Mainstream media continues to get social

As the media landscape continues to change, one of the more interesting trends is traditional media’s use of social media.  There was a time, not that long ago, when a reader’s only option to be heard was getting a letter to the editor published.  And that was not easy.

The web, of course, brought comments.  And virtually every online medium now invites readers to weigh in. Twitter’s arrival on the scene distributed those comments beyond the confines of a destination website. And more recently sophisticated comment platforms like LiveFyre  help media properties use original content not only to stimulate and spread online chatter, but to identify what kind of content will generate the most conversation to begin with.

Still this is only the beginning. As more and more media properties realize they’re in the business of connecting readers to each other as well as to content – the same holds true for brands, by the way – we’ll see the creation of more social networks like the one Boston’s WBUR launched today: Healthcare Savvy.

Instead of simply reporting on health care, the NPR station has started a collaborative site that invites listeners to share and learn from each other how to purchase and evaluate health care offerings.

This is smart on three points.

It attracts more listeners

Smart brands everywhere now know that they have to create value. This is a perfect example of a media property building something that has genuine utility. Potentially it could become a new reason to engage with WBUR. And if the station becomes part of your health care decision making, it might also become your go-to source of news on the topic.

It’s a source of content and news for WBUR

Health care will continue to be a lead story for years to come, especially as baby boomers age and government subsidized programs come under increasing pressure. The shared content, comments and dialog regarding the costs, services, fears and frustrations that all patients face will provide WBUR with essential content and insight for its own news coverage of this topic.

It demonstrates social responsibility that is good for business

Simon Mainwaring writes about brands doing good in his book We First.  Harvard B-School Professor Michael E. Porter makes the same point in a recent Harvard Business Review piece.  Addressing societal issues is integral to profit maximization, not external to it.  Granted NPR stations don’t generate profits. But they do raise money.  The idea that doing something good for the public — beyond programming — should come back and benefit the bottom line. Aren’t you more likely to donate, or donate even more, if your public radio station creates a service that saves you money on health care?

We’re seeing collaboration, the inclusion of readers and customers, and platforms that encourage it to a greater and greater extent.  But the fact is, we’re still only  learning how to do this so it benefits all of us.

Got any other examples?  Please share.

The momentum of mobile

Within two years 50 percent of American employees will work remotely or via mobile.

Wireless will be soon the dominant channel for tracking investments and conducting online trades

Mobile advertising will grow 50 percent in 2011 to over $1 billion

4G will put all of our vending machines and appliances online

Application developers are thrilled with iAd performance and revenues

The biggest opportunities for entrepreneurs and start-up companies will be for those who develop better battery lives

One percent of AT&T customers use 40 percent of its data services

I spent this morning at the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council’s (MTLC) Mobility Summit. The theme, no surprise, was ubiquitous connectivity. Thanks to mobile in its current state we are all connected all the time. Connected to news, information, each other. And with 4G coming we’ll be connected in even less time. Though we’ll pay the price. One speaker alleged that, “If we leave our 4G on, we use up our $90.00 a month worth of data in the first 40 minutes of the month.” Gulp. Not sure I want to see what the rest of the month is going to cost.

Costs aside however, it’s clear that mobile is not only what’s next, it’s a race to see who figures it out first. The service providers – AT&T, Verizon, Sprint – along with the Cisco’s and Akemai’s labor furiously to make 4G a reality and to enlarge the last mile of pipe. Emerging location-based platforms struggle to get their revenue models right. New start-ups with tools and applications for everything from analytics to social aggregation to mobile community building, battle it out for access to venture capital. Meanwhile brands and advertisers search for the marketing mix that might make sense, evaluating and experimenting with mobile banners, contextual offers, iAds, rich media executions, custom apps and QR codes.

What’s interesting at a “summit” like is to see all the different perspectives. To the providers it’s all about technology, capacity and speed. To investors it’s about revenue models, growth and exit strategies. To platforms it’s about user experiences and downloads.

But if you’re a marketer, you have to think about all of that. Technology creates new opportunities for content, video and applications. If subscription costs affect the rate of adoption you have to decide whether to invest simply in basic ads (the CTRs are often better) or to build more robust experiences for a smaller community. And the user experiences in which you do invest — from apps, to utility, to context, to the accessibility of your mobile friendly website – not only have to be great, they need to be considered in light of everything else you do.

In poking around yesterday, I noticed that while numerous retailers have entered into mobile with coupons, LBS offers, and functional apps, others haven’t even converted their websites to be mobile friendly.

That might be the first place to start.

Interested in more?

Mobile trends from Noah Elkin

Marketing thoughts from Brenna Hanly

Fast Company foresees disaster; Bloomberg Businessweek predicts prosperity

Fast Company vs Bloomberg Businessweek: two perspectives on the state of advertising

When it comes to self-criticism, advertising tends to be an industry that loves exaggeration, speculation and especially self-flagellation. We beat ourselves up – or tolerate being berated by others — on a pretty regular basis.  Among the many predictions we’ve endured in recent years: The end of advertising as we know it; Agencies just don’t get it; The Chaos Scenario; and most recently Fast Company’s  Mayhem on Madison Avenue.

The latter, which hit the newsstands last week (though appeared in digital form 10 days earlier) basically suggested that all those dinosaurs who’ve been bringing you the :30 TV spot stand somewhere between too slow to evolve and the edge of extinction. (Note that Mullen was included among those who’ve transformed themselves enough to count as evolved.)

This week, however, we have a very different story. Playing the contrarian, Bloomberg Businessweek suggests that the “lumbering advertising behemoths have advantages over smaller, cutting-edge firms.”

Writer Felix Gillette, after his obligatory references to MadMen, multiple-martini lunches and expense account dinners at Nobu (can’t have an ad agency article without recallying all of that cliche’d imagery for the thousandth time) eventually gets around to disputing the claim that the big, dumb agencies are dead. Instead he insists that the big, dumb agencies are actually kicking the butts of all the little digital shops with funny names.  (That would be Big Spaceship, Blue Barracuda, glueisobar, et. al.)

The poster boy for the article is BBDO NA’s chairman and CCO David Lubars. Throughout a long career, Lubars has produced great advertising work: from his early days in Providence when we ran the Keds business, to an LA stint on Apple, to his time at Fallon where he launched the seminal BMW Films.

So maybe he’s not only entitled but correct when he claims in the Bloomberg story that the little hot shops, who are thumping their chests and declaring the end of mass marketing and the death of the Big Dumb Agencies, do so as a business posture, an attitude for journalists, and a sales pitch to clients. “They don’t believe a word of it,” he says.

Lubars goes on to talk about all the digital work being done at BBDO while the agency still manages to win best Superbowl spot.

One thing both Fast Company and Bloomberg do agree on is that we are in the midst of turbulent times.  Digital shops strive to develop better creative ideas. Giant ad agencies throw money at technical talent in order to compete with the funny-named agencies. And no less than Google, Apple and  Facebook, along with a slew of  hybrids — from the likes of PSFK to multiple new retail platforms –  all have  their own opinions of where the industry is going.

So who’s right? Fast Company? Or Bloomberg? Will the big agencies adapt fast enough and prevail? Or will the smaller, more nimble digital shops with UX and engagement in their DNA win out in the long run.

Hard to say. One thing is certain, however. Given the fact that no other industry in the world seems to inspire more discussion, debate and analysis as the advertising industry, we can be certain the conversation isn’t over.  Like the Energizer bunny, it keeps going and going.

Advertising should stimulate debate. Where do you stand?

New Economist poster campaign asks provocative questions that are harder to answer than you think

This week The Economist announced a new campaign, “Where do you stand?”  The campaign poses provocative statements on posters:  Prisoners should/should not be allowed to vote.  Drugs should/should not be legalized.  Trading human organs should/should not be allowed.

Each poster includes a few key facts around each issue that make committing a lot harder than you might initially think. For example, in favor of selling human organs it declares:

There is a desperate shortage of organs. Around 1000 people die each year in Britain waiting for a transplant.

In 1988, Iran changed the law to allow people to sell their kidneys. Within three years, the country no longer had a waiting list for kidney transplants.

Banning the sale of organs drives the trade underground. That makes transplants riskier for both donors and recipients.

It then asks you to text your answer to the designated number in return for a free copy of The Economist. Presumably the magazine will aggregate answers and publish results.

In many ways the new campaign is brilliant. It demonstrates the thought provoking nature of The Economist, turns you into a participant rather than a reader, and gets you to actually think in the process.

While the posters primary call to action is to text your answers, it’s also cool that the magazine has created a new Facebook page where the debate can take place on line.

(Note that I have modified this post from the original. When I had initially checked The Economist Facebook page there was no mention of the campaign. Nor did it appear on their site. But shortly after this post went live, suggesting that The Economist had missed an opportunity by not extending the conversation to Facebook and elsewhere, I received a note from Jamie Credland, a marketer for The Economist who corrected me. Gotta love social media.)

For sure this campaign belongs on places like Facebook and Twitter, or even better on Livefyre, where it could benefit from a focused debate. It appears that Jamie and his colleagues get that.

If the initial news announcement in The Guardian is correct, the campaign runs for a mere two weeks. I find that a bit perplexing as it seems this is an idea with a much longer life.

But on the positive side we have a traditional medium and an advertiser that realizes a reader isn’t simply a reader but a participant, content generator and distribution channel.  I’m willing to bet that The Economist will see the debate and dialog continue long after the posters come down and that this will not only be the beginning of another great campaign from the magazine that brought us the great red and white posters of the past, it may be something we see copied elsewhere.

So, is this the new advertising?  Where do you stand?

Here are some links that I’ve been able to find so far.  Perhaps there will be more to come from The Economist and its agency AMV BBDO. If you find out anything else, please share.

The posters in Campaign

Story in The Guardian

The agency behind it: AMV BBDO

Faris’s Blog: Talent Imitates, Genius Steals

Video promoting newspapers is more like a eulogy than a parody

I want to like this video. I really do. It’s a pitch-perfect parody of the new integrated social media campaign.  A fictitious ad agency launches a fictitious car, the Zebra, with a cockamamie campaign that includes: opening an actual zoo; crowdsourcing its inhabitants; inviting consumers to engage via Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other social networks; launching an online TV network called Zoo TV; and spreading viral memes in numerous physical environments before realizing the absurdity of the whole thing and deciding instead to run a print campaign. In newspapers.

If it weren’t so pathetic it would be hysterical. Here once again is another example of the newspaper industry — in this case the Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri — reminding us that it has failed miserably to convey the virtues of its medium to readers and advertisers. So in hopes of delaying its inevitable demise, and having nothing persuasive to proffer readers regarding its merits, it settles for a less than convincing swipe at the very media that are bringing newspapers to their knees.

This 1993 campaign for a fake beer demonstrated the power of newspapers 17 years ago

What’s interesting, for those of us who’ve been around a while, is that it’s also a bit derivative of the famous Neil French XO Beer campaign.  In 1993, as an April Fools’ joke, and to prove the efficacy of newspaper advertising at the time, The Straits Times engaged French, who skillfully conceived a phony campaign for a beer that supposedly got you “pissed quicker than any other.”  The purpose of the fake campaign was simply to demonstrate that newspaper ads worked.  And in 1993 they worked pretty well. Ads like the one above, showing a guy in the men’s room passed out from drinking XO, generated so much interest in the beer that liquor stores had to fend off eager customers.  When the campaign was revealed to be a hoax, it came with the claim that only newspaper advertising could create so much demand so quickly.

Unfortunately, the Zebra video, a  modern version of the fake initiative, pales in comparison. Sour grapes don’t work quite as well as high alcohol content hops.

Last I checked people shopped for cars online

If the rate at which newspapers continue to shut down is any indication, recent campaigns — whether they criticize the competition (even with tongue in cheek) like the video above, or make declarations that are so far from believable they appear futile (like the ad to the left) — are completely and totally ineffective.

Meanwhile, the industry’s last remaining crutch, the Sunday circular, which generates significant revenue, isn’t long for this world either. As soon as retailers crack the digital code for how to replace this anachronistic marketing medium — and they’re all working on it, given that their customers spend more time online than in the pages of a newspaper — there will be even fewer reasons to advertise in newspapers.

Newspapers would be better off figuring out how to take what they do have to offer – quality content, reportage, celebrity reporters, objectivity, and a commitment to truth – and finding a way to make those qualities relevant.

Hey, here’s an idea.  Perhaps the newspaper industry needs to embrace social media.  Maybe it needs a campaign just like the one it made fun of in the Zebra video.  Certainly wouldn’t be worse than what they’ve been doing, which from what I can tell is basically nothing more than praying.