Digital can be fun, entertaining, interactive and worth our attention. Is it possible to get all of this into standard online ads?

My last post suggested that maybe (not definitely) Apple’s iAds could be good for digital advertising, making them a bit more useful and a little less interruptive. Only time will tell, of course.

In the meantime, the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) has also come to realize it hasn’t done enough to make paid online advertising appealing or effective enough to attract spending commensurate with the amount of time people spend online. Click rates remain pitiful and no one has yet cracked the code on how to do display advertising or brand building executions in the online space.

While marketers spend $30 billion a year on OLA, $25 billion of that goes directly to search. According to Peter Minnium, who’s helping the IAB develop new standards, the big problem has been too much emphasis on response and too much dependence on the lowest common denominator units – typically the 2” by 3” ads that can be served by anyone from Google and MSN to your local blog.

According to Peter, as a result of standards that have to work for every website out there (in an effort to save advertisers having to create an excess of custom versions) creators face restrictions that drive them toward mediocrity and consumers live with tired, boring ads that fail to capture their imaginations.

The industry knows this. As search starts to slow, all the big portals are looking for ways to beef up revenue.  That means Google, AOL, MSN and others will all try to figure it out on their own, but that approach could lead to confusion and fragmentation. Imagine if advertisers had to create totally different units, experiences and executions for every site where they ran ads?

Can the IAB change this? Well they’re trying. They’ve asked a number of creative folks from the advertising industry to help develop new standards. The objective is to come up with something that excites marketers, agencies and media planners.

IAB thinks that the solution, not unlike Apple’s approach, just might be to combine the sight, sound and motion of video with the web’s power of engagement and sharing, then somehow develop new formats that everyone buys into in order that brands can create fewer units and have the option of running them anywhere.

The big question of course is what is the role of branded display advertising on the Internet? In an ideal format, it will allow consumers to get the information they want, learn something meaningful, search directly from the ad, share if they wish to, and experience entertaining content in the process. Oh right, and it can’t interrupt.

Can this ever be achieved? Is there a model that works for both advertiser and consumer? How about the role of tablets to influence new formats?

Right now, advertisers need to move money out of TV and align budgets with consumer behavior. (Relying on memory here, but I believe the web accounts for 30 percent of consumers’ media time but only 10 percent of marketing dollars. Someone correct me if I’m off with these numbers.)

Running TV spots on the web doesn’t work. We’re online in order to discover what we want. Ads that interrupt us find little welcome. In fact, they’re disdained. And finally, as we turn to our social networks directly for the content we want, traditional search becomes less necessary and OLA close to useless.

Put that way it seems an insurmountable challenge.

The promise of digital advertising, of course, is that it serves us as much as the advertiser. It knows what we’re interested in without violating our privacy. It lets us opt in on our own terms. It includes all the best features of social media – sharing, ratings, recommendations from friends. And it’s exciting.

We seem to get more of the above in great social media executions and compelling viral ideas but not in paid digital ads, despite the few exceptions.

So, will we ever see standard units that are actually conducive to more inspiring advertising? Can the IAB win consensus from both big portals and smaller sites? Will iAds raise the bar for what consumers expect? Can paid digital advertising that lives on a website actually earn our attention?  Lots of questions.  But at least we have acknowledgment of the problem and a set of criteria that seem to make sense.

What do you think? Any chance we’ll ever learn to love online advertising?

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If you’re like most people, chances are only .1 percent that you’ve ever clicked on a banner ad. And while that number is pitifully low, it might even misrepresent whatever enthusiasm exists. I know in my case the only time I open an online ad is by accident. Who needs them when there’s Google, YouTube and Twitter search?

Nissan Leaf iAd has video, product demo and a host of interactive features

The reason, of course, is that most online ads suck. They interrupt us, pop up and take over our screens, or delay our getting to the content we actually seek.  Plus in most cases the lack of an engaging concept of any kind sends us looking for that little “x” which we’re practically programmed to discover within a nanosecond at most.

But change may be on its way. Both Apple with its iAds, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau with its effort to develop new standards, are acutely aware that it’s been a mistake to leave OLA in the hands of the quants instead of the creatives.

Recently I sat through an impressive presentation on iAds by Apple’s Scott Witt. If you’ve seen an iAd, you may not be an instant convert to Apple’s belief that it can inspire advertising people actually love, but at least you’re leaning a little toward the side of optimism. The good ones are absorbing, entertaining and informative.

(If you haven’t seen or experienced an iAd, download the app Tiptitude and open it; it usually displays the Nissan Leaf iAd at the bottom. You can tell an iAd from a regular banner because it identifies itself with the iAd label in the lower right hand side of the launch banner.  Then click.  You’ll experience something pretty cool.  If you get the AT&T ad, just keep trying. The latter has some utility but it’s not as compelling as the Leaf iAd.)

The AT&T ad lets you find mobile hotspots, though to use it you have to "find" the ad in an app

Anyway, Apple is hoping that iAds deliver a quantum leap in advertising story telling as they have the potential to combine the cinematic beauty of great TV advertising (visceral imagery, animation, special effects), the interactive nature of the web (games, choices, navigation), the sharing and involvement of social media, and the tactile (digitally speaking) sensation of turning pages.

The Leaf execution for example has some brilliant film, interactive presentations of the car’s features, tools for comparison on mileage and operating costs, and more. In fact, it’s closer to an app than an ad. Same can be said for early Nike and Dove executions.

This is promising stuff. It acknowledges the need for digital advertising to be more creative and it encourages marketers to make utility and content first, sales pitches second.

True,  iAds will call for a new kind of creative thinking (story telling + technology + user experience) but Apple is there to help (or control, depending on your point of view), acting as creative directors and gatekeepers for any initial iAd concepts. The reason, according to Witt, is that if Apple puts its name on something it wants to guarantee users the Apple standards they’ve come to expect. Apple also justifies its control with the argument that since iAds use all the capabilities of the iPhone OS who knows better than the guys who created it. That may or may not be the case, but if you want to get on the platform those are the rules.

In some cases Apple’s God-like role may be a bit too much for advertisers and agencies to take — I know of some brands that have opted out when Apple wouldn’t let them do what they believed was necessary to be effective. On the other hand, if a digital ad is only as good as the number of people who click on it and Apple’s reputation with users can increase engagement, then maybe submitting to the company’s tightly clenched security measures is worth it.

What will it take for iAds to really succeed? A lot. Brands have to sign up and fork over some serious money — $1 million to $10 million before production. App developers have to sell space on their applications, though with 60 percent of the revenue coming their way there’s a decent incentive. Users have to believe that all iAds are worth clicking on. And finally, advertisers have to see results.

So far, reviews are mixed. Some brand are happy with the performance. Others aren’t willing to play if they have to relinquish so much control.

Nevertheless, I’m hoping Apple’s efforts influence the way all advertising is done and that as iAds show us what’s possible with paid digital ads we’ll see online ads become more experiential, offer genuine utility, and even turn into miniature apps themselves.

Up next, part two of this topic: some thoughts on what the Interactive Advertising Bureau is doing in its quest for new standards.

In the meantime, your thoughts? Have you seen iAds in action? Does Apple’s name alone make you want to click?

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I give Kevin Roddy a lot of credit for coming out and declaring that creative directors might actually be clueless when it comes to creating ideas for the post digital age.

In a guest column in Ad Age, Roddy suggests that traditional CD’s may still know a great idea when they see it, but he questions whether they can inspire or conceive complex digital ideas if their real comfort zone is in the media of TV, print and radio.

BBH New York’s CCO goes on to suggest that advertising creative directors whose experience comes from old media story telling should “admit that they don’t know enough about technology and start asking for help.

“Take down the walls and ask other people for suggestions about how to make the work better,” he smartly suggests.

I’m in total agreement with everything Kevin says. But I might go one step further.  Knowing how most traditional CDs, writers and art directors work, I can confirm that there’s still a tendency among many to generate ad “ad idea” first and then go seek out their digital counterparts who might “make the work better,” to use Kevin’s words.  In fact plenty of creative technologists will tell you that the question they usually get is, “Can you build this?”  When the question they want to be asked is “What should we build?”

Kevin’s right that those of us who grew up on the traditional side of the business need help with the new complexities of technology.  But we should make sure we get that help before we have an idea.

In fact we should be aggressively and proactively learning as much as we can about what’s possible with mobile, geo, APIs, social media and the very latest technology before we or anyone on our team closes the door to go and concept.  Better yet, the people we concept with should be the techies themselves – creative technologists, UX professionals, social media enthusiasts.

I once had a CD tell me that he didn’t really need to know technology because, “No matter what I think up there’ll be someone who’ll know how to build it.”  True, but my question back to him was, “But if you knew what was actually possible, wouldn’t you think up even more interesting ideas?”

Thanks again to Kevin for admitting and reinforcing what we all need to do.  Let’s just make sure we get the help he recommends first. Then we can brief teams, look at ideas, and know we’ve picked the best one.

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Perhaps it’s the inspiration of Zappos and its pioneering use of Twitter.  Maybe it’s the success of Best Buy, whose Twelpforce has turned employees into an online service and support staff.  But retailers everywhere are jumping on the social train.  And well they should.

Today shopping happens anywhere: offline, online, on the go. And shoppers can connect and share every step of the way. Mobile utilities make it possible to find a product in a store and quickly order it for less somewhere else. Services like Groupon deliver daily and or regional discounts providing the crowd responds. Platforms such as Placecast offer all of us a chance to opt-in to offers and messages from our favorite retailers entirely on our own terms. And multi-feature apps such as Springpad (note they’re a client and I serve on the board) will soon actually hunt down the best prices for products you’ve saved to your wish list.

In fact it’s only a matter of time before consumers can issue their own RFI for a given product type or even a specific brand.

So what are retailers doing besides the obvious presence on Twitter and Facebook?  Lots of stuff. In the last couple of months I’ve come across the following.  My guess is it’s just the beginning.

Uniqlo sets the bar

If non-stop experimentation and creativity is your criteria, check out Uniqlo. Their constant fashion innovation extends into social media. For example, UTweet takes all your Twitter content and gives it a cool new look. They’ve got something new every month or so and all of it is designed to engage with customers, connect them to each other and inspire them to pass it around. This is a brand that’s being social rather than doing social.

JC Penny hires haulers

Among the many phenomena brought to us by YouTube are haul videos. Shoppers sharing their most recent purchases. Don’t ask me why, but some of these young women have thousands of followers and hundreds of thousands of views. (Amazing what we are interested in.) JC Penny figured, “Why not have them haul home stuff from its stores?” Give some of the popular ones a couple of gift cards and turn those haulers into customers and advocates all in one fell swoop. No doubt we’ll see more retailers trying to leverage the influence of the individual.

Kohl’s crowdsources customer stories

Again, you may ask yourself why, but it appears we want to share everything and even pay attention to what others are sharing. Kohl’s figured this out and created a simple site where customers could hold up receipts, sharing what they bought and more importantly how much they saved. Granted $100 prizes helped generate participation, but shoppers showed up and shared as much because they wanted recognition and inclusion as they did the money.  In a matter of weeks Kohl’s got thousands of customers to share their purchases and brag about their savings. Note: Kohl’s worked with This Moment, whose platform lets them create a unified brand experience across all the social networks, from YouTube to Facebook to Kohl’s own site.

Diesel introduces social dressing rooms

This is pretty cool. In Spain, Diesel created the Diesel Cam, essentially connecting mirrors right outside the dressing rooms directly to Facebook. When you try on an outfit you can log in, upload a photo of yourself in your new jeans, and solicit immediate feedback and “likes” from your friends.  We all want the opinion of people we trust and who better to watch our backside than our friends?  Social shopping, whether it’s via our iPhone and a quick TwitPic or full-blown installations like Diesel’s, is definitely here.

K-Mart post gamers’ online reviews in-store

This one couldn’t be simpler.  K-Mart invites its video game customers to review games online and possibly have them appear in-store as POP right on the shelf where the game is sold. You get your review and your name front and center for other shoppers to see.  Ups your gamer cred and makes you feel part of the franchise. We all know it’s easy to post comments online, but to have them displayed as a miniature billboard? Much cooler.

Retailers may still be addicted to FSI’s and the offline tactics they’ve always depended on, but if I were in the Sunday circular business, I’d be even more worried than I already am.

If you’ve seen other cool retailer uses of social media, please share. I’m taking up a collection.  Thanks for reading.

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The long term benefit of friends and followers exceeds the short term impact of a campaign

As more and more brands race into social media it appears they’re bringing with them the exact same short-term mindset that they apply to advertising campaigns. I hear it all the time.

“If we do this (fill in the blank: Twitter, Facebook, blog, whatever) how many (fill in the blank: clicks, inquiries, sales, customers) will we get and how soon?

“Because we need it right away. Like tomorrow. Or next week. Otherwise we can’t sell it in.”

Despite all that’s been written, discussed and in many cases proven (thank you Blendtec, Zappos and Gary Vaynerchuk)  regarding the long-term value of listening, engaging, building and mobilizing community, and engendering loyalty, lots of marketers still insist on applying the traditional advertising model to social media, demanding an instant correlation between spending and results.

For years, digital agencies have pointed out the shortcomings of advertising campaigns — they have to be repeated over and over to maintain visibility and impact — arguing instead for platforms that integrate into people’s lives.

Well people, social media is, in many ways, like a digital platform.

When it’s done right, if mirrors the tactics pioneered by none other than the Grateful Dead.

And it generates the same kind of lasting results. It produces an ongoing journey, allows the community to influence the experience, introduces like minded people to each other (a reason in and of itself to be part of a community) and rewards them in such a way that they want to invite their friends to come and join.

Consider all the press and pundits who’ve questioned the effectiveness of the recent “Hello Ladies,” campaign. (I wanted to write a post without saying the name of the brand behind it just to see if I could.)  A gazillion views and all anyone can ask is, “Yeah, but did it sell more product?”  In fact it did. But not because of the videos alone. Promotions and discounts buffeted the campaign, topping off the buzz with real incentives.

Still, half the world had nothing but praise, while the other half felt compelled to point out that video views (social media) don’t translate into revenue. Even Brian Solis, a social media pioneer, correctly predicts  that the videos will diminish in impact over time, but surprisingly suggests they should have included customized offers and discounts as part of their monologs.

You think so? I’m not sure incentives and offers in the videos would have aided views. Plus it misses the point. That being we should stop being so obsessed with the immediate impact of social media efforts. The real benefit of “Hello Ladies” is that like any good engagement advertising it generated over 95,000 new followers for the brand on Twitter and, combined with other marketing efforts, bumped its Facebook likes up to nearly 800,000. Those new community members are the real value. Long term value. Thousands of people who’ve opted in to be part of the conversation.

Engaging Brian Solis from EdelmanDigital on Vimeo.

Presuming that the “Hello Ladies” folks now engage with those fans and followers, they have something even better than a positive blip in weekly sales. They’ve got their equivalent of Dead Heads — people to whom they can market and introduce new products; a community from which they can crowdsource ideas and content; people they can mobilize to bring even more fans into the fold.

We all know that if you want to sell a lot of something you’ve got three things you can do.

One, do what Apple does and come up with an awesome product that everyone wants.

Two, run a promotion with incentives to try or buy the product.

Three, get good at contextual marketing so that you can push messages (don’t spam) to customers who’ve opted into receiving them on their terms.

And, if you really want, you can continue to use social media for short term, campaign oriented results. Give something away. Beef up your engagement ad budget. Incent people to un-friend or re-friend their friends.

But if your objective is to take advantage of social media, stop evaluating everything you (or others) do based on the immediacy of results. Long-term relationships are always better.

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For years, digital agencies have strived to distinguish themselves from traditional advertising agencies that practice digital with the claim that they build platforms – applications and utility that delivery functionality and integrate into people’s lives – while ad agencies come up with digital gimmicks. In fact it was in the news today. As the argument goes, the latter may generate awareness and buzz, but like all offline advertising campaign, they quickly lose their impact when the media buy comes to an end, calling for yet another campaign and then another.

This is true. It was true of Subservient Chicken, true of the Cadbury Gorilla, and true, inevitably, of Old Spice’s recent social media frenzy. In fact, once these campaigns end the only people who tend to remember them are agency types scrambling to replicate their temporary success while making it look as if they didn’t copy the idea.

Meanwhile platforms like Garmin Connect (bet you never even heard of it unless you’re a road cyclist and a Garmin user) and iPhone apps like Stylebook, Zipcar and Timberland Expeditions (one of ours) continue to attract users, generate downloads, and provide the kind of functionality that earns both loyalty and repeat business.

The fact is brands and marketers need both. Without awareness and buzz, the kind of utility that makes a brand indispensable (if that’s possible) never gets embraced. Nike Plus would be invisible if it weren’t for the brand equity built up with years of advertising.

However, the challenge now is more complicated than what’s implied by the debate between idea and platform. The new frontier is the ecosystem. (Yes I know that term gets used to mean a lot of things; but for this purpose it means the interdependency of a brand’s multiple digital properties.) Think about it.  Most brands have an advertising campaign. They probably have a website that offers more than brochure-ware and delivers something of genuine use — either applications, commerce, customized user-experiences, community or how-to videos.

But with the proliferation of social media, chances are good that a brand also has a Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel and at least one if not three iPhone apps. (I recently had a prospect tell me, “We need apps, lots of apps. It’s important for you to know that we’re app happy around here, so whatever you do bring us apps.”) And since the pre iPhone craze was “build me a micro-site,” chances are good it also has half a dozen of those.

Years ago, John Wanamaker said he knew that half his advertising worked, he just wasn’t sure which half.  Today, with all the metrics and analytics baked into everything we do there’s little doubt that we know which stuff works. But do you know whether it all works together?

My suggestion is that if digital agencies and traditional agencies continue fighting over the idea versus the platform they’re wasting words and energy. The new frontier will be the brand’s overall digital ecosystem and figuring out how to get advertising, platforms, social media, conversation strategy and a brand’s existing community of customers to reinforce each other in a way that generates awareness, allows prospects to enter a relationship on their own terms (whether they want to learn, connect, join, transact, share or simply watch) and then holds onto them, ideally turning them into advocates.

Got eco-system?

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It was only a year ago that most ad agencies turned their noses up at the mere mention of Twitter. (The comments are gone now, but half of them were beyond harsh.) It was only a year ago that most social media agencies went around declaring that traditional ad agencies just didn’t get it.  It was only a year ago that advertising creative teams would scream bloody murder if you expected them to generate creative within a couple of days, never mind hours or even minutes.

Well, things change quickly on the Internet.

Today, ad agencies are scrambling to catch up on what Twitter’s all about. Even some of the old guys are showing up.

The social media “gurus” are pulling their feet out of their collective mouths as ad agencies start to raise the SoMe content bar.

And those writer/art director teams that used to whine about shorter timetables? They’re disappearing as quickly as those tweets you saw in your morning stream.

And if they’re not, they will be after today as the Old Spice campaign running on Twitter and YouTube reminds us that everyone was wrong.

The ads that even the anti-advertising crowd loves have harnessed the speed of Twitter and YouTube and combined it with the personal interaction allowed by both to produce a bunch of new spots that speak directly to individuals, responding to their Twitter posts, comments on Reddit , and ramblings on YouTube itself.

If the videos were genuinely being produced in real time, they’re brilliant. And even the whole thing was preplanned, with incoming Tweets and scripts prepared in advance, well the illusion is great. (Hope I don’t sound like a cynic; I want to believe it’s the former.)

I haven’t contacted or spoken with anyone at Weiden and Kennedy, the agency behind the Old Spice idea, but clearly they have just gone out and done what is likely to be labeled one of the best examples of “the new integration.”

Ingredients: big, clever brand idea; social presence that realizes content is as important as the product it represents; opportunity for consumers to participate; responsive, real-time engagement (including faux pas and obvious glances at the script); and a built-in ability to share.

Of course having the formula doesn’t mean you can replicate it. That requires more than free platforms and a branded Twitter account and YouTube channel.  It takes talent.

Congratulations to all for a very cool and amusing idea. F@&*. Wish we’d thought of something like this first.

Relate posts:

ReadWriteWeb on how the videos were produced.

AdWeek on Old Spice ruling the web.

Even the New York Daily News

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Earlier this week YouTube announced it would pony up $5 million, and eventually more, to back emerging auteurs whose videos attract viewers to the popular site. There are two ways to look at this new initiative.

First it’s an effort to get more quality content onto the site. The funding will motivate professionals and talented amateurs alike to create, upload and promote their content.

But second, and more importantly, it’s an acknowledgment that it’s not YouTube the brand or YouTube the platform that draws traffic, but rather the videos and the people who create them. YouTube will inevitably recruit better content creators and then have something new to market.

Customers are your greatest asset

Youtube, of course, isn’t the only brand that’s figured this out.  Plenty of smart businesses realize their customers and users are their most valuable asset. They not only represent repeat business, they become advocates whose endorsement (whether on blogs, Twitter or conversation at a cocktail party), content and participation drive more business. (If you’re not yet thinking this way, you may want to read Joesph Jaffe’s new book Flip the Funnel; it will both convince you that it matters and present you with some useful tactics.)

But an active community might be worth even more

But the YouTube initiative isn’t just about attending to customers. It’s actually closer  to “ladies night.” You remember ladies night. A bar lets women drink for less in hopes that more single females show up and act as a magnet for the opposite sex. Neither sex comes for the bar or the venue as much as they do for one another.  Essentially the bar is gathering a community worth marketing.

Offline advertisers have always done this. VW built an entire brand image around the people who drove the cars rather than the cars themselves. Ralph Lauren Polo did the same. However in those cases the “communities” were contrived and lived only as two-dimensional images on magazine pages or as scenes played by actors in TV commercials.

A community can be the reason to “join” a brand

It strikes me that one of the next opportunities for brands is to market the real communities they build. Or at least promote them as an added benefit. Aren’t there people who purchased Dell computers in part for the customer-run service is?  Or runners who bought Nike not only because it offers Nike + but because the community itself is a virtue?

Red Sox Nation: a made up moniker for the team's fans used as a marketing tool by the organization

So far it appears that most brands see the value in creating a community only as a service to existing customers but not as a feature worth marketing. But why not make it another reason to embrace their brand or buy their product?

The “gift of community,” as I like to call it, should be part of every brand’s marketing plan. Offer customers and prospects a way for them to connect with each other so they can meet, share, learn.

As Clay Shirky reminds us in Cognitive Surplus “humans intrinsically value a sense of connectedness.”  Smart brands realize that customers can create value for each other.  In the future smarter brands will learn to market that fact.

Some communities worth marketing:

Harley Davidson’s Facebook fans

New York Times People

Garmin Connect’s User Base

Got any others?

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The first "changed my life" book I read. I think I was 12.

I missed it when if first appeared, but #booksthatchangedmyworld, a hashtag created by New Yorker writer Susan Orlean has been getting a fair amount of buzz on Twitter and on blogs over the last week.  The rather long hashtag started as a way for Orlean to catalog her own favorite reads, but as happens on Twitter, the community joins in when it wants, deciding whether or not a topic or subject deserves attention and buzz.

One one hand, there’s not much more to this than the fact that lots of people (anyone who reads, for that matter) have been influenced by books and that in an age of social media people like to share.

What’s a little amusing is that it with all the attention that The Shallows, Nicholas Carr’s new book, is getting, the New York Times actually referred to the hashtag in a post suggesting that perhaps Internet addicts aren’t getting stupid as quickly as Nicholas Carr suggests. They actually read books. Or at least they can remember the titles of books they should have read.

Within a day, someone paying attention scoffed up the URL booksthatchangedmyworld.com, recognizing, if not a monetizable idea, at least a subject worth developing further.

But the only folks who should be jumping on this bandwagon – booksellers Barnes and Noble and Amazon – seem conspicuously absent.  Search for their Twitter handles and the hashtag, and as you can see, nothing,  At least when this was written.

Are they completely unaware of the greatest book and publisher marketing program of all time? Courtesy of Edward L. Bernays. (They sell his books, so you’d think they’d know something about him.)

For the uninitiated, in 1930 Bernays was retained by a consortium of book publishers. His charge was simple: sell more books. Bernays solution: build more bookshelves. Knowing that man hates a void, he figured if he could get architects and builders to include more bookshelves in homes and apartments, they’d fill up with books.

How did he do it? Bernays asked respectable public figures – CEOs, senators, lawyers, doctors –  to name the books that influenced and inspired them. He released the findings to the press with a spin: “accomplished people have all been influenced by books.” He then marketed the significant press coverage to home builders with the recommendation that if they wanted to sell to a more desirable clientele, they needed to install built-in bookcases. Ever notice how all homes built in the late 30s, 40s and beyond have built-ins? Needless to say, the sale of books increased significantly.

Barnes and Noble and Amazon were just handed a similar opportunity. The chance to get behind a social media initiative that celebrates books, their impact on people’s lives and the fact that even the Twitterati, those allegedly least inclined to read (according to Carr), willingly share the books that mattered to them is an easy marketing idea waiting to happen.

From the looks of it neither Barnes and Noble nor Amazon bought the URL inspired by Orlean. But they should have.

It’s  not too late for them to get more active on Twitter, pick up on discussions like this and turn them into ideas that help sell more books. Whether it’s simply to engage with the community already commenting or to take the idea and turn it into something even bigger.

What do you think? Don’t you wish your brand were handed opportunities like this?

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Where does brand loyalty come from? A social media platform? Or a brand's behavior?

Once again I enjoyed participating on an episode of The Beancast last night with some really smart people that included Mitch Joel, John Wall, Ian Schafer and, of course, Bob Knorpp.

We discussed the week’s marketing stories: everything from the plight of independent BP service stations to the likely winners at Cannes. But the topic that I found the most interesting was the question of loyalty. How do we measure it?  Can we assign a real dollar value to a Facebook fan? Are the recent findings from Syncapse and Vitrue dependable.

In the case of Syncapse this social media strategy company suggests that a Facebook fan is worth $136.00. The number comes from determining a typical fan’s behavior. Syncapse concluded he’s likely to spend $72.00 a year more on a brand than a non-fan; is 28 more likely to continue using that brand; has a high propensity to recommend products to friends and family; and has a real affinity to the brand he “likes.”

But the real question that no one seems to answer is this: If there were no Facebook or equivalent social network, would that “fan’s” behavior be any different?  Does he fan/like a brand on Facebook because he’s already loyal? Or does becoming a fan somehow induce that loyalty?

I’m willing to bet it’s the former.  We are loyal to a brand because of its products, service, quality and consistency; we then reflect that loyalty by fanning a brand, not vice versa.

This has real implications for marketers. Research like the above results in more of the idiocy we have seen in the last year or two: brands that have to be on Facebook; success that’s measured in terms of how many “fans” or “likes” that brand acquires; programs that are designed to drive up the numbers.

Granted Vitrue’s approach and valuation are quite different. Their number is less than $4.00 per fan, but they’re actually measuring impressions.

To me, both of these metrics represent a classic case of applying old media thinking to a new media environment.  They measure what exists after the fact — customer value and impressions — they don’t tell us whether or how we can actually increase loyalty.

A program that strives to pile up fans will at best simply identify people who are already loyal. At worst, it will convince someone to click a button because it’s effortless, but potentially also meaningless.

The only thing we should be measuring is whether or not we can create content, utility, service and value in the social media space that induces prospects to become customers and customers to become repeat customers, perhaps even willing to pay a premium. Accomplishing that calls for  ideas, creativity and experimentation, not another quantitative study.

Smart brands measure (and, for that matter, predict) everything. But before they put their money behind reaching and collecting fans, they invest in behaviors to prove they’re worthy of a customer’s loyalty.

What’s  your brand doing to earn loyalty?

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