a change in name

hi all,

i've decided that my alter-ego of 'nightterror' isn't reflective of where i want to go with this blog. as such, i've decided to shed that moniker and just use my own name from here on in.

from now on, this address will no longer be used for my postings. instead, please head on over to this link for all my latest musings.

sorry for any inconvenience. i think i've updated everywhere to the new place and my feed should be as well. let me know of any problems either here or there.

nightterror

swept up in the wave

what captivated me most in the last week was google's announcement of wave, their new communication and collaboration tool/platform (bing not even close). yes, i may be a little late to the blogosphere in talking about this, but a) i like to read a lot about something i'm posting and b) i'm not a breaking news blog, so i have no imperative in that regard.

i don't fawn over new software/platforms/apps/what-have-you much, but wave was different, it really struck a chord. it is just so radical, unexpected and a shift from the known and norm that it gripped me like darth vader's force choke.

you need to watch this video to get the full jist of what wave is all about. it's a big time investment, but you really get why it's a game changer. you'll really think about just how flawed our current communication tools are and question why we continue to use them.



i love everything about wave and what it supposes as the future of communicating and collaborating. but what is most interesting to me is that this is the dashboard to your life. this is the single source console to manage all your communication streams that i have been wanting for some time. i love all the different tools out there that are ideal for their special area, but i don't like managing so many accounts and tending to each one in a different interface or sharing each in different ways.

wave solves this, and solves it well. the most exciting part, though, is yet to come. now that it is in the hands of 3rd party developers, they are the ones who will truly make wave shine. but the promise of the framework is disruptive enough.

with my marketing hat on, within wave, there was talk of robots, and there is a lot of promise there. tech blog mashable had a great overview feature that talked a bit about robots. this is the social embedding & conversation embedding that i think everyone was promised, but hasn't happened yet. this is a really powerful proposition.

let me throw out a few examples to illustrate. say i'm organizing a trip to the cottage. within the wave is talk of supplies. any of the companies who make those supplies or retailers who sell them can access that and provide anything from suggestions, to price points, to locations, to coupons, to did-you-also-think-of messages. another easy one is travel companies and airlines embedding into a conversation about an upcoming trip providing all the necessary information for you to plan collaboratively. there's a lot more opportunities for a lot more advertisers.

to marketers, robots will be the new iphone application.

surfing commercials

this was something i wanted to write about last week, but got caught up in my 3 part series. a company called ShortTail Media is introducing a new online video format called D30, which stands for digital 30. that's right, a :30 sec online video unit, and one that completely interrupts your surfing from one page to another.

from the first time i saw this, i was, for lack of a better word, queasy. for a number of reasons, this didn't sit right with me.

1) that it is a :30 sec spot is alone reason enough for this to be considered bad. that length of commercial should not exist online unless it is opt-in. the online world is about bite-sized chunks of information and consuming lots of them. this flies in the face of that. most of the time people don't even spend 30 seconds on a page to begin with so the time spent ratio is of. same as a :30 sec pre-roll ad in front of a short video clip, doesn't quite equate.

2) the flow is off. from page to page with video in between seems weird. it's mixing types of content. in tv it's all video, so it's expected. not true here.

3) i'm sure they downplay it, but what's the load time on a full-screen piece of video with a 30 second runtime? i'm sure it's not short and i'm sure there's plenty of room for delays in downloading that will only further detract from the whole experience.

4) then there's the company's flippant disregard for user experience which is arrogant. yes, we should be pursuing 'bigger, bolder creative' as the ceo puts it, but tempered with the user in mind, not disregarding them as he goes on to say in that we should 'be less sensitive to user experience.'

i think television is a great user experience. there's of course the screen size and often times communal nature of the experience and the commercial breaks add some tension, anticipation, a break to reality to have human interaction (you may have other reasons). it could be improved with shorter breaks of course. just because the tv model is good, doesn't mean it should be taken online and applied in the same manner. it's not the same medium.

i get the reasoning behind taking this tact and largely agree:
- it's easy to ignore standard online ads
- are small and typically in the margins of the page
- they don't interrupt the flow of content (as happens in other media)
- smaller size may lead to less branding opportunities

however, this is the wrong solution to these problems and the problems with current online video experiences. i am in complete agreement, we do need different ad formats online with better breakthrough potential. i want to answer these questions and come up with solutions (ie. actual value in reading this), but don't know the answer yet. if i did, i'd probably have a lot more money. i just know that this isn't it.

i think the sites who will support these ads will do a quick about-face once they see their visitors drop-off. this will be a short-lived venture.

the social media effect - part 3: tying it all together

in part 1 and part 2, i purposely looked at interruptive/disruptive media (i/d) and social media separately. the point being for this third part to tie them together and arrive at how the two work synchronously. not how one will displace the other or how shortcomings are the detriment of using. as i hope to have established already, the two serve different purposes, and both are important for marketing success and will continue to be.

the old question (numbers vary) of what would you rather have, 1 million low engagement impressions or 1,000 high engagement interactions? isn't valid anymore. never was, really. there's no trade-off, you can have both. you should have both.

if social media is inhabited by interest, then it is i/d media that generates that initial interest. realistically, no one is going to find your place or seek it out in the social space unless they know of your brand, company or campaign. how will they know to go and engage if they don't know who you are or what you're doing? social media's success and growth needs i/d media.

this not only goes for getting new people into our communities, but also to bring them back. the i/d media informs consumers as to what to talk about, where to talk and when to talk. obviously social media does this job too, arguably better, only to a smaller set.

let's face it, not everyone goes to a brand website, not everyone goes to our social destinations and not everyone wants to actively participate. we still need to expose consumers to our brand and i/d media accomplishes that. yes, it is a somewhat shallow exposure, no denying that. so enters social media. i/d media does well to expose and social does exceptionally well to solidify the relationship and maximize what we get out of consumers.

there's always new market share to be had, and the tandem approach of i/d and social media is the recipe for success. not one or the other, we need to let them know our brand or company should be considered through i/d media and then use the social tools to seal the deal.

so that's my view. a holistic one where all channels are used in conjunction with one another. my goal was to stop the discussions about social media taking over the world and killing other media. that's just not the case. it's a game changer to be sure and a space i'm a huge proponent of. but i'm also tasked to see the bigger picture and every other tool at our disposal. sometimes we can be a little to narrow viewed and jump to too many conclusions.

so this isn't an admonishment of social media or making it out to be weak. on the contrary. it's to clearly show it's strengths and the role it can play in the whole of the plan. same for i/d media. it has its strengths and faults. it's how each makes up for where the other lacks.

the social media effect - part 2: social media's place

as i alluded to in part 1, social media is just a new tool at the disposal of marketers. i don't want to belittle the importance though in saying that. social media is a powerful tool that dramatically changes the landscape and interactions amongst people and with brands. not saying anything new, just re-affirming in case you thought i had jumped to the other side.

the main shortcoming of social media right now is that it is a pretty small universe that a brand can speak to. i'll qualify this by saying 'directly.' including social sharing muddies the waters some. although it is one of the cornerstones of social media, and the technology makes this easier than ever, it always existed (the water cooler). to say this is all at the behest of a company is erroneous. it has always wrested with the consumer, regardless of ease and a company's influence.

the masses are social, but social media isn't mass.

the first part of that statement is easy. people have flocked to social media sites and applications in droves, and it's still growing. facebook has 200 million members, myspace isn't that far behind. twitter is approaching 10 million and is on fire. there's no denying it, social media has hit the masses.

it's the second part where the mass equation falters. these are strictly opt-in environments and access to brands is limited by interest. again, not a bad thing, just not a breadth thing. while the platforms are open to the larger ecosystem, any one community is only comprised of brand enthusiasts.

this is demonstrated by the 'Fans' or 'Followers' metric. granted, this is pretty shallow and doesn't show all who happen upon the community, but it is the best way to enumerate who is most deeply engaged with the brand or company. if that's the brand's audience, i wouldn't call that mass. yes, there's still growth to be had of these communities, but how high can they really go? certainly not the totality of your market.

here's a rough diagram of what i mean. the enthusiasts are your audience in the social media world. the casuals come by less frequently and don't do as much. then there's the whole rest of the potential audience that you're not talking to in social media.

if all this holds water, then social media efforts are geared at the brand's community, not a mass approach. you could go so far as to say social media is a CRM tool. of course, they already are your customers because they opted in and have shown passion for the brand. so social media seems more the retention side of things in entering an ongoing dialog with your consumers. that seems fair, no?

now i'm not trying to take anything away from the power of social media here, that's not my intention. i'm just a realist and pragmatist who is looking at the whole picture and seeing where all the pieces fit.

right now, the numbers and opt-in nature of social media tells me the place for it is on the retention side. and i see it staying this way, indefinitely. certainly there are tactics that engage and reach beyond those enthusiasts, but for the most part, the efforts are against the core of existing customers.

it works beautifully to engage a community and strengthen bonds with our consumers. i just don't like putting on it any more than is due. that's how the tools were designed, to enhance an affinity. but to go so far as to say it's the killer app and always be able to do a job it wasn't made for is faulty.

there are purposely some holes here and in part 3, i'll wrap this all up into a cohesive framework directly linking interruptive/disruptive and social media. i'm hoping to show a sustainable situation where they coexist, work together and each has a role in the mix. put each in its place as it were.

the social media effect - part 1: interruptive & disruptive media

much has been made in the last while about how social media is the future of marketing (spoiler: it's a part of the future, but not the sole inhabitor of it). how it will shift the consumer and brand relationship (indeed it will in some aspects). how it will banish other media to obsolescence and there will soon be no more interruptive/disruptive brand messging, it will all be opt-in. and that's when i get off the train.

i don't believe this is going to be the case, not for a long while, if ever. there's no denying what potential social media holds or the shift in b2c, c2c, c2b interactions is powerful. what i can deny is how it will obliterate other forms of advertising.

interruptive/disruptive (i/d from here on in) media still has a role and will for some time. how long? who knows. it's not the point. the point is that i/d media is still very powerful (there's a lot of argument around it diminishing - a later blog perhaps), yet just another tool in a marketers box. just like social media is just another tool.

the chief reason why i/d media gets such a bad rap and seen as evil boils down to one main factor that is currently mostly absent -> relevance. it's a simple concept, but makes all the difference. you don't tune out or get outraged if it's a message you actually care to see. i also want to mention value here. it is a subset of relevance, but bears mentioning. if it's relevant, it's probably valuable.

i see relevance as having three components: appeal - informative - need state.

• appeal -> simply that the brand or product fills an emotional or physical gap and makes you feel good when consuming.

• informative -> the content of the message instructs your or informs you of how the brand or product will be good for you.

• need state -> this is mostly timing. that the messge is received when most receptive because it's required (whether that's a true need or a want need)

relevance will find permanance through technology. it's almost here. soon will exist ways of formerly mass media to become much more targeted, and singular in nature. and thus relevance will follow.

a minority report or tek war (yeah, i'm throwing that reference out, watch it) type future of hyper targeted to the individual advertising is upon us. some examples: IP TV, the fridge that catlogs and reminds you what you need and of course, google adwords.

what's necessary to make this happen is the consumer and their opting in. from my perspective, it's a no brainer. who wouldn't want to? if i can now go through my life without having to hear or see tampons, birth control or hair products, then yes, i'm in (though that could be someone else's ideal). if i have to see something (and right now, you do), it might as well be meaningful to me.

this year's cmdc conference did well to extrapolate on this kind of future. in the final session of the day, three groups were taksed to give their vision of media in the year 2020. all three came up with a variant on the same basic premise; that of a device, carried with you everywhere, that identifies you, your demographic makeup, preferences, and product usage, amongst other leverageable by marketers data points. this then ties into everything surrounding you so as to serve you specific content or ads. and thus solving the relevancy issue.

and that's the cloud, right? the semantic web of interconnectedness and personally identifiable data. at least one extension of it.

part of understanding and accepting that i/d media will still be employed and be valuable to marketers is breaking our notions of what form it will take. the :30 sec tv spot isn't it, but is still what we use as our example of how that kind of media works. there's a lot of problems with holding that as our best form of i/d media. that in itself is a post for another day but to list them quickly: 1) length of spot, 2) long commercial breaks, 3) less informative ads 4) not interactive amongst others.

the future of i/d media is in it getting smarter and more sophisticated. we'll find more impactful, less invasive, more integrated and generally better ways of approaching i/d media. these will extend the life of these marketing channels and continue to make them valuable tools.

that's my take on interruptive/disruptive media. it's not going anywhere, anytime soon. that still doesn't fully address the social media implications or the whole notion of opt-in only advertising. well it does, in part. that's opting-in to see ads, not opting-in to certain brands.

that's part 2 coming in a few days. where social media fits in with the whole marketers toolbox. you probably also noticed that i haven't stated exactly how much i/d media there will be and the exact role it will play with the rest of the tools. that too is coming in part 3.

the marketing hourglass

i got to thinking about the marketing funnel while writing another post and it occurred to me that there was something missing. that it didn't exactly capture the new reality of the new web 2.0 world.

the marketing funnel succinctly describes two interrealted continuums - from just a consumer to a customer and also the media used to get them there from broadcast to narrowcast. while this funnel is all nice and good, it leaves out one critical element - the consumer/customer. they should never be left out of the equation, especially now when they have so many tools at their disposal to impact brands and other people.

so i offer the marketing hourglass. maybe someone has thought this way already, but i haven't seen it. so i apologize if i'm just being a hack here, it was a new thought to me.

in this, the top half remains the same with whatever in-between stages you want to assign (i've seen many variations). what i thought was missing is the bottom part, the part that accounts for the consumer's active involvement in the process. what they initiate in the marketing of a product vs. that which the brand begats. this being both messaging points and conversion tactics.

i think it's fair to say that much of these social tools feed into the left side of the top funnel above, or were thought to reside there. that consumers are using these resources in determining how a brand fits a particular point in their need state. but i think it's important to call this out now because of the increasingly important role it is playing. 

this version distinguishes the control of the process that is shifting to the consumers. one of the main reasons to separate it is that the new web 2.0 world is often standalone. consumers are discovering and buying into brands without ever having seen corporate initiated marketing efforts. and that will only increase in prevalence.

the bottom funnel is much smaller than it's northern counterpart. that's because the process by which consumers market to each other is far shorter and also has access to fewer people. in this age of distrust with large companies, there is a lot more steps involved in overcoming the rather larger negative of monolithic corporations hungry for your money. but with consumers in charge, it's all about trust and influence. consumers have this, companies don't. so the words and actions of consumers carry far greater weight and leads others to adopt a brand quicker. 

you'll see how the consumer funnel is both distributive and procurative. it represents that this end of things simultaneously pushes out messages, but also serves the function of collecting consumers. the top funnel is all about the collection. the advertising and media served to move people through the consideration set. in the new model, consumers are making the messages to contribute to a community, to express themselves, and to serve their fellow man (or woman). this has the effect of also garnering new customers into the brand.

so what's the point, what's the take-away? what does it mean? mainly to spell it out, to crystalize the thought and show the value and importance of social media. to make the distinctions with the intent of having the full picture in decision making. it's also about showing the need for relevance with consumers. both ways into customerdom are valid, but this aims to exhibit how to form strategies to get them there and how to allocate resources. 

more on branded content

yesterday i was in a q&a session at the iab online video day. the topic was branded content. as a planner who has brought this tool out of the war chest for his clients, i had some good insights to share (at least i think that's why they asked me).

the main point that i wanted to elucidate on more here was around why an advertiser should pursue this approach for their brand. i broke it down into two criteria that must be evaluated prior to pursuing. if it doesn't meet both of these, than other approaches should be considered.

starts with the brand
i know, it's not normally where i'd say it starts because it always starts with the consumer. in a way it still does, but i'm assuming we've already gotten past the assumption that you are pursuing a digital opportunity because that is where your consumer is and a preferred channel for them.

so to be more precise, it starts with a brand need or it fills some gap in the brand's ability to tell a story and communicate with consumers. a couple of principles go into the making of this first criteria.

• the piece should link strongly back to the core platform or pillar program of the brand. it's not a one-off initiative that doesn't build off anything deeply embedded into the constitution of a brand.
  
• doing branded content should come out of a genuine need to amplify the brand. not because you saw another advertiser do it or a case study at a conference that showed it was a good thing to do.
• does our message require a longer form vehicle to communicate? if the product, it's usage or the story of it is detailed, yet essential, then branded content can be considered.
  

consumer checkpoint
once you've identified a brand need, which is probably often easy to say yes to, then we move to the side of the equation that is much harder to pass. that of the consumer. these are tougher and more subjective questions to answer, but the consumer is solely in charge of the success.

• is it valuable to them? will they get something out of it that otherwise isn't met elsewhere?
• is it interesting? have we really delivered something that our consumer will actually want to spend time with?
• is it entertaining? have we made it enjoyable for them to consume?
• is this something that the consumer will make a connection with our brand? will they feel better about our brand after having seen it?
  

it's an evaluation as you would evaluate any other media decision. it's an honest look into what your efforts are meant to accomplish and if you're setting yourself up for success.

you do have to be a little more careful (but still take risks in your execution) as it's a tricky space to master. consumers are fickle and discerning about these things. it's not like a tv commercial that is 30 seconds long with the absolute expectation in the consumer's mind that it is a commercial. this is a much less hard selling piece and a fine line to walk because consumer perceptions in this area are murky. not to mention there's a lot more ground here (longer than a :30 sec. spot) and potential for missteps.

some other considerations around branded content that are also essential into the decision making process include

• measurement: how will we know it worked and delivered to objectives?
  
• promotion: the notion of 'if you build it they will come' is a fallacy, so how do you want to use media to make sure your consumers see it and it has a chance to succeed?
  
• distribution: what channels will carry this for maximum reach and impact potential?
  
• overtness: probably best practice to not shove the brand in the audience's face. find a way to subtly integrate, but not so far as the brand is completely lost.

the last thought is around collaboration. this is not the area of any one agency or client. it is a cross-functional process that will deliver best results if it is. media, creative, client, site, producers, all need a seat at the table and a say in what happens.

Dapper vs. Google

today google announced intentions to go after the online display market, a break from it's core business in search. as the link indicates, google analyzed it's content network and found it to be more cost effective than search, though still a smaller component to overall revenue and searches. where this data leads google is to say that the content network holds a lot of potential for more than returning just textual, search ads.

meet dapper, a tech that contextually delivers advertising based on page contents and inner-site searches and other data based content. much like google, dapper scans the page for relevant keywords and determines the context, then serves ads based on that.

at last, a marriage of the highly effective, and cost efficient search world with brand building image ads. but does it deliver?

immediately, i love the notion of an ad being more relevant to the environment. as a planner, the context is probably my biggest input in site selection and media placement. to add another layer of that is a real sweet spot. it makes the placement a beacon for consumer engagement and interaction.

this holds tremendous potential for a number of advertisers and industries. dapper's video shows some real easy examples of how to dynamically push ads. as with search, the primary benefactors are e-commerce companies. what about true brand advertisers?

where i'd like to see it go is graphical ads where images can be pulled from a library into preset animations with text generated all from input from the contents of the page? doable? hard to say. maybe. will it look good and just how many iterations can really be made? i don't have answers, but it's exciting to see where it goes and how far it can be pushed.

don't get down in a down economy

it's getting pretty repetitious seeing all the doom and gloom of the economy in the media everyday. it's a reality, but it's also pretty tiresome. in my particular industry, it is being felt just as much, but thankfully not much of the doom (as of yet), just a lot of gloom.

but i'm not letting it stop me or the work of my clients. reading in between the lines of this downturn, i see opportunity. here's my take for the advertising world.

innovation
now's the time to push the envelope. publishers and suppliers are hungry for any revenue and are likely more open to different approaches that break from the norm. or at least they should be if they like income. on the client side, it may be a little harder to justify trying something new and perhaps unproven when every dollar counts so much more. but it is those leaps that can propel a brand when all around them are stagnant. think crazy, think big. challenge the standard and staid.

pricing
in a similar vein, hungry media companies will work in other areas as well to make it attractive for advertisers. it's not bullying, but good deals can be struck. when faced with a lower cost of the media and heavy bonusing or no revenue at all, the choice is clear. and it saves them the erosion on their own brand perceptions of a thin book, lots of house ads or worst of all, ugly credit ads. we should always be innovating and not using the economy as an excuse to postpone.

social media
as this is a relatively lower cost space to play in, social media could take precedence in the marketing mix. when times are tough, it's your core consumers that will keep you in the game and this is the right channel to build that out.

don't stop spending
there's a lot out there to say that curtailing spending on your brands in a recession is harmful to brand growth (or even maintenance) in the long term. the short term impact of putting back to the bottom line is faulty long term. i know this is the hardest to adhere to, but most significant because it is the whole of the brand at stake.

it's too easy to get down in the dumps about a recession. it's the same as with a personal brand as it is with a corporate brand. i read that people have a tendency to go into the doldrums in these times and that is exactly the opposite of what they should be doing. people should be even more active to prove their worth and stand out above the others to continue their growth and keep their jobs. brands should be no different. rise above it and do your bes not to stall.

social media won't kill tv

today i had the good fortune of being on a panel at mesh conference for the 'managing your ad buy' session. during the session i made the above claim. i thought it warranted more context and explanation than the short panel allowed for.

i can't recall how this came up, but i do believe the truth in it. i also can't remember if i did mention a :30 second spot specifically, because that i do not believe. the :30 second spot is becoming a dinosaur and will likely die off. how soon, i don't know. i just know our attention to and desire to watch that length of advertising is waning. shorter length tv ads is the future of that medium. but this change won't be because of social media. it's just changing consumer preference and control over their experiences and time.

the greater context here is in traditional media vs. social media and if the latter will eliminate the former. while i don't think this will ever happen, if it does, it won't be soon. some media will definitely die, no question. i'm looking at you printed media. at least not in their current format. magazines or newspapers may well survive, they will just be digital devices and not pages. that is if publishers ever decide to change before their brands stubbornly perish because they won't adapt. i digress.

tv will no doubt evolve and the advertising model will no doubt as well. but that screen will remain or some form of it to view video content for a while. the main reason is that tv is too far ingrained with our culture - yes, even youth culture. as long as there are viable audiences, it can be monetized with ads in some way. it's going to take far more time than even just one generation for tv to expire.

i would also venture that social media is the best thing for tv. social media is about conversations and conversations around content (ie. tv shows, music, movies, sports, etc) are part of the fabric of the space and society as a whole. social media is just a better version of the water cooler. that content just needs to be good enough to warrant conversations. so in that sense, it's fuelling it, not killing it.

there's no doubt people are spending a huge amount of time with social media. it's diminishing tv's importance and the time spent with it. or is it? somewhat, but the proliferation of two-screen activity is such that both are alive and well and used at the same time.

i'd be remiss if i didn't also inject online video into the mix. while not social media, if anything could kill tv in the digital space, it's online video, not social media. but even this is a long way off as the online video experience pales in comparison to that of tv. and computers and tv are going to converge even further so that online video (or on-demand video in general) could end up back on the tv anyway.

tv is on the cusp of a rebirth not death. technology is coming down the pipe that will really rejuvenate the medium and make it more powerful. all the great things about the web and social media are coming to tv and it will change the experience for advertisers, broadcasters and most importantly, consumers.

twitter for tv

as i'm known to do (not widely albeit, mostly by myself) on a monday night, i watched 24 with a laptop, following along to the #24 hashtag on twitter search. it occurred to me just what twitter could mean to the broadcast world. what a boon for the industry twitter possesses.

tv programs have always been a point of socialization. it's just been the days following the airing at the water cooler and limited to your social network. twitter holds a future of mass socialization in real time around tv programs. an enhanced experience that truly elevates the overall product. something everyone can participate in together, at once.

the opportunity for networks is in making appointment viewing again. to make an event that brings the audience and consequently the advertising dollars. to make the tv broadcast more meaningful again. to embrace a richer experience that can't be had on-demand, neither online nor through pvr. and to prove to advertisers a deeply engaged audience.

networks take notice; there is a place for you on twitter beyond just touting your programming. granted there's no socializing around bad content (at least in a positive way), so make it talk worthy and share worthy. stop cutting back.

so what can the broadcasters do?

• inject the stream with more content elements that build a better and more detailed story arc
• involve the actors/stars/hosts/contestants past and present
• provide a director's commentary type context to the program
• behind the scenes content
• answer questions
• build more suspense, intrigue, interest or anticipation in current and future episodes
• fill in story gaps
• incorporate real time tweets or tweet polls (hastagged yes or no) into live programs

i'm sure there's many more options, but that's a fairly robust menu of options to make for a greater experience. there's countless ways to facilitate this too from network specific twitter clients filtering the stream and adding other audio/video content beside to incorporating it into the broadcast itself. all i'm saying is there is vast opportunity to be capitalized on.

the facebookizing of twitter

after the last post where i gave my thoughts on the twitterizing of facebook i started thinking about how to facebookize twitter a little. i do love that twitter is so very simple and uncluttered, but i do believe they could be a bit more social. certainly not going so far as to diverge from the core of what makes twitter so great and loved, but to add a few features to enhance the overall experience.

here's some things i think could make twitter better:

more profile information
as twitter becomes more and more the virtual presence of people on the web (at least one of them), i think we could have the ability to feature more information on the person behind the @. it's pretty limited right now where you only have a 160 characters for your bio and a website link that gets cut off. i often see people trying to get around this by making a background picture with a lot of the info, but it doesn't always work. so just building it in makes sense.

more customization
i don't mean to the extent that myspace allows you to create such an ugly profile, but allowing users to make the profile more their own. could be as easy as simple blog type features to incorporate a few widgets or pull in rss feeds. just more personalization.

who's following who
as it is now, there's no easy way to know what new people the people you're following are now following. you could go to each of the people you're following and see if there's anyone new, but that's a bit cumbersome isn't it? especially if you are following more than say 50 people. it makes sense as your social network expands, and as the twitter user community grows, to continue finding those interesting people, that those you find interesting, also find interesting.

message threading
not only for the main stream, but dm's as well. especially dm's because right now, they are just a jumble without the ability to sort, group, file, etc. in the stream, some lessons from friendfeed in how conversations appear could go a long way.

groups
similar to how you can sort your news-feed in facebook and similar to how you can set up groups in tweetdeck. simply an easier way to manage your stream, prioritize people and separate like content.

a few thoughts. nothing i think strays from the core functionality of twitter and nothing i think detracts from the experience. maybe adding these features is a revenue route. charge a small fee to allow you to add these features to your profile.

the twitterizing of facebook

the internet is in uproar about the latest facebook redesign. i wanted to wait until i was able to use it for a while before i weighed in. well, i'm not alone in disliking it as a poll application on facebook has tallied 94% 'thumbs down.'

my issue with the change is how facebook is attempting to be more twitter-like. forget about how they're so openly scared of what twitter could do to their business, it's about moving away from what made them so successful and ingrained with people's lives in the first place.

the new redesign puts increased emphasis on the status update, attempting to match the tweet as a real-time lifestreaming tool. but it's been done to the detriment of everything else facebook is used for. i think this is too narrow for facebook users.

see, tweets were always far more reaching than "what are you doing now" as twitter purports to be the question driving what people do in the community. instead it's part 'what am i doing now', part sharing, part dialogue, part breaking news, part mobilizing people and part self promotion. facebook status was never that and would say still isn't except for those people who direct import their tweets as their status.

one thing facebook did add was the ability to comment on a status or 'like' it. great addition and one that i use heavily. it's great for conversation threads around a particular topic/status. where they fell short is that comments, which are the conversation and the power of social media, are not propagated in the message stream. no one knows you commented unless they happened to see the original update. a bit of a miss.

back on track. the part of the change that bothers me is that everything other than status updates and wall posts are in the news-feed. everything else is shunted into the never read right-side column. to me, this is a terrible move. facebook is so much more than a status update and yet that's all that matters now.

facebook was great because it was multi-functional. it allowed people to share so much of themselves and had great utility across all the interest points of social media. photos, link sharing, messaging, events, video, applications, notes, gifts, and chat amongst others. apparently these don't matter as much anymore. facebook long sold that they were the largest photo sharing site on the internet and now you're not alerted as well that people are posting them. you can still get at them and all that other stuff, it's just a lot less obvious.

my point in all this is why make for another twitter when you already have something unique and good already? other twitter clones have failed (pownce, jaiku) so why try to be somehting you're not? to alienate your user base? because that's what you're doing. if facebook users wanted twitter, they'd go to twitter. or maybe they think because they are so big now, they can force this on people and instantly create a viable twitter competitor where the others failed.

it makes even less sense when you factor in that facebook is a walled-garden. users can't get at the breadth of streams they can in an open environment like twitter. you can't hear from news sources, personalities, companies, celebrities, or non-friends in your profession on facebook as you can on twitter. yes, the new fan pages open up message streams, but generally people don't have that many fan pages (we ad types do because we're seeing what's going out there). certainly no one has fanned the number of people twitterers tend to follow.

it seems pretty unanimous that facebook should revert to what it was and leave twitter to their niche. facebook is so much more than twitter and that's a competitive advantage. what is wrong with the existing ability to integrate twitter into your status? just because the update didn't originate with facebook doesn't diminish it. the coming months should be interesting as twitter continues to explode.

in the end it boils down to how people will use facebook status. will they start using it like a tweet? will it ever become the twitter equivalent of all the reasons why people use twitter now? my guess is no. at least not in the immediate future because it's not how they've used facebook and, again, if they wanted to do twitter-like posting, they'd just go to twitter.

thinking visually

how do you think? visually i hope.

unknowingly, i started doing this last august when at work, i devised a few visuals to illustrate some key strategic points. only after that did i come across a gentleman who is a master at this art. his name is david armano and not only does he have a knack for coming up with great new ideas, but visually representing them. once i saw his work, i was converted.

here's armano's syllabus on thinking visually:

Thinking Visually

View more presentations from David Armano. (tags: storytelling presentation)

i'm writing this because the last 3 weeks of my job has been consumed with one project, that at every chance, i tried to apply visual thinking. i'd like to believe that the work was better and the points were made more effectively because of it.

thinking visually is all about communicating an idea not entirely through words, but with images diagrams, art, photos or line art. it's weaving these elements into a clear, cohesive and meaningful representation of a thought or idea. it captures the idea and all the context into a concise snapshot that people can easily recall. think of it as a packed box - everything goes into the box but simply looking at it with 'kitchen' written on it tells the entire story.

there's no official rulebook to thinking visually, but here are a few considerations that i came up with:

• words can't always be replaced, but use them sparingly
• save it for the big ideas so they stay powerful
• it's not just putting a picture on the page
• aesthetics complete the sale
• distill them, make them unconfusing and focused
• use words as tags and let the visual explain
• they don't always stand on their own - add context
  

armano has the gift of being a good designer and artist, which makes his visuals pop. unfortunately, i don't have those gifts. my tool of choice is a powerpoint. the latest version has some great tools embedded that will take you far in thinking and expressing visually.

i think this is a powerful way of applying yourself that makes what you have to say more compelling. it's more than just impressing people with creating eye candy, but conveying the idea in an interesting, thought provoking way. people will take more notice to your ideas, not because it looks pretty, but because the idea has been presented in such a way that is intuitive and more impactful than just words. from a guy who knows little brevity, visually thinking is a great way to condense what normally takes me a hundred words to do.

here are a couple of resources from armano himself that will start you off down the right path:

• blog posts
• flickr archive
• viz think
  

facebook's missed revenue

today facebook revamped their fan pages, the promise being they will be more socially integrated. when fist launched, the fan pages were promised to be social and bring companies and brands more into the fold of people's networks where the sponsored groups stood outside. well that didn't really happen and they are evolving again to try and fulfill that promise.

this time they got it right. but their approach is foolish and will likely end up ruining the space.

this move, while a great opportunity for brands and companies, is another in a string of missteps and bad plays by facebook. let's set it up. facebook, while experiencing tremendous growth, is struggling to make money. a recent lawsuit against them revealed that their valuation has been significantly downgraded from what was previously thought and what microsoft bought a 1% stake in. bill and ballmer can't be very happy. facebook's struggles are around monetizing the ecosystem they've created and the economy is aggravating the situation as advertisers are vacillating to spend advertising dollars.

so what's the problem with the new fan pages? well, facebook again missed a huge opportunity to add revenue streams and make their business viable as a free, ad-supported platform. this isn't the first time they've stumbled in actually bringing in money and not just bleeding it.

remember applications? yeah, no one really uses them anymore. the opportunity they blew then was not charging developers and companies a fee for developing and listing them. instead, they opened it up to everyone and that lead to their demise. they became trite spam engines that people stopped using after their initial glow wore off. after the last site design overhaul, they were relegated to a place of far diminished presence and importance. i don't lay blame on the developers for creating crappy apps, but facebook for opening the floodgates and allowing crappy apps to proliferate. they needed to be the gatekeepers to ensure quality control and real value was there for users. without a vested interest (ie. revenue stream) they had no reason to protect the space and as such it was ruined.

then there's the ads themselves, the only revenue stream they have. they aren't making any strides to make those much more compelling or interesting. i mean, it's a tiny static picture and 135 characters. not very interesting or compelling. they were okay when they were in the news-feed, but are now relegated off to the side where they can be ignored much easier. they would argue their engagement ads are the answer, but those still live in a place not many people care about. want proof, look at declining CTR and CPMs. also the ads that appear on your profile page and elsewhere are very often of poor quality and carry messages that are little more than spam companies.

facebook connect could probably be a pay model as well, but they missed out on that too. and while we're on missteps, let's also mention their most recent debacle around their terms of service.

that brings us to the new facebook fan pages. what facebook has done is make these look and act exactly like a person's profile. a fan page can now do all the things we do and have those actions be visible to the fans in their news-feed. that's a powerful proposition. brands and companies now fully integrated into their fans social network.

it's ripe for abuse. brands need to be very conscious of how they use these new communication tools. it'll be very easy to over-use them and spam the fans. and it's open to everyone again to do as much as they want.

how could this be averted so the entire facebook ecosystem doesn't become infested with overzealous brands turning people off from even logging on? well a pay model of course. this would have the side effect of actually bringing in money to the company.

i'm thinking first a pay to play system where there is a yearly fee for companies to create fan pages. something in the neighborhood of $50K to $100K. this is fairly nominal for any company to enter the space which provides them with such a robust offering to communicate with their consumers and most ardent followers. it also serves to weed out those who would likely abuse it.

second, to protect the space from over-use and ensure that the people who are there aren't spammed by the brands and companies they are fans of. the revenue model is a pay-per-interaction fee. so every post, or photo added, or comment made, anything really, comes at some kind of fee so companies are smarter about using them.

we could try and pass on the operating expense to the users and make it a pay model, but we've all been trained to expect to use facebook for free. so it will be hard to make that change. so it falls on an ad supported model or more precisely an advertiser supported model.

i'm just fascinated that facebook can continue to stumble through their operations like this. mark zuckerberg is a smart guy, but he is not a smart businessman. he's not proving to be good at making smart moves to make his company viable. i'll be waiting to see how companies use this new space and how facebook could have to backtrack because of abuse.

your credit sucks

apparently, you need to know your credit score - desperately. so a few pages browsed on the web in recent weeks would make you believe given the recent preponderance of credit score ads. that's only part of the problem. it seems we've taken a time warp back to 1995 when crappy online ads with flashy line art, blinking incessantly and generally looking like a 4th grader's attempt at making an ad for their daddy's company ruled the world. everything old is new again, and shoddy online ads have made a comeback.

here's a colossal collage of credit crap:


i guess i can't fault sites for accepting these ads. they are there to sell banner space and usually that's on a first come first serve basis. the credit score people were the first to the table, or maybe the only ones. you'd think that was untrue as the web was the one advertising vehicle everyone thought would weather this financial storm better than the rest, but the sheer volume of these ads has a different story to tell (something to be argued when numbers are available).

making a buck is one thing so you can be around when the dust settles on the recession/depression, but building a brand is quite another. i'm just going to put it out there: sites that accept these ads are destroying the advertising potential for everyone. and i mean for both sides of the ad game.

for advertisers, this just makes online ads even more of a turn-off for a site's audience and potential consumers. the few ruin it for the rest. ads become wallpaper even more and their impact lessens considerably. even their strength as branding vehicles erodes.

on the other side, the site itself, which is actually a brand that needs to be cultivated as any other. slowly these websites are compromising the quality of their brand and product. they are make it known that they have low standards and are in this for the revenue - value to consumers isn't a factor. that's a big miss. and it makes your site look ridiculous.

dare i say, websites have a responsibility to both their audience and advertisers - neither the site can survive without - to weed these types of ads out. it's not benefiting either. here's a handful of solutions to keep your sites at a high standard and not with a 'sell-out' plaque on it.'

1. offer discounts to higher grade advertisers to encourage them back in the market
2. reduce the number of ad units on the page. then each ad has more impact, position and effect. that and your site isn't junked up with meaningless ads
3. run house ads instead
4. bonus key clients more impressions
5. just run nothing, at least it will be cleaner
   

defending a-rod

alex rodriguez came clean yesterday on the allegations of steroid use. the right move for a bad decision. but does it matter? can he ever escape this? is his career tarnished forever?

i'll admit, when the mitchell report came out, or even before when bonds was under constant scrutiny for steroid use, i thought a-rod was exempt. i felt that he was one player who was above performance enhancing drugs. he's a pure talent, and still is. i guess jose canseco got it right a while back when he implicated rodriguez, but there was no evidence and no further scrutiny. i dismissed that as just more of canseco's wild accusations to cling to what little fame he had left. sorry i doubted you jose. you gave me no reason to, ever.

i'm in the camp to say that 3 years of performance enhancing drug use does not tarnish rodriguez's career. he is a natural talent. he was productive and a star before he took p.e.d.'s and was the same afterwards. look at his stats and he was just as productive prior to and after his steroid years. you could argue that without them he would have been just as effective. it's negligible. doesn't make it right that he took them, albeit under a cloud of non-policy by mlb, just that he shouldn't be forever villainized for his actions. if you want, when his career is done, wipe those 3 years from the record and he is still hall of fame worthy, and rightly considered one of the best ever.

the way rodriguez has played this out is that right way. he's admitting his actions, incurring the wrath, and seeking forgiveness from the court of public opinion. this is something no other player has done. not mcgwire, who refused to talk about it. not bonds, who says he never knowingly took them. not clemens or palmeiro who fervently deny it. he is trying to make it right. he's admitted fault, he's accepted his errors, and he will live with how he is going to be perceived. that shows a lot of strength of chracter. not just to come clean, but to have stopped using when he did.

i genuinely believe he is sorry for his actions and regrets them (some will say regret getting caught). he is human, and exercised poor judgement. rodriguez was sincere, and made himself accountable. he should be forgiven. if not forgiven, then not have his entire career diminished for it.

still there's three issues with all this which don't sit right with me.
1) not for public knowledge
the drug tests that led to this outing were supposed to be anonymous, sealed by court order. how did these test results get out, especially when the tests themselves and the players names were never supposed to be linked and lived in separate databases? i'm not trying to justify the actions of any of those 104 players, but they had a right to have this information protected.

the point is, steroid use was rampant and mlb was trying to stop it. the testing survey was done to gauge just how pervasive it is in order to establish rules and disciplinary actions. it was accepted practice and rodriguez, along with scores of others, were part of it because no rules were in place to govern it. good judgement and morality aside, that was the era these players were in and it was common practice. with all the influences (manager, trainers, owners, agents, etc) it was not hard to play the game.

the effect all this is having is to sling more shit at baseball and generally increase the ire around the sport. i don't think that's needed. mlb needs to reconcile with it's fans and people in general and this is a step backwards form that. i'm not saying brush it under the carpet, but the lessons have been learned, the course is correcting, let's move forward.

2) the faultless mlb
mlb has, and rightly so, only been praised for cleaning up the sport, while not being accountable or admonished for their role in the 'steroid era.' it was their inaction, non-policy, and general state of denial that led to an atmosphere where performance enhancing drugs were able to be as epidemic as they were. don't just tear the players down when you can't look in the mirror and accept your role in this situation, mlb. they too easily throw their players, their product mind you, under the bus while throwing their hands up and saying 'don't look at me.'

superbowl ads - fading away

is the superbowl still the cultural beacon for advertising anymore? i vote no.

because i live in canada, we don't get the privilege of seeing the real superbowl ads as they happen. i mean we broadcast the superbowl and try to parade our ads on it, but there isn't the fanfare, novelty and expense associated in doing so. thankfully the internet has made this cultural fascination more accessible. and therein lies why i don't think the superbowl is much more than the game itself anymore. we as marketers are losing the one day where advertising is elevated to a cultural phenomenon, spectacle and curiosity for all the masses to stand up and take notice of our great work. the day where everyday folk put aside their trite statements of "i don't pay attention to ads" and embrace the brandsell as entertainment.

so the day after the superbowl i mosey over to whatever site is making a big stink about the superbowl ads so that i can see for myself. but ever since the first media rumblings of the superbowl bubbled up in the media this year and last, it nagged at me that it's just not the same anymore. the game has changed.

not the destination it was
no longer do we accept content channels making destination viewing. a fixed time and channel for content doesn't hold the viewing audience hostage with the emergence of pvr's, torrents, online video and quicker to market dvd's. the new distribution systems make it so that we are not subject to someone else's schedule, network or otherwise.

we're not beholden to one day of the year anymore to see great work. it's out there, everywhere. brand produced or user generated. hours after the superbowl (or sooner), every ad was already circulating around the internet. by the following day, every media outlet and every joe with a recording device and the ability to encode it as online video has uploaded all the commercials and everyone else has watched them online.

so it doesn't need the big day. if advertisers created great ads and used non-broadcast distribution methods, the pickup is the same. with greater access it becomes less forced on the consumer and more in keeping with their preference to view as they choose. consumers can be more selective and an ad in the superbowl may not be that place anymore. advertisers lose the passive 'push' messaging, but in online get a more valuable engaged audience.

heightened expectations
even more of a factor than a populace consuming on their own terms is the content of the ads themselves. the superbowl used to be the meeting place where the best, funniest, most creative, wacky, random, highly entertaining and cool ads came to show off. that is a bygone time. television, even the superbowl, has been relegated to second fiddle in an internet video era where it is not only the channel of choice, but the new bastion of all that is great in video, ads or otherwise.

with access to the long tail of video content, consumer appetite has changed in what is truly breakthrough and salient with them. they still want the polish of it all, but have a very altered notion of what makes a great 30 second ad. they have been trained to want edgier, more interesting, more entertaining, more emotive, less branded and sell-y type ads. they have gravitated toward the subversive, where the brand is minimized, but the impact is amplified.

when we can take to the web and watch great work from every corner of the world, a tv spot faces greater obstacles to relevance and effect on the consumer. a place where broadcast standards don't apply and the risk/reward ratio is not as severe.

social currency
we still think of superbowl ads as something to be placed on a mantle and revered. truth is, they don't carry the same social currency as before. the ads within are brand messages, directed at viewers en masse, that through media investment, word of mouth can be engineered. the tectonic plates of consumer discussion have shifted though with the emergence of efficient and open distribution methods, and the democratization of content production. consumers are now in control of engineering what breaks through the din of all the brand messages in the media world.

only difference has been that somehow we equated a spot in the superbowl to mean it's going to be a great ad. that's lazy marketing because not all superbowl ads are great and not all superbowl viewers are your intended audience. these spots got attention because they were in the superbowl, not necessarily by virtue of their greatness. with the rise of alternative ways of viewing and a wider assortment of stuff to consume, truly great creative shines and becomes culturally significant because it's not being pushed on us, but because it talk worthy.

there is also how we share these ads and bring them into our own social fold. before we could only talk about them around a water cooler, having seen it just the one time. with the internet, we can go back to it, we can physically share it, we can comment on it, we can elevate it or diminish it in many places. it takes on a life of its own because it lives on, not dying after its lone airing.

the cost equation
every second of advertising in the superbowl costs $100,000. add to that the cost of making the ad, which often comes at a premium because of the special occasion and creative types pulling out the big guns. that's a lot to pay for something that has every chance to be a big success as it does to be a colossal failure. it also runs the risk of just being mediocre and lost in the shuffle. and quite often, that spot airs just the once, making it a pricey one-off.

compare that to online distribution methods. the likelihood of breaking out and having a real impact are just as strong and for 100% less the cost of a superbowl ad. i won't pretend that you can get it for $0, but technically you could. so for significantly less in cost you can put it in the consumer's hand, who always had the final say in just how far an ad proliferated the cultural consciousness.

the timing of it all
as i elaborated already on the distribution side of things, we are at a point where we don't need the big event anymore to debut a new spot. things move faster now and we can constantly innovate our approaches and iterate our creative faster. we can access our consumers quicker and take the great thing we built and release it to the world for accelerated return on our efforts. we can be more nimble in responding to successes and failures. the internet is as big a seeding ground for our efforts on an ongoing basis than any one day or game. the potential for groundswell and expansion on a continual basis is enormous.

of course this won't be the last year of a big commotion being made of the superbowl ads. but i think it will slowly erode and in the not too distant future almost cease to be a talking point anymore. it will be broadcast, it will have ads, but won't have the same fuss about it.

begrudging biz books

i've been on a bit of a business book binge (also thought leadership books, but that would ruin the alliteration) for the last little bit and one thing has become abundantly clear - they all drown themselves in case studies. so much so, i was able to power through the books at speed because i was just glossing over the painful articulation of one microcosm of an example.

i get why a case study can be good, i do. it's a real world example of one's premise or idea in action. it's there to lend credibility to what is being put forth. this is more about fewer case studies than getting rid of them altogether. then again, i wouldn't be mourning their altogether elimination.

you see, someone else's success story (or failure for that matter) is their own. each case study is comprised of a completely unique set of circumstances and personalities. there is only so much of that which lends itself to any of the reader's situation. it's great to hear about people applying the ideas postulated but copying it does not a success make. there's nothing to say that a similar application of the idea has bearing on any other situation. so where exactly is the value?

some will point to credibility. that the idea has needs to prove itself, right or wrong, to have validity. i don't totally buy that. the reason being because the idea gains its credibility by way of the author.

the book exists because of a singular, powerful, unique thought from a leader in the field who has a vision to share. they are being published because they are respected, their opinion carries weight and their notion is truly original, innovative or inspiring. shouldn't that be enough? are they so insecure with their premise that they need to find examples up the wazoo to verify it is correct or exists at all? is it publisher imposed? does the audience really clamor for them that much? is that their own insecurity in adopting an idea that they can't tread where others haven't forged a path already?

i say, if the idea is powerful, then put it out there and the world will decide. it seems ingenuine that someone will do something not because they believe what they are reading, but because someone else has done it. if it's right, or makes sense, or is logical then it should be pursued. right isn't someone else's version of right. making sense isn't how someone else made sense of the idea and brought it to life. and well, not everyone follows the same logic.

all said, the books are theories. they convey an abstract idea that isn't proved in any one way. the practical side of the equation is too unique for each acting upon it. as a marketer of beer, my reading a case study about a shoe marketer has little application to me. i'm glad they did well, but how they did it was of no value to me because i live in a different universe. (i'm not sure if that last part was a case study to prove my point thus making me a hypocrite. it's too meta to think about)

so authors, focus on writing your ideas and sharing them, not on showing they can be right. unless you get paid by the word, then i vote for putting the idea out there and saving some time (and precious trees) for people to actually take that idea and run with it.

when to not say yes to the vet

this weekend has been a tough one for us. one of our rabbits fell seriously ill with fluid in his chest and an abscess in his stomach. he's doing much better now (not quite out of the woods though) after some great care by 3 different vets. but it got me thinking about the dollars and cents of veterinary care.

we don't have pet insurance, virtually no one does. i read a stat that only 0.4% of all cats and dogs in the u.s. are insured by their owners. that is amazingly low. i thought it was maybe between 5% and 10%. compare that to human insurance in the u.s. which is around 82% (it's the only fair comparison given our universl health care in canada - the point being that if we didn't have socialized healthcare here, the percentages would likely be similar). so how much do we really love our pet companions? what is the price tag we have on them? apparently it's around $576 before euthanization becomes a much more viable option to further treatment according to caa.

pet insurance aside, what of company benefits. do any of them include pets? i seriously doubt it (mine doesn't), even though they are a part of the family and the rest of them get coverage. my pets wellbeing weighs on me as my people family would and that affects my work life and my financial life that the rest of my benefits are there to assuage in the event of health issues. 

why can't they be included? there's a lot of crap in benefit packages we don't ever use. $500 in massage that i'll never use i'd rather have available to put toward vet bills. i won't go through it line by line, but there's lot sof things i don't need or won't use that would easily make up for what i'd spend or use in pet insurance. not to take this post of track, but i'd love to see an openness and flexibility in benfit packages that a person could tailor to themselves and their situation, especially as it pertains to pets.

more than anything, i struggle with the dynamic people and their pets, especially when it comes down to medical care and the associated costs. on one side, i can see how there's a point where people can decide that the equaion doesn't balance and it doesn't make sense. it's a very real possibility some times. or that they simply don't have the money to give their pet that care. on the flip side, pets are just as much a part of people's lives and there is deep love people have for them. we wouldn't question it were a person on the operating table, so why do we for a pet?

i'll openly grant that it's easier to let a pet go than it is to do the same for a person. people are of a peer level and a love bond based on more levels than an animal is capable of. but that doesn't make them disposable. i hope not. that's a little shameful, though, isn't it? to think that we love animals less or in another way that somehow isn't equal. why are animals more replaceable than humans?

it's morality vs. economic. in the state of our world, we know that those two have a lot of difficulty co-existing in a positively genuine way. it's not easy.

did we consider euthanization? no, we didn't. he was still treatable and as long as that's the case, with a good outlook post-treatment, then i'm all for it. it's just money, right? so i have a little debt. so i work part time for 2-3 months to pay it off. it's worth it for me. he brings a lot of joy in my life and $3,000 is worth it for him to still be around for the rest of his life to live, be a happy rabbit and me to have his companionship.

i'm not  saying i'm a saint here. sure, i looked at the cost and had my brief doubts on whether it was worth it. i felt ashamed for doing so, but it happened. that's the dilemma with all this - why did i question it? i wasn't ready to say goodbye. there will be a time when i am more ready and feel that it is his time. when he won't be able to live a quality life, when he doesn't have a good chance of making it through, when he's lived for a long time, and when i can put my own selfishness of wanting him around aside for his own well being and stem any suffering. 

how easily we forgot about our own selfishness in this whole mater. and it's on both sides. selfishness for our money and the impact a drain will have on our lives. then selfishness of wanting to keep them around for ourselves. how do we resolve this?

i know i'm not being as clear as i'd like. it's hard to express such esoteric quandires where emotion is so heavily involved. i am having a hard time reconciling this all myself.

weighing in on the death of newspapers

in today's weekly blog reading catch-up, i perused numerous stories on the death of newspapers and thought i'd weigh-in myself as it's something i've been conceptualizing since college when i wrote a thesis paper on their death, or evolution as it really should be. i thought it was a good time to revisit it and update with some of the new information.

do i want newspapers to die? yes, in their current incarnation i do, but not entirely. why not entirely? well it's simple, journalism in that form still has a very important place in the fabric of society. citizen journalists (ie. bloggers) are one thing, but the world still needs, as atlantic magazine puts it:

... there’s no online substitute for institutions that can marshal years of well-developed sourcing and reporting experience—not to mention the resources to, say, send journalists leapfrogging between Mumbai and Islamabad to decode the complexities of the India-Pakistan conflict.

newspapers have arrived at this point solely by virtue of intense hubris in their value and business model, which hasn't changed in 100 years. while keeping their core printed versions status quo, they simply layered on website versions with little apparent thought to changing the costlier side of the business, that was really in danger.

to distill it down, the business model of newspapers is in disseminating information to the masses. what i'm about to say isn't new, but important to the discussion to elaborate later. the main problem with the printed business model is the old 24 hour news cycle which doesn't exist anymore. news is a constant stream now and expected to be by the viewing public. immediacy is key and that doesn't happen with a product that has to lock in their news the previous afternoon, get printed and shipped in the wee hours of the morning. newspaper people need to get over that, and should have a decade ago.

while immediacy is paramount in the news business, the quality of journalism is what should continue to be the hallmark and still has a place in society and media today. it's melding the two into a new product which better meets consumer needs that is their future.

so what did i posit in 2000 as a possible and viable solution? i needn't look much further than my geek side and star trek: the next generation. no, not phasers to wipe out the arrogant old guard newspaper barons, but the data padds (yes, i'm spelling it right).

i'm not saying this is a revolutionary thought, but back then i did think it was forward thinking, but now well outside of the dream phase.

already we have the amazon kindle and a host of other reading devices. some papers even have editions available for it like the new york times. it's a step, but why did they wait for someone else to do it? why did they make their content fit someone else's platform rather than creating their own? newspapers have always created the vehicle for their content delivery, right?

beyond the kindle, here's a couple other emerging technologies that are options as well. forbes took the leap with this new e-ink as a disposable version, so certainly there is a reusable option.


granted, it's easy in hindsight, with the benefit of seeing where technology took us, to see what newspapers could have done. but that's the point, right? these things didn't happen over night, and with a little foresight, could have been tapped into earlier. there are smarter people than myself and if it occurred to me nearly 10 years ago, surely it must have for someone else too.

we are just seeing this technology emerge now because scientists are developing it to find applications for it. had newspapers stepped in to lend some of their considerable resources (although greatly diminished as of late, but there was money years ago) for development with a specific purpose, it's quite likely that it would have come faster. they could already be in market with some derivation of this and we wouldn't be having all these conversations about their demise.

now it's 2009 and we have iphones, other smartphones, kindles, and other personal digital devices. it's infinitely more difficult now to break into the handheld space and it becomes harder to ask consumers to adopt yet another device. if they were leaders though, there wouldn't be this added hurdle. although, with a quality, low cost device, there is still plenty of room for consumer uptake.

what of cost? i would think it'd have to be free, but as this technology continues to come down in price, it becomes much more fiscally prudent. especially if you can lock people into subscriptions to pay the device costs over time. it works for cell phones.

then there's what makes the whole newspaper world go round, advertising. that's right editors, it's not the purity of news reporting, it's the dirty world of selling things. sorry. here lies a tremendous amount of opportunity for marketers to capitalize on that printed publicaitons fall on their face. how so? glad you asked:

1. interactivity - the ads in the space would no longer be static and thus more engaging
2. measurement - being able to directly and far more precisely understand the audience and actual readership
3. linkable - simply being able to click through to an advertiser is a huge boon
4. current - messages no longer have to be expensively developed and locked in far in advance
5. lower cost - newspapers are notoriously high in cost because the printing and distribution is passed on to the advertiser, not the reader, and this is a far less expensive delivery system

it probably sounds like i'm oversimplifying this, but it doesn't seem that far of a stretch to me. pretty logical, really. anything's better than death, right? for all their smarts in delivering a superior information product, they certainly are myopic of their own predicament.

i feel compelled to lastly address people's long standing adherence to the notion that the tactile nature of newspapers (and any printed medium) is of benefit to people and something they are willing to give up. i guess it's true so long as people like, cumbersome sized pages, low quality paper, rub-off ink and lower production quality imagery (ie. blurry or just b&w). this is just another old school belief. newspapers are failing because young people are not adopting due to their needs not being met by newspapers. that attitude doesn't resonate with them. they have more important things to worry about than feeling newsprint between their fingers.

update: here's an article that makes it pretty clear this model could succeed. 

the more commercial guitar hero

i picked up the guitar hero world tour set for our wii over the holidays. great addition to the series, but one that was clearly marked with it's commercial success. of course i'm talking about all the advertising that is very visible throughout.

the first instance is as soon as you open the case, a coupon from kfc.


then throughout the gameplay you're peppered with a number of other placements like the coke and kfc bucket below.


as someone in advertising, these efforts are all good in my book. video games have emerged as a mainstream vehicle, whose viability as a new medium is very clear. i say all this with one caveat of course, and that's relevance. there's a place for everything and marketers have to find the right ones or else it's wasted money and consumer dissonance.

the examples above are well suited, in my mind, to the environment you find them in. kudos to those companies, they did a good job. but then there's the flops. also featured in the game is a prominent sign for at&t (i wish i could get a picture to show you, but there's not a still frame to take something of quality). i don't see what place it has in a video game about rock and roll. there's a disconnect, and it's not integrated within the game or story as the others.

it's our responsibility as marketers and agencies to find appropriate venues for our products to be placed. just because it is a hot game, on an emerging platform doesn't mean we should get involved blindly because on paper i makes sense to form some, even loose association. sure there's eyeballs, but what's the quality of your implementation?

i see three main guardrails we all should adhere to so we don't ruin the space and make our efforts just more wallpaper.

1. relevance: does the product or service have a legitimate place within the theme or story of the game? does it fit environmentally?
   
2. value: does it enhance the the user's experience and give them something they might actually want?
3. integration: is the product or service inserted in a way that is thoughtful and not just slapped on?

there's so much opportunity in video games that has yet to be realized, but just jumping to it without thinking hard about how we do it isn't a recipe for success. it is a highly immersive and interactive medium and that is where success lies. by it's very nature, the audience is ripe, but only if it's handled with care because it's also very personal.