at the moment.
The impact on the rest of the UK economy of HBOS turning into the minority partner in the Lloyds Halifax megabank is yet to be felt, but there’s no shortage of doom-mongers around… and this is not the time or place to argue with them too vociferously. I do, however, remain guardedly optimistic that we’re not seeing the meltdown that the papers seem to be helping us talk ourselves into. But the alternative remains a fairly daunting one: a ‘bath-shaped’ recession (or at least downturn) that could last a while… the big question seems to be ‘how deep?’.
What impact does that have on the marketing industry?
Rainy days
In the last comparable recession, back in the early 1990s there was talk of ‘the end of western civilisation’. It was pretty torrid, but we survived. What was interesting, from a marketing perspective, was the surge in the use of direct marketing techniques/expenditure. The downturn then raised the perception of the Direct Marketing discipline – and with it budgets – to the level where, from being a small part of marketing expenditure, it has reached equal footing with the flashier, arguably sexier world of above the line marketing… i.e. advertising. I found an amusing recollection of that period over at adliterate, where the author recalls the hubristic dreams of DM agencies back in 1990 that DM would ‘kill off’ glossy advertising.
So here we are in 2008, and all the data points to this period being critical in the development of Digital Marketing. 81% of marketers are planning to increase their digital budgets… and 82% of them at the expense of other advertising media.
So is this digital’s ‘moment’?
Digital will win out in a recession (compared to other media) because:
- it’s fast – the results come in very quickly
- it’s effective
- you can measure it
- you can optimise to what works on the fly
- it remains comparatively inexpensive (no really!)
- … oh, and unlike the 2001/2 marketing recession, digital is now a firmly established part of mainstream marketing… not the experimental silo it was then.
But the real winner will be engagement marketing. Yes, talking to people you already know. Building on relationships – and keeping your promise with sharpened attention to value and service. Getting people who already buy from you to recommend you to their friends… all that wonderful stuff.
OK – so I have an interest in this – my company, Silverpop, is deep in this territory, providing solutions for engagement marketing, particularly email marketing. We also published a white paper this year on marketing in a recession, which you’re welcome to download.
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Bye Bye DRM
I blogged a couple of times on this subject already – this is really just an update. Seems Sandlines was pretty quick off the mark with this news yesterday, beating New Media Age, Brand Republic and the Guardian to the punch.
When I posted below, there were a smattering of Sony/Columbia etc titles available in MP3 format. 7Digital have now confirmed that they are 100% MP3. That means 4 million tracks. Oh, and that Glasvegas album is better value, this week only, for a fiver. You heard it here first 
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I wrote earlier about Universal leaping whole-heartedly into the fray with a huge catalogue of artists now available in MP3 format. Now Sony have leaped into action as well. OK – so leapt is perhaps an overstatement… the new Glasvegas album is up on 7Digital today (a week or so later than on iTunes) in glorious 320 kbps MP3 format. There seem to be a few other back catalogue items in there too, but I’ve not done a thorough check and it seems patchy rather than as enthusiastic as Universal, Warners and EMI (in reverse order of committing) are today.
BUT, I’m genuinely excited that we may be seeing the end of ridiculously un-customer friendly DRM policies in the sale of music. Who knows, if they get round to TELLING people they’re doing this, maybe their sales might even increase a little…. I’ve long believed one of the reasons that *some* people download, um, illegally is because DRM makes life so blinking difficult to enjoy music that you have legitimately bought.
Now all we need is for Apple to soften their approach to syncing your iPod with more than one PC and we’ll be making REAL progress in providing a highly usable digital music experience. Hurrah!
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