Adver-Whatever

AoC 2008!

I've been holding off on doing this post until I had a little more information, but I'm now ready to do my part in promoting this year's sequel to the Age of Conversation.

Last year, over 100 authors came together to write a book entirely on the topic of "conversation" in marketing and new media, and all of the proceeds went to Variety: The Children's Charity. They recently held a "bum rush the charts" effort to get a last spurt of support, and climbed the Amazon sales charts to finally be #36 in business and #262 overall by the end of the day. The whole project was a great success, and from the sound of it, a good deal of fun.

So, the publishers of the first book, Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton, are at it again, organizing another huge communal book-writing effort. The topic this time around is "Why Don't They Get It," and because an amazing 275 people volunteered to write a chapter, they've broken it down into subsections:

• The Accidental Marketer
• Keeping Secrets
• A New Brand of Creative
• My Marketing Tragedy
• Business Models
• Conversation to Action
• Life in the Conversation Lane
• Manifestos

We'll have to wait for the book early this Fall to get exactly what each of these topics means to the individuals writing about them. So of course, I volunteered as soon as I heard about the opportunity (I'm writing about My Marketing Tragedy, which should be fun), but here is the full list of all 275 of the contributing authors. Be sure to check some (or all) of them out!

Adam Crowe, Adrian Ho, Aki Spicer, Alex Henault, Amy Jussel, Andrew Odom, Andy Nulman, Andy Sernovitz, Andy Whitlock, Angela Maiers, Ann Handley, Anna Farmery, Armando Alves, Arun Rajagopal, Asi Sharabi, Becky Carroll, Becky McCray, Bernie Scheffler, Bill Gammell, Bob Carlton, Bob LeDrew, Brad Shorr, Bradley Spitzer, Brandon Murphy, Branislav Peric, Brent Dixon, Brett Macfarlane, Brian Reich, C.C. Chapman, Cam Beck, Casper Willer, Cathleen Rittereiser, Cathryn Hrudicka, Cedric Giorgi, Charles Sipe, Chris Kieff, Chris Cree, Chris Wilson, Christina Kerley (CK), C.B. Whittemore, Clay Parker Jones, Chris Brown, Colin McKay, Connie Bensen, Connie Reece, Cord Silverstein, Corentin Monot, Craig Wilson, Daniel Honigman, Dan Goldstein, Dan Schawbel, Dana VanDen Heuvel, Dan Sitter, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darren Herman, Darryl Patterson, Dave Davison, Dave Origano, David Armano, David Bausola, David Berkowitz, David Brazeal, David Koopmans, David Meerman Scott, David Petherick, David Reich, David Weinfeld, David Zinger, Deanna Gernert, Deborah Brown, Dennis Price, Derrick Kwa, Dino Demopoulos, Doug Haslam, Doug Meacham, Doug Mitchell, Douglas Hanna, Douglas Karr, Drew McLellan, Duane Brown, Dustin Jacobsen, Dylan Viner, Ed Brenegar, Ed Cotton, Efrain Mendicuti, Ellen Weber, Emily Reed, Eric Peterson, Eric Nehrlich, Ernie Mosteller, Faris Yakob, Fernanda Romano, Francis Anderson, G. Kofi Annan, Gareth Kay, Gary Cohen, Gaurav Mishra, Gavin Heaton, Geert Desager, George Jenkins, G.L. Hoffman, Gianandrea Facchini, Gordon Whitehead, Graham Hill, Greg Verdino, Gretel Going & Kathryn Fleming, Hillel Cooperman, Hugh Weber, J. Erik Potter, J.C. Hutchins, James Gordon-Macintosh, Jamey Shiels, Jasmin Tragas, Jason Oke, Jay Ehret, Jeanne Dininni, Jeff De Cagna, Jeff Gwynne, Jeff Noble, Jeff Wallace, Jennifer Warwick, Jenny Meade, Jeremy Fuksa, Jeremy Heilpern, Jeremy Middleton, Jeroen Verkroost, Jessica Hagy, Joanna Young, Joe Pulizzi, Joe Talbott, John Herrington, John Jantsch, John Moore, John Rosen, John Todor, Jon Burg, Jon Swanson, Jonathan Trenn, Jordan Behan, Julie Fleischer, Justin Flowers, Justin Foster, Karl Turley, Kate Trgovac, Katie Chatfield, Katie Konrath, Kenny Lauer, Keri Willenborg, Kevin Jessop, Kris Hoet, Krishna De, Kristin Gorski, Laura Fitton, Laurence Helene Borei, Lewis Green, Lois Kelly, Lori Magno, Louise Barnes-Johnston, Louise Mangan, Louise Manning, Luc Debaisieux, Marcus Brown, Mario Vellandi, Mark Blair, Mark Earls, Mark Goren, Mark Hancock, Mark Lewis, Mark McGuinness, Mark McSpadden, Matt Dickman, Matt J. McDonald, Matt Moore, Michael Hawkins, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Michelle Lamar, Mike Arauz, Mike McAllen, Mike Sansone, Mitch Joel, Monica Wright, Nathan Gilliatt, Nathan Snell, Neil Perkin, Nettie Hartsock, Nick Rice, Oleksandr Skorokhod, Ozgur Alaz, Paul Chaney, Paul Hebert, Paul Isakson, Paul Marobella, Paul McEnany, Paul Tedesco, Paul Williams, Pet Campbell, Pete Deutschman, Peter Corbett, Phil Gerbyshak, Phil Lewis, Phil Soden, Piet Wulleman, Rachel Steiner, Sreeraj Menon, Reginald Adkins, Richard Huntington, Rishi Desai, Beeker Northam, Rob Mortimer, Robert Hruzek, Roberta Rosenberg, Robyn McMaster, Roger von Oech, Rohit Bhargava, Ron Shevlin, Ryan Barrett, Ryan Karpeles, Ryan Rasmussen, Sam Huleatt, Sandy Renshaw, Scott Goodson, Scott Monty, Scott Townsend, Scott White, Sean Howard, Sean Scott, Seni Thomas, Seth Gaffney, Shama Hyder, Sheila Scarborough, Sheryl Steadman, Simon Payn, Sonia Simone, Spike Jones, Stanley Johnson, Stephen Collins, Stephen Cribbett, Stephen Landau, Stephen Smith, Steve Bannister, Steve Hardy, Steve Portigal, Steve Roesler, Steven Verbruggen, Steve Woodruff, Sue Edworthy, Susan Bird, Susan Gunelius, Susan Heywood, Tammy Lenski, Terrell Meek, Thomas Clifford, Thomas Knoll, Tiffany Kenyon, Tim Brunelle, Tim Buesing, Tim Connor, Tim Jackson, Tim Longhurst, Tim Mannveille, Tim Tyler, Timothy Johnson, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Toby Bloomberg, Todd Andrlik, Troy Rutter, Troy Worman, Uwe Hook, Valeria Maltoni, Vandana Ahuja, Vanessa DiMauro, Veronique Rabuteau, Wayne Buckhanan, William Azaroff, Yves Van Landeghem

What the People Want

It's been fairly interesting watching what Facebook and Myspace have been doing to retain members / attract new members / increase overall usage of their sites now that social media seems to finally be reaching a peak. At least, if it hasn't peaked yet, it's growth is certainly slowing down.

This week marked two developments aimed at keeping social networking fresh and interesting. The first of these is the launch of Myspace Latino. Apparently, someone just told all of the major social networking sites that there are rather a lot of Latinos in America. Add to this the fact that they tend to be early adopters of new technology and use various social media much more often than the average consumer, and you have a pretty good reason for social networking sites to bend over backwards trying to reach them.

Myspace Latino is an attempt to create a bilingual community for it's 9.7 million latino users. The site features eight new communities focused on entertainment, fashion and celebrity, music, nightlife, soccer, events, and news. Several Hispanic and mainstream groups and media outlets, including the Spanish Broadcasting System, the Spanish version of Billboard, Gibson Guitars, McDonald's, and Sprint Nextel, have partnered with MySpace to deliver content and promote activities. For the launch of the new service, they're putting on a show, featuring Latino artists Tego Calderon, Circo, and Locos por Juana.

Facebook launched a Spanish-language version of it's site two months ago, so we'll have to see if this kind of community targeting catches on with consumers.

The second major development is the release of Facebook Chat. The new tool is essentially a messenger the likes of AIM that sits on the bottom of your browser and lets you talk to your Facebook friends in real time. Right now it's only open to Ivy League networks, but it will be slowly opening up to everyone soon enough. Sadly, unlike Myspace's big announcement, they don't seem to have rolled out the application with a giant concert. :-(

It seems to fit well into the Facebook brand: it's already entirely centered around communication with friends, and since you don't have to set up a buddy list or install anything, it could just lead to people keeping Facebook open all day long. It could also mean trouble for traditional chat clients, and offer competition for the AOL + Bebo team up that happened a while back (if AOL ever does anything with its latest acquisition, which, knowing AOL, it probably won't), and the relatively recent Myspace Messenger.

Stay tuned to see what these crazy sites do to stay relevant next!   

Mind Control?

Well, folks, there appears to be an entirely new form of advertising on the horizon that is going to solve all of our problems. It no longer matters that people don't watch television, listen to the radio, or read the newspaper. It doesn't even really matter that no one looks at banner ads online. All this is thanks to Prof. Olaf Prilo PHD from the Mind and Brain Institute of New South Wales and his new Trust Banners.

These amazing high frequency (90fps) banner ads "stimulate specific regions of the visual cortex (Visual area V5/MT) producing instant effects on consumers."

In fact, after seeing a Trust Banner:
        -  87.9% average increase of product desire in test subjects.
        -  76.4% switched brands after seeing a single TrustBanner
        -  63% purchased consumable products within 7 days.
        -  No Click / CTA required. Can be applied to any banner ad.

Be sure to check it out for more of the amazing details.

Happy April Fool's day, and thank you Avenue A Razorfish, for making my day a little brighter.

90's flashback

So, did you know that there are still retail companies out there that don’t have their products available for sale online? Because I had no idea. I thought that selling things online was such a basic Web 1.0, 1990’s concept, that it would be impossible for any national retailer to have missed that trend altogether and just decided that their randomly scattered “stores” would be enough to meet demand.

World, meet Express Fashion. It comes from a dark, pre-internet era where people have to take the time to physically drag their bodies away from a computer and into a brick and mortar “store” where piles upon piles of goods must be searched through for the right color, size, and style before they can be purchased.

As if this weren’t bad enough, their stores are not located conveniently enough for me. Back in the shopping paradise that is California, I never had this problem, but right now, I am in Ithaca, New York. For the 5.999 billion people in the world who have never heard of it, I believe I have finally found a place that can correctly be called “The middle of freaking nowhere”. Ithaca itself may be a bustling metropolis (by upstate New York standards), but it is surrounded on every side by approximately 50 miles of NOTHING. Possibly needless to say, there is not an Express “store” in Ithaca. (Despite the population of about 30 thousand college students, who would all love one.) The nearest “store” is in Syracuse, exactly 62.79 miles away.

My favorite pair of black pants got torn yesterday, and because they were such fabulously comfortable, stylish pants, that lasted me nearly two years, I would really really like to get another pair.

Thank you, Express, for making that entirely impossible.

*Update from Express:
Thank you for contacting Express, we are excited that you are interested in purchasing merchandise from our website.  What you are seeing online right now is phase 1 of our work to build you a website that will fulfill online sales.
The launch of the site will be Fall ’08 and will initially only ship merchandise within the continental U.S.
To be one of the first to know when we go live, visit email sign up at Expressfashion.com and submit your information.
Again, thank you for your interest in Express, we value your business.


*My response:
You should have had this up and running either before or shortly after Y2K. Still angry.

Third Time's a Charm

I'm way behind the ball on this one because well, I've been busy. But I'm sure a little continued buzz never hurt anything. The Age of Conversation bumrush is officially (finally) back on the calendar. The book has been made available to a wider audience through Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com, and since things have actually been worked out with Amazon, they won't be canceling this one at the last moment (we hope). To reiterate the point of the whole thing, bumrush the charts efforts have been attempted, to the best of my knowledge, three times before, all with great success. It works very well as a way to get people involved around a product, to create and enlarge a community, and at least for one day, to boost sales significantly. Essentially, it's a day-long event where everyone who was going to buy the book does it all on the same day to make the product's sales ranking increase much faster than it otherwise would, getting it more attention, and then more sales. It's fun to watch, and more fun to get involved with.

So, here are the details:

• Buy the book here on March 29 (THIS Saturday)

That's it! Plus, of course, anything that you can do to spread the word to make this a successful event is also good. I'm just glad to see that after two failed attempts this event is finally getting off the ground!

AOL is at it again...

As if to prove what I said about the company's entire business strategy yesterday, they have gone and bought another company, Beebo. Watch as this previously popular social networking site languishes into oblivion as AOL does absolutely nothing to either market the site, or integrate it in with it's brand as a whole. AKA: Userplane.

Desperate Company Uses Free Student Work: Eh, nothing new

So AOL, that company that is perhaps best known as the one that gave us Instant Messenger and truck-loads of wasted CD's, is going to hell in a hand basket. That's not really news, but according to today's NY Times, "Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, AOL’s parent company, acknowledged weakness in the business and said he was open to combining AOL with another company." Their entire business strategy at this point is to sell advertising on all of their extremely disjointed websites, by buying up and rolling together 7 different advertising companies that previously had nothing to do with each other. They are calling this random mash-up "Platform A." Randy Falco, the chief executive of AOL, says that The management changes were necessary to be able to move quickly. "After spending dearly to amass assets, the trick was to get them working together and integrated in a very meaningful way.”

The problem is, their strategy of just buying up random companies and hoping that it will all somehow work together is pretty much all that they have been doing since the 90's, and it hasn't been going very well for them. Anyone ever heard of AIM Pages? How about AIM Groups? Userplane? People Connection? The list goes on for about, well, forever. Every time something new and interesting comes out, such as social networking sites like Myspace, AOL's reaction is to buy another company, and then let it sit, just hoping that it will catch on. Now, AOL’s Web sites may attract 112 million visitors a month, but if you consider the sheer number of websites that they have, plus the fact that one pops up every time you open AIM, it's really not that impressive and is no indication that they have a healthy, thriving business on their hands.

The reason why this sad story caught my interest is because I (as part of a team of 22 senior marketing majors at Ithaca College) am participating in this years AAF National Student Advertising Competition, and the sponsor for the year happens to be none other than AOL. So while AOL employees hold "screaming matches" in their offices about how to get their company off the ground, hundreds of college students from around the country are busy trying to fix this mess (and don't get me wrong, despite screaming matches of our own, it's a lot of fun).

Look for our brilliant solutions this June, at the NSAC finals in Atlanta.

The Problem with Mobile Ads

...Everything.

My phone beeps at me - I've gotten a text message. 9 times out of 10, that will be my boyfriend saying something sweet, or a friend from home updating me on a new game release. Or...Carrie asking me if I have an orange... But no, this time it's an ad. I'm not 100% sure, but I may have just had to actually pay 10 cents for some jibberish text message that not only did I delete immediately on principle, but which I never read. I'll be annoyed at the world of advertising for the rest of the day. That's right, mobile advertisers - you have successfully ruined my day. And because of this, I never buy the product or service that you are physically shoving into my pocket, and you can be 100% assured that whatever you spent on getting my personal telephone number, writing the ad, and sending it has been utterly wasted. Congratulations.

I am very much not alone in my undiluted hatred of  having marketing messages sent to my phone. According to the honorable New York Times, about 13 percent of people said they they would be open to ads if they improve the mobile content available, while about 14 percent said they were open to ads as long as they were relevant to their interests, the survey found. So, a resounding 87% of people DO NOT want to see mobile advertising, even if it meant that it would improve the content available, and 86% of people don't want to see it even if it is relevant to their interests.

By the way - the ads that I have been receiving have absolutely nothing to do with my interests, and in no way improve my mobile content, as I don't use the internet on my phone. I don't have any statistics about how many people want to see ads that don't relate to their interests, and give them absolutely nothing in return, but I'm going to guess that it's somewhere down around 0%. When I'm watching television, I can accept the commercials, because they are sponsoring the program I'm watching. The same is true of online ads, for the most part. But these mobile ads are not bringing me anything - in fact, they are actually making me pay for them - and that's what is so unacceptable.

But does it matter that so few people want to see these things on their phones? No - of course not. Mobile ads are on the rise! About 23% of U.S. mobile phone users have seen advertising on their cell phones in the last 30 days, which is up by 38%! About 11% of people even responded to these ads. (89% did not.) The Times says Service providers such as AT&T Inc <T.N> and

Sprint Nextel Corp

<S.N> have long-discussed the concept of augmenting revenue with mobile phone ads and have been easing into the market slowly for fear of bombarding customers. Be prepared for bombardment in the coming months.

UNM2PNM Pre-Game

Last week, I promised details about an experiment of Joseph Jaffe's that I'm participating in. So, here it is:

Jaffe's second book, Join the Conversation was released last fall, and since then he has been promoting the book using the non-traditional New Marketing methods that he's been preaching about for years. The effort has gone through two stages. The first stage was a "Bum Rush the Charts" event done shortly after the book's release, in which Jaffe asked anyone and everyone who was planning to buy the book to do so on one day from Amazon.com, making the book's sales ranking soar for the duration of the event. The second stage is the one I'm getting involved with now. You can see Jaffe's comments on the whole thing here, but a brief summary of the whole thing is that he decided to give away 150 copies of the book to anyone who agreed to review it on their blog. I just recently got mine in the mail, and am reading it as hurriedly as I can (and enjoying it thoroughly).

As far as I'm concerned, it's great for everyone involved: the bloggers reviewing the book get both a free book and link love on Jaffe's blog which increases their traffic, and Jaffe gets 150 book reviews and a chance to prove that his new marketing method works. Awesome.

As of now, I believe all 150 books have been claimed, but you should definitely go and buy it, and join the Facebook group about the effort - it's a lot of fun to follow and get involved.

Traditional Media Beware...

Yesterday on The Huffington Post, former CNN producer Chez Pazienza had some interesting comments to make as to the loss of his job, and the trends being followed by the major news corporations today. Without going into too much detail (if you haven't, you really should read the article),the man was fired for having a personal blog, and has decided (for somewhat unrelated reasons) to speak out against network news.

Pazienza had this to say about the practices of the major networks:

"I watched the media in general do anything within reason to scare the hell out of the American public -- to convince people that they were about to be infected by the bird flu, poisoned by the food supply, or eaten by sharks. I marveled at our elevation of the death of Anna Nicole Smith to near-mythic status … and that's not even taking into account the 24/7 Vaudeville act over at Fox News. I watched The Daily Show laugh not at our mistakes but at our intentional absurdity."

But, well... I would hope that anyone reading this is smarter than to actually take anything on network television for "news".

The major topic of interest for me was the way CNN completely wrote off the power of bloggers.

Because he said it better than I could say it myself:

"[CNN] pays more lip-service to bloggers and their internet realm than any other mainstream media outlet, but in the end that's really all it is -- lip-service... As far as CNN (and to be fair, the mainstream TV press in general) believes, it still sits comfortably at the top of the food chain, unthreatened by any possibility of a major paradigm shift being brought to bear by a horde of little people with laptops and opinions. Although the big networks recognize the need to appeal to bloggers, they don't fear them -- and that means that they don't respect them."

Apparently, they were entirely unconcerned about the buzz that would be caused by their firing of a relatively popular blogger. Either they didn't realize that it would happen at all, or (maybe even worse), they thought that they were so far above it that it could simply be ignored. Now obviously, I wouldn't be concerned about me and my extensive readership of about 4 people, but there are thousands of bloggers out there who make a real impact on their communities, and the relationships that they have established with their readers translates into an accountability and believability that large corporations will probably never achieve.

This is the age where most educated people get their news from sources that are as far away from these networks as possible, and the fact that they seem to think they are still remotely relevant would almost be funny if it weren't so sad. If they are that concerned with retaining a market, they should have embraced the idea of a popular blogger in their midst, and tried to bring him into the fold. Or at the very least, they shouldn't have given him a reason to write this particular article. It's a kind of interesting example of how the world is moving on and leaving large corporations behind.