michael.cervieri.com » marketing

Calling Out QR Codes

Michael Cervieri — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 22:55:00 +0000

Why wouldn’t I just type in a Website address like a normal person?

Media Brands and the News

Michael Cervieri — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 17:58:10 +0000

The two researchers took a story about Greek public finances that appeared online on the Huffington Post and showed it to a test group of 700 readers in three forms: as an unlabeled piece published online, as an online piece published by the Huffington Post and as an online piece published by The Economist.

The scent of this rose depended very much on its name: When respondents believed they were reading an Economist story, they rated its quality at 6.9 on a scale of 10; when the same piece was attributed to the Huffington Post, it drew a score of 6.1; and when it had no label, it scored just 5.4.

soupsoup:

I’d be willing to bet that same piece shared in someone’s trusted social network would receive the highest score. I rarely go directly to Huffington Post (if at all) or The Economist directly, unless led there by someone to read a specific article, and 99% of the time I’m glad they did.

FJP: Very interesting look at how brands affect the way we perceive the news. We noted a similar study yesterday conducted by two PhD candidates at the University of Michigan. In it they look at Al Jazeera, and how viewers respond to news clips marked with the AJE brand versus how they respond when the brand is stripped or replaced by CNN International. Their conclusions are very similar to this study.

Originally posted on the Future Journalism Project.

What Do “Likes” Tell Us About the News

Michael Cervieri — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 17:04:00 +0000

Yahoo! researcher Yury Lifshits studied the Facebook “like” counts of the world’s top 45 news sources over a three month time period in order to see how they’re performing in terms of social engagement with their users.

Via Ediscope:

There are around 10 likes per 1000 pageviews (across several websites with public PV numbers). Decay of engagement is extremely sharp, with less than 20% likes happening after the first 24 hours…

..Stories about Facebook, Apple, Verizon, Groupon, future and infographics are universally popular across technology blogs. Articles about Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung, cloud computing, TV and search see much less engagement.

An interesting — and in our view positive —note comes at the beginning of the screencast. It’s not the frequency of publication that garners “likes”. Instead, it’s the quality of the piece.

Unfortunately, as noted, news stories appear to be highly disposable, basically drifting off into the digital ether after the first 24 hours:

Yahoo! News has the sharpest decay of user interest. Engadget articles have the longest lifespan. But even in this case, new content is only visible for 3 or 4 days.

Here are some tips Yury gives for engaging your audience:

Put significant effort in your top stories
Improve promotion of your best content
Improve your median story
Use both intuition and algorithms for demand analysis
Invest in social media optimization

Visit Ediscope for details on each of the above.

Run Time: 4:52.

Originally posted on the Future Journalism Project.

Blogs, SXSW and Disclosure

Michael Cervieri — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:02:44 +0000

The annual SXSW conference/festival is just around the corner with Austin gearing up for an influx of musicians, filmmakers, technologist, bloggers, press and the marketers that support them.

As has been the case, many brands are sponsoring bloggers to make their way to Texas to report on the event. This relationship, of course, requires openness and disclosure on the part of each side.

Via AdAge:

Ethical, professional and legal considerations come into play when there is an exchange of buzz for money, and could even hurt the credibility of some bloggers who want to be taken seriously. And then there is the matter of disclosure.

This year, Chevrolet is sending online video reporter Shira Lazar to be the official host for all Chevrolet SXSW content during 10 days of the event. That’s airfare and hotel accommodations — and some of the rooms can run as high as $500 a night. Also on Chevy’s payroll: Veronica Belmont, co-host of Revision 3’s “Tekzilla” and part of the automaker’s “Cruze-arati” roster of blogger-endorsers. She’ll be blogging, tweeting her 1.5 million followers and uploading video of her experiences at the festival as well as “chatting it up with other attendees and possibly even hosting webchats in the Volt Lounge,” Chevrolet said.

Chevrolet spokesman Matt Dickman said content creators are asked to “capture the spirit of the event.” Are they required to talk about Chevy cars such as the Cruze? “We don’t ask them to talk about Chevy unless it makes sense with what they’re doing — like interviewing a celebrity while they are driven to an event in a Chevy Cruze — and even then, the brand is in the background, but enabling that experience,” Mr. Dickman said. “Last year, for example, we covered the best tattoos, coolest dogs and the best shoes for SXSW as well as celebrity access and entertainment.” In addition to Ms. Lazar and Ms. Belmont, Steven Smith and Micah Jesse are sponsored by Chevrolet to cover music and film.

That’s the ethical side of the equation. There’s a legal side too. In 2009 the US Federal Trade Commission established new guidelines governing sponsorships and endorsements, be it from celebrities, ordinary citizens and bloggers alike.

A key passage runs like so:

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.

So, too those attending and reporting on what their attending: have a great time, and make sure you transparently disclose who foot the bill to get you there.

Originally posted on the Future Journalism Project.

The Other Fifty Percent – An Advertiser’s Dilemma

Michael Cervieri — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:42:06 +0000

A long-time advertising adage runs something like this: buy time on television and fifty percent of your budget is wasted. Which fifty? Who knows. But fifty percent it will be.

Sponsor

IAB coverage was made possible through the kind support of CPX Interactive.

The target is simply too broad. Selling men’s deodorant? Your ad spend just hit a considerable amount of women and adolescents. Selling womanly products? A bunch of men just switched channels.

This much is known. Television may be our greatest mass medium but it fails the advertiser specifically because it’s such a mass medium. Yes there are numbers in that buy. But do those numbers contain the specific demographic we hope to reach? Cross our fingers that perhaps so.

But next time you’re in a meeting room see how well the fingers crossed strategy goes down. When the dust settles and the abuse subsides, give us a call and we’ll start thinking strategy, round two.

Television people know this. No matter how segmented our thousand digital channels may be, they’re never quite segmented enough for the ad buyer. There are simply too many unknown people channel surfing on the other side of the tube.

Avner Ronen knows this too. The founder and CEO of Boxee, creators of the open source, “Internet TV” media center, might seem an unlikely savior for the small screen industry and what ails it but savior they might be.

“One of the worst things that happened to advertising on TV is DVR,” he says in the video above, referring to the increasing American propensity to time shift television viewing by recording shows.

As Nielsen reported last year:

“Must See TV” doesn’t mean that people are gathering around their TV anymore during primetime on a Thursday night. Appointment viewing is now when the viewer wants to watch it thanks to DVRs. As of March 2009, 30.6 percent of households in Nielsen’s National People Meter Panel have a DVR, up significantly from just 12.3 percent in January 2007.
A key factor to this expansion is the integration of DVRs into cable and DBS set top boxes: 55 percent of DVR homes had it as part of their cable box and 40 percent had a DVR within their DBS box. Just 5 percent had a standalone DVR. And as households recognize the convenience DVR offers, a growing number are becoming multi-DVR households. 25 percent of homes had two, while 5 percent had three or more.

Take a step back and you realize that not only will an advertiser pay for an audience that might not care for its wares, but those that record programs might skip over the commercials entirely.

Again, we know this but Ronen thinks Internet TV could change it. DVR, he believes, could become obsolete once programming enters the cloud. The point here is why would people record if the programming is always there. Then, if and when delivered through a Boxee type application through the Internet, advertisers can get the measurement details they crave.

“You get the benefits of targeting and measurement and accountability that you have on the Internet and that should be great news for the industry,” Ronen believes.

Content consumer stand to benefit too. If traditional television is a one to many broadcast medium with recipients passive consumers of advertisements, Internet TV turns us into active participants in that process.

Hulu’s been experimenting with this model, asking viewers to decide what type of advertising they’d like to see before watching clips and shows. This will increasingly become the norm and with active audience participation and ownership, the idea is there will be greater recall rates and engagement with actual brand advertising.

Boxee’s currently innovating. They plan on releasing a payment platform in the second quarter of this year. Good news for the networks and other publishers that are looking for monetization strategies.

“When people value content they will pay for it,” says Ronen.

For Boxee skeptics, Internet engagement, measurement and discernible metrics are certainly a better strategy than fingers crossed on a lost fifty percent.

About Aardvark and the Synaptic Web

This article originally appeared on ScribeMedia.org.

Please visit the original to rant, rave or otherwise discuss.

Possibly Related Posts

Branding Nations Through Search Results

Michael Cervieri — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:30:22 +0000

Digital reputation is something individuals and organizations face every time a search on their name is conducted. With split second perceptions, users read through a page or two of results and decide whether the person or brand is good, bad or irrelevant.

Managing reputation can be tricky. Take a colleague of mine. As far as I know — and I know him pretty well — he’s a capable, intelligent and amiable fellow. Oh, and law abiding too. Yes, law abiding.

Why do I say that? Because if you search on the Google for him your second result will be for a convict with his exact same name. It’s come up when dealing with clients and potential employers. This usually happens after an awkward pause and goes something like this: “So, um, I hate to bring this up, um, but, ah… ah… you ever spend time in jail?”

No he hasn’t. And when explained there’s usually a laugh followed perhaps by another awkward silence.

Search “Colombia” and Ms. Colombia greets you.

I bring all this up because of a conversation this morning with my cousin. He wants to visit Colombia. He mentioned that when he did a search on the country, one of the first image results is of beautiful women. Sure enough, here it is.

This got me thinking. Usually when doing image searches for countries the first results are maps and flags. But what does the first results with people in it say about national character? How does it brand the country.

Brand Colombia: sultry.

Let’s try Iran. It’s in the news. The world’s talking about it non-stop. Negotiations go on in the UN Security Council to figure out how to halt the nation’s nuclear ambitions.

Here are the first humans we get via an “Iran” Google image search.

Iran’s digital reputation? Less Good.

Obviously not so good.

My cousin and I went back and forth on this for a while. We’d select a country and just like that, brand image in a search result.

Definite loser of the bunch after Iran is Mugabe’s Zimbabwe below.

Not only are there no maps and flags, the first result is just a disgusting abuse showing the horror of torture. The second image? A baton wielding cop chasing a civilian.

It’s interesting to watch how countries are starting to focus on digital diplomacy.

For better or for worse, many are coming to understand that much rests on actual digital reputation. That is, what topics trend in Twitter, what search results are seen on YouTube and Google.

Mugabe’s World of Nightmare

Better, what search results are buried and mostly forgotten.

National Public Radio recently had a story about Israel’s “pre-emptive PR” strategies for dealing in the Middle East.

Part of the country’s strategy to improve its image in the diplomatic world is to engage the social media world. This was most famously pursued during and after Gaza but diplomacy and reputation is a 24 hour a day, year-round affair.

The Israelis are keenly aware of this.

From All Things Considered:

Noam Lemelshtrich, dean of communications at IDC Herzliya, the university that hosted the conference, says Israel should be using new media — such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube — to get its message across to a wider audience.

“I think we are handling this very, very poorly,” Lemelshtrich says. “It’s not being handled by professionals, it’s being handled by politicians. But fortunately, the Internet and social networks allow the people of Israel, who are much better than their government, to tell their stories to friendly crowds across the world in the United States and in Europe. So I am optimistic, because the new social medium allows us to bypass the government.”

When Tony Blair became Prime Minister he famously sought to rebrand dour England. The attempt was made to make Britain “cool”.

Today, the social Web takes that out of government hands and places it in our search results.

Update

Due to a personal reasons, I’d be remiss not to post the first anthropomorphic image when searching “Russia”. Not quite sure how to interpret this but here goes.

Good News: Things are Less Bad

Michael Cervieri — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:50:46 +0000

the|G| via Creative Commons/Flickr.

The Association of National Advertisers released their latest poll today on how economic conditions are affecting advertising and marketing dollars.

The silver lining findings: things suck, but not quite as much as they did six and twelve months ago. The poll, which surveys ANA members, has been conducted every six months for the past two years.

“Today, 83% of the respondents indicate they are identifying cost savings and reductions in their current marketing and advertising efforts,” the report reads. “While that represents a high percentage of respondents, this is improved from six months ago (87%), one year ago (93%), and eighteen months ago (87%).”

Calling savings and reductions the “new normal,” the ANA believes reductions will continue if and when the economy improves. Currently, over 23 percent of the survey’s respondents say they expect to reduce their marketing budget by 11-20 percent. Another 29 percent believe they’ll be asked to make a 10 percent reduction.

“The quest for cost saving and reductions is here to stay and will be with us through both good and bad times,” says Bill Duggan, ANA Executive Vice President. “Just because the economy is improving doesn’t mean that clients won’t continue to press for such reductions. Pressure on agencies seems to be particularly brutal as marketers look for agencies to reduce internal costs as well as reduce the compensation marketers pay to them.”

Cost cutting includes internal mandates such as hiring and salary freezes but, significantly, a majority of respondents say they will reduce their overall advertising media and production budgets.

Yay for the new normal.

A copy of the report can be downloaded here.

Apple and the Art of the Media Leak

Michael Cervieri — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:01:58 +0000

It’s been months now that speculation about Apple’s new tablet hit the Web. With a thousand fanboys and their associated blogs trying to suss out any bit of information about if, when, where and how the product might launch, the company has forward looking gadget hounds in a tizzy.

Google “iTablet” and you get a neat 634,000 results. Try the more generic “Mac Tablet” and you get 19 million more. It’s the type of hype money simply can’t buy. But borrow from the pre-release marketing strategies of movie studios and you can get it done.

Over on Mac Observer, former Apple Marketing Manager John Martellaro tells us how he used to do it: keep it quiet, keep it sneaky, no emails and maintain plausible deniability for both the company and the publication that’s leaking it.

The communication is always done in person or on the phone. Never via e-mail. That’s so that if there’s ever any dispute about what transpired, there’s no paper trail to contradict either party’s version of the story. Both sides can maintain plausible deniability and simply claim a misunderstanding. That protects Apple and the publication.

In the case of yesterday’s story, Walt Mossberg was bypassed so that Mr. Mossberg would remain above the fray, above reproach. Also, two journalists at the WSJ were involved. That way, each one could point the finger at the other and claim, “I thought he told me to run with this story! Sorry.”

Twitter’s currently in a huff that such things happen. The issue is that with wink and nudge, news organizations are in bed with Apple. It’s a legitimate gripe but more interesting right now is how Apple plants the viral seeds to create an absolute need for whatever product they are (or are not) rolling out at their January 26 event (if it’s happening at all).

The strategy is one we’ve seen used by the movie studios. Cloverfield comes to mind. The pre-release tidbits leaking across the Web created a feeding frenzy of early fans trying to piece together the plot. It became a giant viral treasure hunt that spread from movie sites to sports sites and beyond. Blair Witch accomplished the same remarkable feat over a decade ago.

The trick now is living up to the hype. Fans are amped. Critics are ready to pounce. The tablet has become a mythical creation worthy of a name (”iSlate”) and pseudo renderings created by publications to demonstrate what it would/could/should be.

After so much foreplay, the company has to deliver or the collective let down will suck the wind out of whatever it does for the rest of the year.

Semantics Matter. Stop Calling Us Consumers.

Michael Cervieri — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:20:22 +0000

Why do some organizations struggle with their social media strategy? Because they have the wrong attitude and demeanor going into it.

Two recent examples:

NY Times has their first social media editor. She started the other day and Twitted her first Tweet: how can @nytimes use twitter.

I wrote back, saying, change ‘use’ to ‘participate’ and you’re halfway there.

It’s a matter of perspective, demeanor and semantics. If Twitter is chattered conversation you need to treat it as such. If you approached a social gathering like a party and said, how am I going to use this situation, and worse, articulated it and acted like it, you’d come off as abrasive and crude.

This isn’t to say I think the Times is abrasive or crude. I think they’re doing very progressive things online and people like @palafo are fun to follow.

About 2 months ago I was filming a brand strategy and market research gathering. It was a closed, invite only affair of very smart, highly placed people at some of our well known advertising, marketing and branding organizations.

Despite this, their language still displayed blind spots in their thinking. They kept talking about and referring to Consumer Generated Content, how to harness CGC and how to interact and participate with CGC. The impulse, of course, is right. The semantics are wrong.

Again, language is important, it exposes prejudices and sensibilities. These are not ‘consumers’ we’re dealing with except in the crudest of distinctions. They are people and producers and creators and thinkers. As such they consume, but they are many things before they are Consumers.

At worst, the marketing/advertising community should drop the pretension and do like the rest of us and call it User Generated Content. At best, we need to come up with an entirely new name that encompasses the range and breadth and humanity that we see across this medium.

And then, maybe, these clumsy organizations will be ready to engage.

The video above is a preview from that event which — despite my nitpicking — was quite good. We’ll be releasing individual talks from it over the next few weeks.

Following the Herd

Michael Cervieri — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:13:04 +0000

When the iPod came to market in 2001, technophiles waxed rhapsodic and it quickly became the must-have gadget among the geek chic.

Sales, of course, didn’t stop there. The pure lustiness of it all catapulted the device to iconic status with the iPod’s white headphones doing for consumer electronics what the Nike swoosh did for sneakers.

But what actually happened that brought the iPod to global status symbol while earlier MP3 players like the Diamond Rio ended up in the historical dust bin?

Mark Earls writes in Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature that traditional marketers completely misunderstood the mechanics of mass behavior. Instead of a direct relationship between brand and individual, our instinct is to look at what others around us are doing, using and possessing, and emulating that behavior.

Think the ubiquity of text messaging, the explosion of the Internet itself and the crowding of social networking sites: all examples of activities that entered daily activity not so much because of top down marketing, but because each lubricated the social interaction of those among us.

In the video above, John Kearon, Chief Juicer of market research firm BrainJuicer, and Earls discuss specific examples of this phenomenon, how the advertising and marketing industry has changed over the years, and what all this means for products, brands and those that create and market them.