Facebook? No thanks.

Thanks to Dylan Fuller who, over in the Local Search Summit on LinkedIn drew my attention to this article. It seems that P&G are no longer interested in running advertising on Facebook. Ted McConnell, GM of Interactive marketing over at Proctor and Gamble said:

“I have a reaction to [Facebook] as a consumer advocate and an advertiser: What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”

Now there’s a hefty dose of rhetoric about the circumstances that McConnell describes, but the point is clear: he sees Facebook (and their peers) as C2C communications, not media opportunities. He feels it is arrogant to interrupt it.

I’m unsurprised by this reaction - and I tend to agree that banners on FB are not the way forward. But it’s nothing new. After all, ad placements have funded Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail …. for years - and often quite successfully.

But it’s the placements that occur outside the composition and reading of the emails that works best - i.e. the log-on or log-off pages, or the pages that confirm an email has been sent in the old style webmail accounts. Which is logical: you’re not interrupting someone in the middle of another conversation.

Several years ago, when I was at Yahoo!, I devised a campaign for Vodafone that was deliberately designed to sit inside these types of C2C interactions. There was an obvious relevance to such a campaign that fitted with the creative tone. However, these types of campaigns have always been the exception rather than the rule.

Historically advertisers have been shy of placing brand sensitive advertising near user generated content. The risk of negative association has been deemed too great. Imagine, placing your family friendly cereal brank ad next to content that celebrates gore or porn. Not an attractive proposition.

Meanwhile the low responsiveness of such placements have made the inventory generated on UGC amongst the most commodotised online.

So what is a social network to do?

Invent a new model, is what. Old skool advertising is (Sandlines believes) never going to be the way forward for such businesses. They need to figure out a way of converting the obvious engagement they build with their user communities into a commercial proposition. And the starting point to that is to consider where the exchange of value can occur that benefits all parties: the community members, the marketer - and of course the network owner.

Simple, huh?

Tags: banners, C2C, facebook, gmail, hotmail, linkedin, p&g, proctor & gamble, social media, ugc, user generated content, vodafone, web 2.0, Yahoo!

Last week I got into a discussion that started over on LinkedIn about whether simply placing ads on social networks sites was enough to claim that you are engaged in Social Media Marketing (SMM). The question was linking to a post over at Windchimes which does into more detail.

Of course, my view is that all you are doing is advertising in this instance: you are not engaged in SMM unless you are, ahem, engaging with the audience. And that takes a lot more work.

So I was interested to read that online video upstart Hulu is outgunning YouTube in terms of revenues over in the US. Forecast revenue, that is, for 2009.

This is on the back of 6m users compared to YouTube’s 83m.

That would appear to be a useful measure of the ad-revenue-value of ‘professional’ content versus user generated (or, dare I say it, pirated?) content. 14:1 - not a bad multiple… and wholly understandable.

So, the question remains: what is the revenue model for social media? Doesn’t look a lot like it’s advertising as we know it… it must come down to engagement marketing. I wish I had some great examples to share wtih you but they are still too few and far between IMHO.

Tags: hulu, linkedin, social media marketing, windchimes, youtube

I opened my copy of the Economist today and read yet another plea for Jerry Yang to step down as CEO of Yahoo!

I’ve rehearsed the arguments on this question before, but I’m more interested today in the subtext to this story: the extent to which Yahoo!’s reliance on display advertising is going to hurt them during the current economic difficulties.

It’s chastening to think how much of digital’s growth in revenue is purely from search - and yet that’s just the beginning of what the medium can deliver.

Search marketing words (both SEM and SEO) because it is by some distance the most effective way to introduce someone to what you are offering/saying… providing that they are already in the market for it. It’s all about steering someone toward your version of what they already know they want. Powerful, cost-effective and an essential weaon in the marketing arsenal. And almost totally transactional.

But what about the other side of the line?

For most businesses, it’s not just the first sale that matters - it’s the ongoing relationship that the first sale might lead to. This is very strongly the case with subscription-type businesses (e.g. utilities, mobile phones, satellite tv, magazines etc). It is also central to FMCG (or CPG as they call it in the US) marketing.

But it’s also the basis of what your local retail outlet hopes for. Or what your window cleaner relies on. In fact most businesses in the real world tend to prize the ongoing relationship past the first sale very highly.

So why has the digital economy been so hung up on the idea of paying Google (or their affiliate marketing partner) every time they want to conclude another transaction?

Of course, this is still very different from the display advertising model that Yahoo! and the like espouse. But it is, for me, crucial to digital marketing’s success in this recession - and to the rosier times that will sooner or later follow it.

If you haven’t already, start planning for it now! Google is NOT the only show in town.

Tags: affiliate marketing, aol, CPG, display advertising, FMCG, google, Jerry Yang, sem, seo, Yahoo!

I read a tale of woe from the Economist this week, about how both Virgin Atlantic and British Airways had flown into turbulence over their respective employees’ use of blogs and social networks. Seems that passengers took a dim view of being described in less than flattering terms online.

Odd that a similar furore didn’t arise when Air Babylon was published, yet the idea is essentially the same. Hence, I guess, the use of ‘Anonymous’ as the alleged source of the insider’s view.

It’s amazing how badly some organisations are dealing with the democratisation of production and distribution of content that characterise the web 2.0 world.

I recall a couple of years ago being on a panel at a marketing conference at which we were asked by a marketer from a University how he should handle the fact that students were using social networks to actually tell prospective students what life was like at his university. Should he ‘control it’?

My jaw is still bruised from it’s severe drop when a fellow panellist told him “Yes!”

That is, not just contribute to the discussion, but actually try to quash genuinely expressed views.

I wonder if the same answer would be give a couple of years later? Surely to do this is merely chasing bubbles in a water bed. You might stop them appearing in that location, but the commentary will merely appear somewhere else - and probably with deeper bitterness.

Anyone remember f***edcompany.com? I wonder if we’re due a version of that for social media snafus.

Tags: air babylon, BA, british airways, economist, facebook, fuckedcompany, snafu, social media marketing, virgin atlantic, web 2.0

Paul Dacre

Peter Wilby, over on the Guardian’s site, is complaining about Paul Dacre (editor of the Daily Mail and set for much grander things as he celebrates his 60th birthday this week) complaining about the BBC. Apparently Dacre’s comments are ’self serving’ (and worse).

Now there’s a surprise. Editor of major news outlet gives speech in which he says something that is true to his (and his employers’) interests. Hold the front page.

The various titles down at Wapping seem equally happy to take a poke at the BBC whenever possible too. Both the Times and the Sun (and their respective Sunday iterations) have been known similarly to attack Auntie on sometimes flimsy grounds. Witness the News of the World’s (pernicious? self-serving?) lead last weekend about the amount of money paid to top execs over at the BBC. I noted that no mention was made on the packages paid to senior execs over at Wapping - or indeed at sister company Sky.

So does Dacre have a point? The Daily Mail is part of a larger group that has a large swathe of regional papers (Northcliffe Media) who are falling on harder times at the moment, not least because of the rise of decent online content, and the BBC is investing heavily on 65 ‘ultra-local’ websites. This won’t help Northcliffe Media any - and it’ll be interesting to see what they try to do with their ‘ThisIs…’ brand website extensions to those local papers.

It is Sandlines’ view that the local markets are the next really interesting battleground online. I’ll be watching with a great deal of interest. Who knows, perhaps something will come out of it that actually helps the people these sites are trying to reach - and the advertisers who are trying to talk to them. Sandlines lives in hope.

Tags: BBC, daily mail, guardian, local, newspapers, northcliffe, paul dacre

Over on Razorshine, my old pal Kanani has been shopping - in the real world - and hoping that Google would help him. As the organisation dedicated to ‘…organi(sing) the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” this is perhaps not an unreasonable expectation. Especially when, as Riaz says, the new Westfield Shopping Centre has linked to Google Maps to show us how to find them. Ah well.

It raises a question that someone asked me a couple of weeks ago over a pint - and which has come up several times recently: is it possible to go up against Google and win?

Privately, many inside Microsoft would say that perhaps it isn’t - at least for Microsoft.

So if you’re going into business doing anything around the ‘organisation’ and provision of information, does that mean you should pack up and go home?

No.

Google does an outstanding job most of the time - but they are not perfect, or infallible. And, for all their 16,000+ employees, they still cannot do everything. At least, not all right now. Pick the right one of those areas and you’re in business… perhaps.

Then there’s the new semantic search technologies that are touted as the foundation of a ‘web 3.0′ world. Google, of course, will play in this sandpit, but it’s a different approach to presenting information than that which is hard coded into Google’s corporate psyche, so the jury is not quite in yet as to whether they’ll rise to the challenge.

Of course, there is also the entire ecosystem that has sprung up around the way Google makes money. One friend of mine calls this ‘feeding the monster’. Shopping comparison and much affiliate marketing could be described as falling into this bucket. And it’s a healthy one, even in a downturn.

But one of the more interesting perspectives is coming from a book I’m reading at the moment - Randall Stoss has published a near-insider’s view of Google in ‘Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know” ( I link to the ebook, but you can get it on Amazon too). And it’s a compelling view. Doubtless I will mention it again over the coming days.

It’s curious in how it compares Google’s ‘open’ view of the world with the essentially closed environment that social networking (well, mainly Facebook) is once again introducing to the web.

Just as Google wins the legal battle to index the content of pretty much any published book it likes - and extend beyond the virtual world - it’s curious that its biggest threat may well come from the web itself. Food for thought.

Tags: google, google books, google maps, Microsoft, planet google, randall stross, razorshine, semantic search, web 3.0, westfield

yesterday's news? BE MORE DEMANDING!

So it turns out I was right.

Somewhere between 8 and 9pm, Ocado kindly delivered, without direct prior warning, a copy of that day’s Times.

Thanks.

There are at least two things wrong with this:

• What value do you put on the day’s morning paper at 8pm?
• What if I’d already bought it?

In the days of concern about the amount of printed paper we get through, I’d estimate the capacity for dissapointment from this marketing gesture is about 85%. Seriously Ocado, this is a great way to turn something that *should* be a positive into a reason for a customer to feel let down instead.

Tags: ecommerce, gift horse, internet shopping, Ocado, Times

It’s a personal bugbear of mine: the emphasis on getting a good measurement versus the actual delivery of results. It manifests in many ways - I recall a conversation with a digital media sales guy who was determined to tell me that the best thing about the web was that you could measure everything. Never mind how WELL it worked, the measurement was the best part.

And yes, measurement has value (usually to help improve results), but there is a point at which the actual value of what you are doing gets lost.

This is very apparent in customer service situations.

My wife took her car to the local dealership for its annual service a few months back. The customer service was, at best, average… actually, we had cause to feel it was not even that good. But the Service Manager was determined we should, nevertheless, give them a 10/10 in the customer satisfaction survey we were about to be invited to complete. Anything less than that, he told us, and his operation would get a black mark.

We were then told several more times that a survey was coming up. Despite having nothing to do with the service, I was telephoned and asked what I thought of the service - and to make sure we’d give a good mark in the service. When I indicated dissatisfaction, I was pressed to put this aside for the forthcoming service and still give a good mark.

By the time the survey came around… well, I’m sure you can guess my mood.

All this came flooding back to me with a piece in the paper today about a man who, having been told (rudely, it seems) that he could not extend his overdraft with the Abbey, was pressed to give a good mark in the post-call survey. The results make painful reading.

In either case, had a fraction of the effort expended trying to persuade the customer to mark the service well gone into actually providing good service, everyone would have been much happier.

So I will take actual positive experience over survey results every time.

… and that is reflected in the way consumers prefer peer reviews to marketing spiel every time too.

Tags: abbey, customer satisfaction, mercedes, survey

Yesterday's news...

Sandlines is eagerly awaiting Friday’s delivery from Ocado at home. It’s coming late in the day - around 8pm. I know, I know, but I have a 3 year old, so Friday nights are different to how they once were… and that’s not a complaint btw…

Anyway, I just read over at Brand Republic that Ocado and The Times have agreed to distribute copies of the paper to people getting a delivery. Nice touch. The Times is losing readers - and in credit crunch times, Ocado customers are presumably questioning the value of their weekly order (I know I’m down to about once a month now…)

So at 8pm, do I get that morning’s paper? If that’s the outcome, then someone, somewhere has really failed to think this through. What am I going to do with Friday’s paper at 8pm? If only the laws hadn’t changed, I could have used it to wrap up some fish and chips …

Or maybe wrap up the salad they’ve supplied that is also out of date the next morning.

I feel I should be more demanding!

Tags: brand republic, engagement marketing, newspaper, Ocado, Times

My post on Friday sparked a couple of conversations offline about participation in communities: how do you get people to contribute in an online community?

There’s a huge surge in interest in the ecommerce community, for example, in posting customer reviews on web stores. A couple of interesting businesses in particular (ReeVoo and BazaarVoice) are based around this concept, and both seem to be doing quite nicely thank you.

Over at the IMRG, I’ve participated in/listened to some discussions around the issues involved here - and a big initial concern for e-retailers is around the nature of things that people will say. The assumption is that consumers are far more likely to post negative comments than rave about good stuff. Apparently this assumption is false.

And yet, away from the direct retail environment, one of the themes I’ve heard from new (and new-ish) businesses is around the difficulty in getting conversations started at all. It seems that once they’re underway, it’s somewhat easier to keep it going, but seeding the discussion is a tougher proposition.

What does the Sandlines audience think? I’d love to hear back from people about their ideas on this? Or experiences?

Tags: BazaarVoice, communities, ReeVoo, Reviews