Fizz from ConsumerPop

Mobile, Search and Product Placement

Each of these continues to grow in either practice or importance. I always sit up and take notice when others agree with my perspective and so allow me to share with you a few affirmations I've noticed of late of my focus on two of the three.

On the mobile front I'm no savant when it comes to noticing that the new Google Phone, the Nexus One, screams that Google is all about seeing mobile as the future. Both Google and Apple have purchased mobile ad companies recently which only reinforces what I (and many others) have been seeing and saying for years now:

Here's my prediction. I think it's all about mobile. It's about making mobile faster, easier, smaller, more powerful. It's about carrying the Internet in your pocket.

Virginia DeBolt at BlogHer: Voice Apps: Have You Talked *To* Your Phone Yet?

Personally, I saw our mobile everything-on-our-phones future by observing my niece. So let me amend my previous statement. Mobile and children are our future.

As is product placement. Amanda Congdon brought the idea up in the panel we held on the future of television in a digital world at new comm forum a couple years ago and ever since it has become increasingly evident. latest data point comes from return of the show Chuck.

Ultimately, Subway may have saved “Chuck” when it struck a sponsorship deal for the show’s third season, helping to offset the hundreds of thousands of dollars that producers agreed to cut from their per-episode budgets. (As they did last season, Subway sandwiches and stores will turn up in logical places in Chuck’s life, like the mall where he works.) Dave Itzkoff at The New York Times Pulling Out All the Stops to Rescue a TV Hero

I'm certain that as video entertainment shifts to the web that product placement will grow as a key method of financing production costs for all forms of television whether it be delivered via broadcast, cable or internet allowing advertising outside the show to do less of the heavy lifting and deliver profits.

G.E. and Comcast Strike a Deal for NBC: What It Could Mean for the Future of TV and the Internet

The General Electric Company has agreed to sell a controlling stake in NBC Universal to cable giant Comcast. Comcast will own 51% of a new joint venture with G.E. retaining 49%.

While rumors of the pending deal have been swirling for months, the new venture still faces a regulatory confirmation process that deal watchers estimate will take anywhere from 9 to 18 months to complete.

Although what new media landscape might emerge from this deal is, at this time, speculative, Comcast has created a microsite about the acquisition and Chairman and CEO, Brian L. Roberts, is blogging about the announcement.

The desire to own a media content creation company is not new for Comcast. In 2004 Comcast attempted a hostile takeover of Disney that ultimately failed.

Comcast's interest in this area is not difficult to discern. Television and media watchers like myself have long seen some writing on the wall: winners in the new world will be the ones that can deliver any and all content to viewers on the device and at the time of their choosing.

Several solutions have been developing but none have been completely satisfactory. Comcast has developed its "On-Demand" service, Netflix has partnered with device makers in order to stream content directly to televisions, Apple makes its Apple TV box and using iTunes you can purchase television shows to download to your iPod, DVRs like TiVo allow time shifting of recorded shows, sites like Hulu and Clicker aggregate television content to facilitate one-stop online viewing of free over-the-air and cable television without the subscription or the television set, and television manufacturers are working on developing internet enabled televisions that will cut out the service provider and device middlemen.

However content creators still hold some important cards in this poker game for the future. Mailing physical DVDs is not the future and no company is more aware of this than Netflix (Full disclosure: I am a former employee of Netflix). That's why they've been developing their on-demand streaming services and what allows them to lead in this arena is the existing relationships they have with studios, from their original DVD-rentals-by-mail business, with whom they must negotiate to get the rights to stream their content.

Each new change in technology requires a new round of standards, permissions and deals to be made. As both the content creator (Universal Studios, NBC Television and the plethora of cable channels NBC and Comcast each own) and deliverer (Comcast's cable and internet services) Comcast positions itself to better take advantage of an ability to provide whatever consumers want, wherever they gravitate as broadcast TV, DVD and other media models rapidly decline. If they could manage to acquire a mobile phone service provider and device manufacturer, Comcast could completely dominate where I think we are headed: i.e., everything must be accessible via a handheld device like a cell phone. And in negotiation with themselves they can not only better control the process but profit from it as well.

BlogHer co-founder and CEO, Lisa Stone, sees the potential for an exciting future with the new Comcast:

Full disclosure: GE/NBCU are investors in BlogHer through the Peacock Equity Fund. But that doesn't change my opinion that, from the outside, the synergy of media assets between NBCU and Comcast is pretty exciting. The joint venture will be a video powerhouse immediately, but it seems to me that the sleeper opportunity is digital. Just imagine what one could accomplish for women online with the multimedia and .com assets of E! and DailyCandy to iVillage, BravoTV, and Oxygen, not to mention MSNBC and CNBC.com.

No crystal ball is without some clouds in the picture, however. The merger of AOL and Time Warner in an effort to dominate the future media world provides an important cautionary tale. Nevertheless it seems to make smart business sense for both Comcast and G.E.. The potential for monopoly power, however, frightens a number of observers, especially supporters of net neutrality principles who are particularly concerned given Comcast's previous troubles with the FCC over their perceived attempts to throttle the internet and to limit and control and, some believe, ultimately tier access.

As a keen observer of television (content and hardware) and opiner on its digital future (delivery, consumption and business models), I will be watching this deal and how the changes it ultimately will bring about play out. What possibilities do you see? Are you concerned about regulatory, monopoly or net neutrality issues? What opportunities could this deal create for women online?

They Lost, We Won and Other Lessons from the CMO Summit

Last week I attended the excellent CMO Summit put on by Aberdeen. It was an terrific opportunity to learn how to be a better marketer and even brush up on my statistics.

I took away insights from each of the presentations but my favorite was from Michael Williams, VP Marketing for the San Francisco 49ers. The whole presentation was, in internet-speak, full of win, but the insight that has really stuck with me was that when fans talk about a game the next day, if their team won fans will say "we won!" However, if their team loses they'll say "they lost."  How do you connect so deeply with your consumers that they see themselves as a "we" and not your brand as a "they?" And there is no reason why any brand cannot be a "we" brand. I feel that way about my razor (the Schick Intuition) of which I am an unabashed raving fan.

Also, an aside, if you need a speaker to talk about marketing, branding, managing competing organizational goals and a variety of different challenges and opportunities, and you can persuade Michael to join you, you won't regret it. I honestly had no idea professional football marketing could be so relevant and compelling.

Another excellent insight came from Matt Smith, VP Marketing Services for Best Buy. Matt talked about Best Buy's "Twelpforce" on twitter. The interesting aspect of the Twelpforce is that, other than basic guidelines, Best Buy employees are empowered to be a part of the force and provide customer service. This seems to be very much in line with Best Buy's employee-trust centered Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE). Seeing companies approach social media and use it in a way that is consistent with company values provides smart case studies.

Burt's Bees CMO, Mike Indursky, gave us another fantastic example of leveraging company values to guide social media use. When Clorox bought Burt's Bees there was a lot of fear expressed in the blogosphere that Burt's Bees would lose their green and natural standards once a bleach company was running the show. Mike described how Burt's Bees smartly engaged skeptical bloggers while maintaining and enforcing their core values. Great learning.

Sylvia Reynolds, CMO of Wells Fargo, which has long been a leader in innovating consumer-facing social media use among large companies, especially heavily regulated companies, talked about pro bono marketing and other professional services  work Wells Fargo employees do with the Taproot Foundation. In the course of her talk she mentioned an eye-popping statistic: 1 in 500 Americans work for Wells Fargo. I tweeted those numbers. Several people re-tweeted it. The next day, Aberdeen President, Andrew Boyd saw the tweets because I used the #CMOSummit hashtag. He (kindly without naming me) pointed out the tweets propagated through social media and will live on. Andrew made a great observation: of course the proper statistic would be 1 in 500 working Americans. Still a wow for me but a very different number. In addition to remembering to be precise in statistics, it provides an important reminder about how social media can quickly and easily share and spread information that shouldn't always be taken at face value.

Marketers vs Bloggers: Why We All Need To Learn To Be Bilingual

Recently I read two posts that neatly illustrated just how much bloggers and marketers don't get about each other. One was written by and for marketers in an effort to help marketers better understand bloggers, how we think, how to approach us and how to market to social media communities. The other was written by bloggers to explain how marketers are getting their approaches to bloggers and social media communities wrong and how marketers could do better.

Both were cringe worthy reading. Marketers don't get bloggers and bloggers don't get marketers. Neither speaks the others' language, understands the others' process nor the others' goals. What seems obvious to me is that if marketers are to grasp how to successfully add social media tools to our marketing mix, bilingual translators are needed and we are in short (but growing) supply.

I am purposefully not linking to either post because I don't wish to single the authors out for criticism. The points made in their posts are not unique but reading them back-to-back helped crystallize my line of thought in this post, so let me tell you a bit more about what the marketers and bloggers are thinking.

1. The Marketers:

I've long lost count of the number of pixels that have formed to express how badly marketers, and the PR function in particular, have gone about pitching to, working with and attempting to partner with bloggers and social media communities. A post from a well known, well respected media outlet did a good job of clearly articulating the need to get past the models of cluelessly sending press releases, offering interviews and product samples. They pointed out why bloggers are not the same as newspaper journalists or magazine editors and why it is important to modify your approach. However, they still managed to make the same fundamental error of insight that most marketers who don't grok blogging and communities make; i.e., they did not move past the medium to understand the varying motivations of bloggers and the dynamics of communities.

Bloggers are not a monolith. People do not read, join networks or participate in communities for the same reasons or with the same goals. The advice that sending a press release will likely be received differently and, likely negatively, by bloggers is a step forward but still reveals just how much the authors don't know.

Sites like TechCrunch or Mashable could be considered blogs. Also there are individual bloggers who mine similar territory. However, what those sites do is vastly different than a personal blogger who writes about her life. Bloggers like the former are more akin to newsites and sending press releases or offering product for review might make sense. A blogger who develops a blog that functions not unlike a beauty or women's service magazine might enjoy and appreciate being approached like a magazine editors because it serves her mission and expectations she's set for her reader community.

Many personal bloggers write of and for themselves. They don't exist nor are they set up to do your marketing for you. They don't hunger for "content ideas." For many, finding the time and sometimes the motivation to write about the many ideas swirling in their head is the much bigger problem. That however does not mean that they are unapproachable. Rather it means that you need to understand the different types of bloggers as well as their different goals, motivations and readerships. And that is what is missing from the marketer perspective and why bloggers (and folks on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc...) remain frustrated and often hostile to so many marketers.

2. The Bloggers:

This time the post was from a well known, well respected group blogging site. The authors pointed out what they perceived as ineffective, even offensive marketing efforts from large companies to bloggers and social media communities. As is often the case in these broad missives and dismissals (vs. individual bloggers calling out specific egregious behavior from a marketer they've experience directly) is that it reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of how consumer marketing, from both big and small companies, works.

It is fine to be outraged by the message you hear. It is important and worthwhile for marketers to hear your reactions and the lenses through which you are filtering your messages. However, I have noticed a trend from bloggers to believe that because they understand their own experience and values that they know how to teach marketers how to do their jobs. And that attitude was in full effect in this post.

What is disturbing about this trend is that more than a few bloggers think that because they blog they not only know how companies should market and that companies should therefore listen to them and that they should be paid as consultants to teach companies how to market. The sad and frustrating thing about this trend is not only the mistaken hubris on the part of bloggers, but that some companies out of fear of missing the social media marketing train and/or ignorance of the blogging and social media universe, actually entertain and engage this advice.

In the long run it will only be bad for marketers, bloggers and social media communities.

3. The Bilingual Translators:

For bloggers who desire to engage with marketing and PR representatives, it is important that if you do not have a background in and understanding of marketing from a company and business perspective, your experience as a blogger, consumer and recipient of clueless pitches does not qualify you as a social media guru nor as a marketing consultant. If you seek for companies to hire you for your expertise and you offer ill-informed, bad advice it is not only bad for companies but bad for you and your fellow bloggers in the long run.

However, this is the smaller problem by far. What is more important is that companies get help from people who really understand using social media tools.

I don't mean that companies should pursue the rather clueless efforts to hire college-age digital natives who have a blog and just looooove to update their Facebook status every hour and have thousands of followers on twitter as I see with alarming frequency (oh and pay them nothing as an intern because they get to learn marketing). The recent Goode Job search and initial Best Buy hiring requirements debacles show that companies, get that they need to develop understanding and expertise around social media but don't know what to look for. In Murphy-Goode's case they disregarded the results of the popularity contest they promoted and were more concerned with marketing credentials which aren't often the basis for winning popularity contests. In the case of Best Buy, they got called out by marketing professionals who rightly questioned how having 250 minimum followers on Twitter transformed a graduate degree into social media marketing expertise. To Best Buy's credit they listened and refined their approach.

In fact, Best Buy's new job posting for Sr. Manager of Emerging Media provides good guidance for the kind of in-house expertise most companies, especially larger companies that engage in consumer-focused marketing, need to develop. There need to be resources in companies who have both an understanding of classical, proven effective marketing techniques and meaningful, relevant experience in the social media space.

And I believe companies need to have that expertise, those bilingual translators who speak both blogger and marketer, in-house. Although companies often work with outside agencies to execute and implement marketing efforts such as advertising and PR, they still have internal departments and deep knowledge of how to plan and use those tools as well as how to measure results and adjust efforts accordingly. Just as companies don't hire PR or advertising agencies without having some basis for determining the agency's qualifications and the desirability of campaigns they propose and then evaluating their effectiveness, companies need to be prepared to apply those same standards to social media marketing proposals and efforts from outside agencies. Also it is increasingly important that marketers become fluent in these languages and that they <i>get</i> the social mediasphere. Having in-house expertise will help them develop that fluency and deep understanding so that digital/emerging/social media marketing becomes part of the tool box of every good, well-rounded marketer.

The best news is that bilingual translators exist. We are out here and valuable collaborators continue to emerge. Plus, as marketers work with the new tools they will build not just expertise but best practices. I'm not going to name names here just because I'll miss too many but if you have questions, feel free to contact me and I'm happy to discuss my services or point you to who I believe some of the companies, practitioners, potential hires, PR, advertising or other agencies out there are that can speak both languages.

I firmly believe that best practices will really be established when proven marketing techniques meet the exuberant frontier of passionate expression and communities. Let's not ignore or fail to understand one or privilege the other. 

Bonus Reading:

Two posts from a marketer perspective emerging from the 2009 BlogHer Conference

Jeremy Pepper at POP! PR Jots: Don't be THAT PR person at BlogHer (Or Any Event)

Annie Heckenberger at Social Media Is The New Black: Let's talk about Blogher '09

Could Alice.com Be Your New Shopping BFF?

When I first heard about the new e-commerce site, Alice.com, I scoffed. Fresh Direct in the New York City area is once again growing after suffering some setbacks. And Peapod and Amazon show some signs of success and growth in their grocery delivery business. But Alice.com is being pitched as the hottest new delivery site and service, in part because it is both Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), i.e., stuff you buy at the grocery store, manufacturer friendly and consumer friendly.

For CPG companies, Alice.com offers a way to dip their toes back into the waters of selling directly to consumers and bypassing retailers who increasingly compete with them by offering plain-wrap-no-more, attractively packaged, directly competitive private label products.

For consumers, negotiated prices, free shipping and built-in coupons combined with reminders to re-order your favorites promises to help ensure that you will never run out of toilet paper or other essentials ever again. Plus they have several bloggy and social media community features which help Alice really feel like a trusted friend you can get to know.

Part of my initial scoffing was because Alice.com doesn't eliminate the need to go to the grocery store for perishible items. Delivery service makes more sense to me in someplace like Manhattan where there are not ginormous sprawling suburban grocery stores, Walmart Superstores and Super Targets where you can fill all your needs at once from tomatoes to toothpaste. But, if you're still going to have to go to the grocery store anyway, why would you spend the time filling up your cart both in person and virtually?

Then I started reading bloggers writing about Alice.com and I was reminded of why, when you are building or marketing a business, you always do your homework and research because often, you are not the customer. And, despite my CPG smarts, I am not the customer here.

Kristen at Cool Mom Picks, however, is the customer. She signed up to be a beta tester for the site and fell in love. One reason?

Plus, you get it all delivered right to your doorstep. That's got to be at least one less grocery store tantrum a month.

I don't have to wrangle kids plus I work from home and have a flexible schedule. Although it is still hard sometimes for me to get away from the computer to do my grocery shopping I don't have anyone else to shop with or around. If all you have to run into the store for is a gallon of milk and a pound of apples and the rest can be delivered, I bet it would be a useful service for families of more than one.

And from the perspective of CPG manufacturers, I think the era of worrying about annoying retail partners by bypassing them and pursuing direct sales is long past.  And the opportunity to compete with private label while potentially delighting consumers is an opportunity worth testing. I appreciate hearing bloggers describe how they are finding Alice.com useful but it will interesting to watch how adoption and use develops.

What do you think? Does Alice.com seem like a service that is opening a useful door to manufacturers? As a shopper is it something that seems like it would be a helpful tool?

Selling Content in a Free World

Newspapers are on a long, sad death spiral. The rise of the Kindle leads reactionary publishers to eye the failed journey of the music business as a model for how to throw tantrums and demand protection for an existing business model on their way to oblivion.

I don't have the answer but I suspect it lies in rethinking what is advertising and what is value people are willing to pay for. I was thinking about music videos which started out as advertising for recordings. Although music videos can be useful tools in selling music, they no longer do much for selling recordings. In this digital era, recordings now serve as advertisements for live concerts in many cases. Recordings can be pirated, experiences cannot.

Publishers, like record companies, seem fixated on being paid for developing and packaging content. Fair or not, consumers have made it pretty clear that they don't see value in that proposition and are no longer willing to pay for it. Therefore, content creators and publishers need to figure out what their content and value-added production and packaging can sell.

iTunes did a great job for years of selling iPods until Amazon figured out how to sell iPods, any other MP3 player, content and Amazon itself much as they are doing with the Kindle. Now apps sell iPods and iPhones and iPhones sell AT&T cell phone service. Cell phone service, other than at the margins, is equally unpleasant regardless of which carrier you choose. There is not much to differentiate carriers other than price for the majority of consumers. Except if you want an iPhone.

Eric Pfanner at The New York Times is musing along the same lines: Pay Walls Alone Won't Save Newspapers.

How about you - any bright ideas on how content, publishing and value can be rethought and what they could sell other than packaged content itself?

TechCrunch50: Like TC40 but 10 Louder

I had an opportunity to attend TechCrunch50 this year. This new conference, in its second year now, gives startup companies a chance to pitch their business, get evaluated by an expert panel and potentially win $50,000.

Mint.com, last year's winner, is a successful personal finance money management site that a number of bloggers now use. This year's winner is a twitter-like service for businesses called Yammer.

What will bloghers be using from the TC50 lineup? I spotted a few possibilities.

First is iThryv which is money management and financial literacy software for kids and schools. Charlene Li hopes they succeed if for no other reason than their plans to give the software to schools for free.

One that parents might be avoiding though is (the cute and extremely charming - women, men and dogs were all breathlessly following him around) Ashton Kucher's offering, Blah Girls. Charlene Li has already decided that this mashup of South Park and Perez Hilton with animated, rude, gossip hungry tween girls is going on her home's ban list. It's too bad that this show is so parent-unfriendly because the product placement/integrated advertising business model is, I believe, the future of digital entertainment.

Miss Olive says that Closet Couture is "going to make social shopping a reality online."

Miss Olive also believes Causecast.org will change the world. Heather Snodgrass thinks it looks good, too.

Amy Jussel of Shaping Youth watched the live stream from home rather than brave the crowds (though, other than the non-functioning internet day one, I am always surprised at how much I enjoy this event). Her pick is FitBit which is a gadget that tracks your fitness.

My only disappointment is that since I am not an actual girl reporter on the go and just play one occasionally on the internet, I couldn't hang out for the entire time. That meant I missed Joss Whedon speaking on the Hollywood Goes Silicon Valley panel. Fortunately one of my favorite real life girl reporters on the go, Jessica Guynn, has a writeup for the Los Angeles Times' Technology blog.

More reports from Jessica Guynn can be found here.

I also sat next to (and commiserated with over the internet woes) the charming Orli Yakuel of Go2Web2.0 and she has several posts from TC50 on her blog.

Did you check out TC50?  Did you spot any must try services or products?  Do any of the ones I mentioned looked intriguing?  Let me know what you think in the comments.

Cross posted at BlogHer.com

Services To Watch: Orgoo Integrated Communications Dashboard

There were a number of companies who demonstrated their products and services at the TechCrunch 40 conference last year which I found interesting.  One of which was Orgoo so when TechCrunch offered 500 beta invites today to try the service as they move closer to a full launch, I grabbed one so I can check out how it has evolved from what CEO Michael Kantor demonstrated for me last September.

Orgoo allows you to integrate email and IM services into a single web-based dashboard.  Additionally there are cool features such as the ability to create group chats and video chat all within the same space.

There are some issues to work out.  Notably, in the comment thread on today's TechCrunch post, several expressed concern about providing passwords in order to incorporate accounts when there is no obvious security protection such as switching to a https URL.  One of the co-founders jumped in to explain security features but it needs to be more transparent.  Also, some services such as Yahoo! mail currently can only be incorporated if you are using the pay "plus" version and not the free version.

However, I am looking forward to trying the service out more as I really liked what I saw in the demonstration.  The TechCrunch invites were snapped up in minutes but I have 6 to give.  Please leave a comment and use a valid email address (which does not display, only I see will see it) and I'll send them out.

The Psycographic Approach

Analysts say software companies like NetBooks and ConnectWise play to the diversity of small businesses by avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach.

Michael Speyer of Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., who focuses on information technology issues affecting small businesses, said that many high-tech companies segment potential customers by the number of employees they have, overlooking the concerns of entrepreneurs versus those of corporate managers.

By contrast, NetBooks considers factors like how active the owner is as a manager, how much daily control he or she requires, the owner’s attitude toward using technology and whether a venture capital company has invested money in the business.

“I like the fact that NetBooks has taken a psychographic approach to finding out who their customers are and what they really want,” Mr. Speyer said. “This is really what counts. I think the way they characterize the market is spot-on. Stages of development are really what counts.”

Sonal Gandhi, an analyst with JupiterResearch in New York, said that small businesses were more open to using an application developed by one of their own. “There is certain functionality they crave,” she said.

This New York Times article describes business accounting software developed by small business entrepreneurs for small business entrepreneurs.  It's a classic example of someone solving their own problem and finding out that lots of other folks can use their solution. 

But even if you aren't your own best customer doesn't mean that you can't develop products that start with psychographics of consumers rather than demographics or what your engineers can create.  It can be more difficult, more time consuming and more expensive to take this approach but I believe the potential rewards and long term prospects for your product or service are much, much greater.

Halp! The Internetz Iz In Mah Putter Reading Mah Mindz!*

Today I visited a blog I visit pretty much daily and embedded between the blog post was a little video ad.  Not remarkable in and of itself but it was for Priceline, focused on rental cars and featured William Shatner's "Priceline Negotiator" character working on behalf of a woman (check) seeking a discounted price (check) on a mid-size rental car (check).

 

Here is where it gets freaky.  I performed this very search last night.  And although I did not have Bill Shatner's nor his falcon of truth's assistance, I did visit the Priceline site.  Once these ads can not just follow my browsing history and appear to persuade me in case I had not completed my deal hunting and can predict what I will be searching for and show up on my favorite blogs in advance of my search, well not only will all pretense of personal privacy be completely blown and big brother fully realized, but I might actually then find that having my privacy violated is actually helpful because it means that I am truly shown just the ads I want to see.

*Apologies if I have mangled the lolcat language