Silicon Alley Insider reports that G1 sales are strong. As I noted in earlier missives to Steve and regarding the power of Android, a services-optimized phone will make the price approach zero.
And for you Apple fanboys, cooing that iPhone hit a million sold in 74 days, note that G1 is succeeding and will hit 1mm phones in less than 120 days, in the midst of crapiest economy in a hundred years! Go you little 'droid, you!
Great story on the net this am about Cooking Mama, a video game with a virtual chef, and the attack parody game launched by PETA in protest of meat recipes in the game. In the end, the game's publisher demonstrates exemplary brand authenticiy in their even handed, measured response.
Cooking Mama has already sold more than a million units, pretty substantial for a small publisher. This week, PETA launched an attack on the latest release of the game by creating their own microsite and casual game: Cooking Mama: Cooking Mama Kills Animals. Their hope was and is to sway gamers away from eating meat by using a game parody to lampoon Cooking Mama. In effect, they attacked the game publisher to get their point across.
While more elaborate that throwing blood on fur coats, PETA consistently bares their claws when taking on issues and targets. What's disappointing but not unexpected is that PETA did not contact Majestic with their gripes ahead of launching the microsite and the knife-wielding Mama.
Here's what's interesting: In a great display of brand authenticity, Majestic took the high road in their response to this unprovoked aattack by PETA. Instead of calling their lawyers, seeking injunctive relief, etc, Majestic issued a statement thanking PETA for the publicity, and took the opportunity to highlight Cooking Mama's vegetarian and meat alternative recipes included in the game. Sure, it's reasonable since Mama is a loveable and presumably not-litigious chef in the kitchen. But how many companies can you recall that have shown similar grace under pressure, and behaved so consistently with their customer's perception of them? Given the dollars involved, and the brand character that companies wish they had, most courts are full of lawsuits, countersuits etc over brand squabbles. Obama showed us recently that brand authenticity is living authentically, and it pays huges dividends when you do so.
In an upcoming post, I'll revisit the world of Roomba, the hackable robot vacuum that was one of the earliest and coolest examples of brands behaving consistently with their image.
In the meantime, you'd be happy to know that Cooking Mama has come through this storm looking like a gem. PETA has now issued a statement saying that Cooking Mama has engaged in a fair dialogue with them and will release a vegan title. Can I get a group hug, anyone?
PetsMart (PETM) has seen their stock take a huge beating-- down over 50%-- in the last two months. Looks like lots of debate over the menace of Walmart, the recession-proof consumer in pet supplies, and whether anything is a screaming buy in the market right now.
But, stock picks aside, UStream is serving up a great expansion idea (and simple application of digital media) that would be dynamite for the folks over at PetsMart. With their 24 X 7 live streaming puppy cam, UStream is garnering upwards of 30K simultaneous viewers eager to watch the minute to minute lives of 6 awfully cute Shiba Inu puppies. I would love to see the data uniques, time spent on the site and the numbers of return visitors. I bet they are awesome.
The streamcast is available on UStream and via embedded players all around the net, and folks appear to really like watching the pups. If I were on the marketing team over at PetsMart, I would move ASAP to get kittycams, puppycams, boacams, hamstercams, etc set up in my stores! Talk about great branded content! Imagine how many consumers would love to watch the animals, possibly find one to bring home, see the toys they play with and so on. At a minimum, viewers can satisfy their interest in cute furry animals at minimal (no) cost, and PetsMart builds their brand relationship to boot. In effect, PetsMart would become the host of the conversation that their consumers demand-- where can I see puppies and kittens in action, doing what they do? This is a simple yet powerful example of how PetsMart could capture sincere interest and convert it into an effective sponsorship opportunity.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to get back to the pups; they are stacked like cordwood in their bed for an afternoon nap.
Yet again the topic of advertisers dollars and the spend around web (video) content was front and center at the NewTeeVee summit hosted by Om and team in San Francisco yesterday. TechCrunch offered a nice summary of the discussion, including projections and analysis of advertising spend. The data shows that video content on the net garners far lower CPMs than the same or similar content on broadcast TV. Last January, Jeff Zucker's had in effect predicted this when commenting on the writer's guild strike and the wrangling over digital content rights.Zucker said that mass (analog)media companies fear that large dollar ad spends associated with broadcast media drop significantly (to pennies on the dollar) as those viewers and content is ported over to the net. Prophetic to say the least.
In a previous post, I covered the myriad reasons why CPMs are valued so differently between the net and mass media. However, I think one point continues hit home, and I want to re-highlight it-- advertising delivery in digital media is essentially a transposition of existing and outdated forms advertising created for broadcast media. And, mass media models do not work (in any form) on the internet. Stated differently-- consumers of digital media on the internet have powers not available in broadcast media-- a sea of instantaneous choices, interactive computing power, and social connectivity-- and these powers make them far more resistant to advertising consumption common to the (powerless) world of broadcast media.
So how do we deal with this? A simple answer that will be complicated to deliver-- create new forms of advertising and sponsorship that leverage the powers of the digital consumer. Embrace interactivity, connectedness, and specificity as the governance of marketing to the digital consumer. Instead of continuing to re-purpose 30 second pre-roll/post-roll creative from broadcast media, throw it out and start from scratch. Ask the question: how can we engage a consumer in a conversation about our brand in ways that are authentic, meaningful, and useful, given the powers they possess? Do that well, or even close to well, and you will open the doors to the treasury of the digital media consumer. CPMs go up, brands convert customers and build loyalty, and broadcast media will be left with the tailings.
A little more than a year ago, the guys at Eqal who created Lonely Girl 15 (www.LG15.com)
and Kate Modern (www.katemodern.com)
wrote a new character into the plot of LG15 and took brand interaction
and product placement to a whole new level. I thought it would be great
to revisit this story as it still serves as a shining example of
integrated, authentic brand marketing.
The character, a (fictitious) scientist working for Neutrogena, was created by Eqal and Neutrogena (with the help of CAA) as a life-imitating-art and vice versa situation for LG15. The goal was to credibly weave a real life brand into the story in a way that viewers would accept. Through careful design of the plot and treatment, Eqal and Neutrogena built the character and enlisted the help of viewers to recruit the character to the cause of eliminating the evil group,"The Order," in the story. In real life, they created an entry in the Neutrogena corporate directory (and email) for the character so fans could interact and become part of the story. The response was significant, with the fictitious character receiving thousands of email pleas to join in.
No doubt this took a lot of hand holding with the brand, but what's
cool is that adding a Neutrogena scientist to the plot did not offend
viewers, as LG15 is set in the real world, with real world surroundings
and brands. In fact, a real brand presence added to the realism of the
story. More importantly, the brand immersion was huge. Neutrogena
reached a value demographic, placed their brand in a quality context,
and garnered tons of interaction from fans, many of whom set up
websites, recorded videos, and created their own content around support
for Neutrogena, the character and the products of the company.
This is a great illustration of the interactive, immersive potential
of brand advertising in digital media. With time, more courage from
authentic brands, and the applied knowledge of interactive marketing
agencies, I expect new and more exciting forms of advertising and brand
building to come to the fore. Stay tuned.
Everyone see the interview yesterday with Ballmer trashing Android? If i were heading to Redmond this am, I would pull over and call my recruiter.
"Hello, Steve, are you are still in denial? How can you not see the power that Google gains by giving away an open operating system to leverage ad revenue opportunities from mobile access to hosted services? "
Ballmer's criticism of Google feels like another "I love the 90's" on VH1. It's old skool, and in the software world, that's not a good thing. Anybody remember Sybase? Ballmer's comments suggest that instead of a free, open-source OS that enables valuable revenue services (search, mobile contextual search), Google should: 1) develop a proprietary OS, 2) license it to handset manufacturers, 3) bear the cost of support, maintenance and upgrades, and 4) saddle mobile devices with fat-client software that are clunky to use (How's Intellisync working for you Exchange users?). This is not only out of touch with today's world-- light, agile, thin client apps, hosted services in the cloud-- it also reflects a continued institutional arrogance about who can build better software-- Microsoft or the Crowd?
The fact is, Android is a brilliant idea. Google has commoditized the OS by making it free and open source. This is good, because customer don't care about branded O/S's- quick, what O/S does your Mac run on/-- and commoditized open source O/S's mean lower cost to produce, and a higher likelihood that the end product will be better than the stuff coming off the assembly line at Microsoft (anybody remember Vista?) With legions of worldwide developers pounding out the O/S and thin-client applications, PLUS the integration of Google services puts Android ahead of all smartphones-- even one day, the iPhone. And, Google's position will only grow as integrated services and bandwidth become more available (Wi-Fi, 4G). Sure, right now it's easy to kick Google in the handset--HTC is not a glamor product, but think how far off the first iPod was from what has become the iPone.
It's unavoidable that Google can dominate mobile services delivery and advertising as the central stakeholder in Android. In fact, it makes a lot more sense that a services company will prevail as compared to hardware/handset makers (Apple, you listening?) because all of the value in mobile computing will be in the applications themselves. iTunes, you need to shape up!
Meanwhile, Steve, you need to put your head in the cloud and recognize that making money off of proprietary OS licensing and fat client apps no longer works as a business model. Just ask Amazon or Salesforce.com. So, embrace open, service hosted delivery models or face the reality of becoming obsolote in mobile smartphones in the future.
Move over Billy Maze, there's a new sheriff in town,and he's Vince Offer, pitchman for the Shamwow. Seriously, can you believe the buzz behind the Shamwow (a sponge/cleaner like a synthetic chamois, I believe)? In one day, I heard one radio, one TV news, and two overheard conversations at a conference all mention Shamwow. What's going on?
Clearly facination with infotainment is not new. Ron Popeil was (is?) the master of producing commercials that looked more like talk shows, and he moved a lot of product. Similarly, OxyClean, Orange whatever and host of other cleaning products have been convincingly pitched by Maze, the in your face pitchman with the driving monotone voice.
With Shamwow, Vince brings us in mini-theater. Some say he's kinda creepy with a leering smile, and rapid fire delivery. I personally like the non-sequiturs and meaningless selling points, like "It's from Germany." What's the point--I don't have any firm brand associations (positive ones) with Germany as either very clean or very clever with cleaning products. Cars, yes, but sponges, no. Might as well add Florida to that list too-- bupkis on any positive associations with "It's from Florida." If it's not a mouse, playing NFL football, or hanging off a tree, I don't want it. Sorry Sunshine state.
In any case, it's clear that Shamwow is on people's minds because it's kind of like infotainment. Shot on a budget, the Shamwow can, and does it all....dog, car, bathroom, counter--- Shamwow could probably mop up sub-prime too. For 90 seconds, Vince has us spellbound, and YouTube shows that over 300K viewers haven't gotten enough of Vince on late night cable. It's even spawned a series of highly flattering parody videos to boot.
In a subsequent post, we'll take a look at another Infotainment attempt, Dos Equis Most Interesting Assistant Competition which proves that you can also bomb (in a big way) when trying to mask a pitch as something interesting to watch.
Abstract: The rise of social networks is creating huge
opportunities for marketers, yet huge liabilities loom for inauthentic
brands trying to vie for consumer attention.
For all the technology geeks out there, peer to peer computing is a familiar concept-- harnessing an interconnected mesh of network bandwidth for information sharing and distribution. Companies like FON, a peer to peer approach to wifi, and Joost, a peer-to-peer method of distributing video are two fine examples of services that use peer to peer computing very well. The key concept in each case is that networked members (computers) share their collective bandwidth and computing power to process and deliver information.
The rise of social networks like MySpace, Facebook and popular blogs that invite reader interaction like The Huffington Post, FARK, and Boing Boing are driving a new (and obvious) form of peer to peer-- social P2P networking, where the collective bandwidth of social networks is used to distribute and share information. For a recent example, look no further than the 12 hours leading up to the presidential election when huge numbers of people 'donated' their Facebook status to supporting Barack Obama. In doing so, the P2P network of one's Facebook friends became a statement about who's voting for whom, and the collective weight of how many became obvious.
Instead of sharing network bandwidth, connected groups of people are now sharing their collective brain-bandwidth on trends, what to believe, what to consume, who or what to like, hate, engage with and so forth. Again, in Facebook, you see this reflected every day in people becoming "fans" of products, services, people, such as Tina Fey or the iPhone. In his excellent book, Here Come's Everybody, Clay Shirky describes the power of organizing outside of organizations brought about by the openness of the internet and the means of connecting groups with similar affinities. This is enormously powerful stuff, as it means that connectedness and sharing have huge power to influence purchasing of products and services, and therefore all marketers should be very interested if they want to prosper, nee to even survive!
For brand marketers, the obvious challenge is finding the means to tap into these networks to leverage their collective power. This is particularly important as people shift TV viewing time and other time slots for advertising consumption over to time spent interacting with friends via social networks and blogs. It's not an easy process, as networks are elusive, difficult to enjoin, and impermanent. There's a lot of writing out there on how marketers should approach and appeal to social networks, but one issue is missing from the discussion altogether, and I think it is the most important and challenging for all marketers-- is your brand authentically living up to its promises.
Typically
brands such as GM have had complete latitude to define their brand in
the mind of consumers. Using TV, print, and radio advertising, ideals
such as "Like a rock!" have been poured onto the consumer, along with
images of apple pie, Americana, and hard working people. However, in
the Spring of 2006, when GM asked their customers to make and submit their own commercials,
the gap between brand sending (GM) and reception (their customers) was
painfully exposed, thanks in part to social P2P. GM was shocked to
discover how many consumers were not buying their GM promise, and had
other messages on their minds, like "You're melting the planet," and so
on. And, herein lies the biggest challenge for all brands in the new
connected world of P2P social networks-- if your brand promotion is
inconsistent with the consumer's true brand experience, your marketing
will not only fail, but it will fail spectacularly as connected
consumers use their bandwidth to distribute that failed brand promise.
It's one thing to be laughed at by a single magazine reader, or roomful
ofsuperbowl viewers, yet quite another to experience the collective ire of blogs like hatewalmart.com. Some brands, such as Scion, Red Bull, and even BaconSalt (and Baconnaise) are creating and living up tp authentic brand promises for their consumers, and this
reflects in the promotional fan and consumer communities that have
sprung up on soical networks (Facebook has 395 groups for Scion).
Again, closing this gap is not a luxury-- -it is a strategic
imperative for marketers as consumers come to rely more and more on
their social networks to find, share and categorize their brand
experiences.What it requires, however, is a dose of honesty that more closely resembles a conversation with consumers, and not a core dump of self-important messages and imagery. This will be the topic of a subsequent post.
Well it's Tuesday, and in addition to being a historic election day (and hopefully the day we re-commit to being responsible world leaders),it's also Back on Topps episode day. Every Tuesday and Thursday for the current season, Randy and Jason "The Sklar Brothers" and the team at Eisner's Tornante bring great writing and rapid fire dialogue to another episode of "Back on Topps."
I originally learned about the Back on Topps webiseries via the Wall Street Journal article on the world of web-shorts content. B o T is a fictitious tale that follows Leyland and Leif Topps ( the Sklars ) as they struggle to find their way after their uncle Marvin sells the family company, Topps Inc-- to Michael Eisner. With art imitating life-- Eisner did in fact buy Topps-- the B o T team, including Eisner's Tornante production company, puts forth a funny, healthy self-satire to say the least. As Leland and Leif try to get on with their Michael Scott-esque boss, Galen, the plots feature office and sports parody including a mix of sports figure cameos and references-- everyone from Rodman to a 'roided out Carrot Top make the scene.
The episodes mostly center around Leyland and Leif's wacky product development ideas (60 Seconds interview show, the Paul Mitchell Scandal) with character twists (a black Eisner, a stalker with a baby) and great dialogue ( "Are you guys trying out for Hezbollah?"). In addition to being entertainment, there's an obvious point that B o T has bills to pay, and they manage to pull off genuine promotion of their sponsor, Skype, in every episode without looking silly or canned. In fact, some storylines put Skype front and center as more than product placement. In a recent episode, basketball player Greg Odin delivers a tutorial on Skype video conferencing, and he does a convincing job of it. At other points, paying bills seems to be out the window as products such as Red Bull are worked extensively into the script in spite of not having a product placement deal. I know the Sklars are committed to funny first (it's working), but I would get those placements too (from the edgier brands). It's ok to be good, entertaining, and profitable as long as you support authentic brands (a subsequent post to follow).
The business angle is working-- the word I hear is that B o T will renew for a second season (Tuesdays and Thursdays keep rolling). Although Tornante does not share numbers on viewership, syndication through sites like Fox Sports and the bi-weekly email campaign appear to be driving enough traffic to support continued investment. What's not known is whether B o T is helping sell more baseball/sports cards. I would be very interested to know how far discussions with Topps have gone on this. Clearly there is a bright line between fiction and reality, as the Topps Company does not have any reference to the series on their website. Further, in a recent episode Leland and Leif committed to publishing a "bottom 5" (as opposed to a top 10) plays on the Topps website, yet a visit to Topps.com yielded no signs that Leyland and Leif had been there with their ahem, bottom(s).
This is a paradox that should be resolved in the next season. The Sklars and Tornante have produced a great series around a real brand. But the lack of real world benefit from a connection to Topps leaves them saddled with a creative limitation. As an artist, i would want this resolved so I would know how far I can go with the writing and dialogue-- is anything off limits? For example, having a fictitious Dunder Miflin Co in the series "The Office," means the gloves are off for writers, and they lampoon the company, it's management, etc. to the hilt. Were Back on Topps to become "Back on Acme," (dumb name, I know), the Sklars could really skewer the world of this fictitious company (including no more reverence to Mr Eisner in the treatments).
I for one like the commitment to support a real brand, and I don't think it has sacrificed content and funny writing. But, I would like to see them go all the way-- make Back on Topps live in the context of the actual the Topps company brand. I have seen great examples of this recently, such as with Eqal (Lonely Girl 15, Kate Modern) and their very creative integration of Neutrogena into the content of the show. The Topps Company seems like an older sports marketing brand in need of a fresher, updated image and presence within the internet community (I wonder how they have failed to dominate sports media given their huge head start; must be the commitment to shipping gum). In any case, Back on Topps to me seems like one of the best vehicles they could embrace to update their image and business.
I will talk more in a subsequent post about Eqal, LG15 and other interesting forms of marketing-integrated Infotainment on the web right now. Can you say "ShamWow?!"
I just returned from Digital Hollywood where I moderated a panel on contextual media and advertising. We had really good feedback from the crowd as we channeled our discussion toward marketing to consumers in the hosted attention economy. More later in a subsequent post.
Throughout the conference, there was a consistent theme among content producers, ad networks, and agencies. Interesting side note-- few if any major brands made the conference. I think this says a lot about the state of digital media and perhaps serves as a reminder that Digital Hollywood needs to become more inclusive to brands. The theme, actually it was more of a gripe, was that major advertising dollars are still not flowing from conventional media-- print, TV, radio-- into digital alternatives after 10 years of digital media and web advertising.
After participating in lots of discussion both in and out of the presentation sessions, I wanted to dig deeper into what's going on. My conclusion is that there a still a number of legitimate barriers that are holding back the significant flow of advertising spend. However most everyone seemed too quick to conclude that TV buying is still too strong, in light of overall ratings declines in broadcast TV, because of people issues: the brand-agency-buyer-network machine is staffed with too many old media types, unwilling to make the transformation to digital media marketing. This is a sort of "They're all comfortable/lazy/stubborn to change" type of argument that masks more serious factors facing marketers in digital media. Let's dig into those.
The first issue facing brands is the explosion of content taking many different and as-yet un-standardized forms. In conventional media, print, radio, TV forms are well understood, with known parameters defining what it is-- it's a sitcom; when it's produced-- 22 weekly installments; how long it is-- 30 minutes with 6 slots, and so on. With internet content coming in all forms, standards don't exist-- how long is a blog post, what is 3 minute short, how long is the average sudoku game, etc. This means that advertisers have to completely start from scratch when thinking about the opportunities for brand promotion.
Going hand in hand with new forms of content is the challenge of defining advertising units. Other than for sites like Hulu, the net offers banners, widgets, sponsored players, pre-roll, post-roll, interstitials, pop ups, etc-- a vast and growing array of vehicles to reach the consumer. When compared to the analog world of 30 or 60 second advertising spots, digital media advertising is a veritable galaxy of medium choice. Further, most major brands do not think net advertising is big enough for their expansive stories, messaging, and brand character. In a subsequent post, I will revisit this and explore how authenticity is the next big hurdle once brands make the leap to internet advertising. For the time being, it's clear that creative directors and their brand counterparts still really love making commercials for broadcast TV.
Compounding the content-producer-medium challenge is the avalanche of content producers, mostly unknown, vying for their slice of advertising dollars. Again, though offline media content comes from a vast array of content producers, centralized outlets such as broadcast TV, cable, syndication networks, etc represent a manageable portfolio of content brands. In digital media, content is exploding onto the net from all corners of the globe from an entirely new, and rapidly growing supply network of producers, all looking for sponsorship. Advertising networks-- linked syndicates of publisher sites and their ad inventory-- try to help the cause by bundling targeted, semi-targeted and un-targeted ad buying opportunities. Aside from the sheer number of networks, brands are also forced to reckon with much more fragmentation of their audience, and the need to make intelligent decisions on demographics. There's even the new element of what to show which person at what time on a dynamic basis. For example networks like Turn and Drivepm offer targeted access with the added blessing (curse?) of auction pricing and just in time delivery of ad units based on the demographic of a consumer who shows up on a site. It's like the game of let's herd the cattle has been replaced with 300 simultaneous games of whack-a-mole.
So, we have an avalanche of content, publishers, and networks. New forms of content, ad units and demographics. Manage it all, and you win a place on Letterman keeping the plates spinning on the sticks. Unfortunately, there's still one more issue facing brands, and it's a biggie: tools and metrics to measure efficacy.
I can only describe it as the gulf of accountability. That is, in digital media, there's massive potential to engage your consumers in a brand conversation (see my post on Eqal), but at present no one has a universal understanding of how, what, when a marketer should measure the effectiveness of their brand to consumer dialogue. Cookie tracking is now more than 10 years old, and marketers are beginning to understand-- it is not about simply knowing who's on the other end of the conversation, rather it's about where they stand in their conversation with you. So, cookie tracking is like using a megaphone for school guidance counseling. You'll get a message across, but it wont be the one that will work for everyone.
The good news in all the above? Automation and technology will be the only means by which all of the above can be solved, and the pace of development continues unabated. This is great news for all the bright, hard working technology builders and analytics pros that have the power to transform the digital media space from top to bottom.
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