Adver-Whatever

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.

Dealing with people who don't care

After two weeks of stress and the worst weather imaginable, I'm finally back. Sorry about the unexpected hiatus. So - to what I was going to say today:

"The EXPECTATION ECONOMY is an economy inhabited by experienced, well-informed consumers from Canada to South Korea who have a long list of high expectations that they apply to each and every good, service and experience on offer.

Their expectations are based on years of self-training in hyperconsumption, and on the biblical flood of new-style, readily available information sources, curators and BS filters. Which all help them track down and expect not just basic standards of quality, but the 'best of the best'."

The above is a quote from this months  trend briefing from TrendWatching.com. Apparently, someone else has attempted to dig into the inner core mentality of my generation. (Well, not only my generation, but they always seem to be very focused on what the Gen-Y-er's are doing. BTW - I hate the term Generation Y - they really couldn't come up with a better name for us? Just because we came after Generation X? And I don't like the term "Millenials" either - I was born in the 80's - I lived more than half my life so far in the last millennium, so I don't want to be dumped in with a group who never saw or don't remember the 20th century. Please think of something else to call us. Thank you for bearing with my generation rant.)

Fine - so we'll go with it. The article basically talks about how we as consumers have set impossibly high standards for every product or service available, and get bored and irritated with anyone or anything that doesn't live up to those standards. In addition, all new websites are dedicated to nothing more than making those standards higher.

It also states that we don't care what industry the standards were set in. For example: “Tomboy Trades, a Canadian start-up aimed at DIY for women, has developed steel-toe boots in pink, green, blue and red. Matching tool belts, safety glasses and hard hats soon followed, as did retail partnerships with Home Depot and Zellers, a Canadian department store. Expectations being set here? Female versions of everything and anything!”

It is supposed to serve as a warning for companies who otherwise might not be keeping up – assuming any of them actually care – and it’s advice that should be carefully considered. I’ve been reading Joeseph Jaffe’s latest book, Join the Conversation (more on that to come), and in it, he talks about the importance of brands to form actual, meaningful relationships with their customers. He’s been busy proving that it can be done by using these methods to promote the book.

However, what this article comes back to is that if your product isn’t living up to people’s high expectations, then it won’t be long before people won’t want to have a conversation with you. Consumers are happy to comment on brands that have are already satisfying them, and they will even throw comments toward brands that are unforgivably terrible.  But a complete lack of loyalty and general feeling of apathy toward the vast majority of mediocre brands leads to a complete lack of attention.

Figure out what people want – what we really want – and then we’ll start giving you a chance to talk to us. But you might want to hurry, because what we want will likely change tomorrow.

The Obligitory Super-Bowl Post

I thought I should hold off on saying anything about the Super-Bowl until I actually had something to say. So I did a little experiment - I watched the game like I normally would (well, suffered through the game is a more accurate description of what I did), with friends talking all through the most important parts (the commercials), and tried to see which ones I actually remembered the following morning. The following morning has now arrived in all of its cold and snowy glory, so here I go:

1. The extremely weird car commercial in the beginning about an old man waking up in his bed covered in mud next to the front of an old car - I think it was for Audi?
2. The people falling asleep - Diet Pepsi Max.
3. The giant birds - FedEx.
4. The talking stain - Tide something-or-other.
5. The lizards dancing to "Thriller" - Sobe Smart Water.
6. Shaq in a horse race - ...some drink at the end, I think - too busy watching Shaq on a horse.
7. Stewie and Underdog blimps fighting for a bottle of Coke - Coke.
8. The one that opened with Marilyn Monroe, and thereby immediately won my heart - Sunsilk.
9. The talking baby - eTrade
10. Victoria's Secret
11. Breathing Fire / Flying - Budlight
12. Man attacked by a giant mouse? - Doritos
13. Danika Patrick - Go Daddy
14. Girl singing - Doritos

(After watching them again on Myspace, I found that the first one was for an Audi R8 and number 6 was for Vitamin Water, of all things.)

I have proof that at least two of them worked - at least on some people. My dad reported that after the game he went to the Doritos site because he liked the Kina Grannis song, and wanted to see what else she had done. Also, after the Go Daddy commercial, two of his friends rushed to the computer so quickly to see Danika Patrick's "exposure" that one of them ended up with a bloody nose. Wonderful.

Over-all, though, I was really disappointed this year. I remembered several more than I thought I would, and I know that none of my roommates remembered more than 3 or 4 of them (though I'm sure if prompted to think about it, they could probably have come up with a few more). There were a few good spots that I enjoyed, but no great ones - not a single ad that really stood out and made a big impression. The consensus among most of the people that I have talked to seems to be that this year was an all-time low. In fact, the thing that I enjoyed the most in the whole 4 hours of misery was the terminator robot coming out and fighting the Super-Bowl mascot robot every once in a while at the bottom of the screen.

Come on, guys - If you're going to spend close to 3 million dollars just to place an ad, you'd think you'd take the time to make it good. What a waste. The next time I am forced to sit and watch FOUR BLOODY HOURS of large men knocking each other over, there had better be something that stands out and keeps me entertained in between.