Final Blog

Hi

I am in the process of moving PiKE's Thinking... to its new home at http://walterpike.com

See you there - read the article on Obama's election.

Is it only about getting EyeBalls?

I had heard about Eyeballs but it was Louise Marsland at the Cracking the Digital Code workshop who invited me to try it out. I did for a few hours.

My comments are going to appear paradoxical because I think that it is going to be successful, but that its not going to work. 

It will be successful because it fits right into the marketers and advertising industry's current understanding of online marketing and branding, both are still purveyors of mass communication and locked into the interruption marketing model, the core principle of which is to find an audience and interrupt them by putting a marketing message in front of them. This is what Eyeballs does, whenever a subscriber receives an sms or a call or makes one an ad appears on the screen. On my Nokia N95 8G its a beautiful image. The subscriber also receives a reward which can be exchanged for mobile value.

Sounds like a good formulae - actually paying your reader to be exposed to your advertising. Exactly the language the market and the agencies understand.

Note that I used the word exposed, getting eyeballs. Listen to Seth Godin here. The old marketing is about getting eyeballs, the new marketing is about getting engaged and delivering relevance.

The future of mobile marketing allows even more relevance, because your phone is with you and so its possible to know where you are and what you are doing and advertising that is geographic, time and context sensitive is appropriate.

The mobile consumer is ruthless - if it doesn't add value to him now, he just ignore it.

In its current iteration Eyeballs is old marketing - SPAM.  So it will be successful because advertisers will spend advertising money on it. It won't work because the mobile consumer wont be spammed, he will either just switch off and get rewards or like me get irritated and uninstall.

"Who counts more than how many"

Why arent you in advertising? - a bursary application in 160 characters.

"If you think that advertising is in you, then SMS the reason to 32532, and you could win a bursary or one of 10 iPods" is the invitation in the aaa school of advertising's new student recruitment campaign. 

To be able to complete a bursary application in 160 characters requires some creativity, exactly the type of person the school wants.

Advertising is challenging and fast paced and the type of people advertising attracts are creative, adventurous and even slightly off the wall this is true for both creatives and account management people. 

The aaa school of advertising is the leading establishment of its type on the continent and wants to attract people who have advertising in them, the best quality talent of the current crop of Matrics (high school graduates). This group of matriculants will be the first group to have graduated under the outcomes based education system.  

We need to reach them during a time when Matrics are already out of day to day schooling and studying on their own. Luckily this generation are seldom off MXit the mobile social platform and Facebook and the internet forms a massive part of their life. Most haven't made up their mind as to what they will do next year and are googling for answers and the majority really don't know what career opportunities exist in the ad industry.

I was involved with social and mobile agency Brandsh in the development of the digital portion of the campaign, the original concept and poster design was done by through the line agency Switch.

In answer to the initial sms the reply will send exploring matrics to a WAP site with more information and to the campaign website Its in You, here they will be able to explore student and alumni work as well as upload advertising, comment and rate local advertising and work from around the world. They will also have another opportunity to enter the bursary competition.

The initial activation is using a full range of media including a poster and pamphlet campaign. A Facebook page and a YouTube channel have been created both linking to the promotional site, extra traffic will be generated by Cost per Click (CPC) mobile advertising, Google Adwords and Facebook ads. A short while into the campaign a MXit competition will launch.

Not only is this campaign tightly targeted, but it also demonstrates the fact that the aaa school is on the edge of modern communications trends.

In July this year I joined the aaa school of advertising as the head of the faculty of marketing and advertising of the Johannesburg campus. The aaa school of advertising is owned by the professional body of the advertising industry through the ACA (Association for Communication and Advertising) and is only private academic institution in Sub Sahara Africa accredited by the IAA (International Advertising Association), New York, USA. 

Graduates ALSO receive an IAA Diploma.

Is that the failwhale over @ MyGenius?

Earlier this week I asked the owners of South Africa business networking site MyGenius to delete my profile and along with it went all my blogs and comments. I now longer wish to associated with the site.

For a while I was one of their most active and loyal members, writing literally hundreds of posts mostly with marketing advice for small entrepreneurs and responding with more than 700 responses on other peoples questions and comments.

I wasn't the only one either, MyGenius was a vibrant, supportive and caring community with discussions that focused a lot on business advice and support but with a healthy dose of fun and humour thrown in.

Although I have never received much in the way of direct business, a core group of members became pretty good friends with business and social interaction both on and offline. At one stage, because I believed in the community, I opted to pay R100 a month for membership for very minimal benefits over the ‘rank of file’

So what happened? Well a number things which changed the dynamics completely:

• As the site got bigger so it started losing its intimacy.
• A group of vociferous members, who believed that they needed profile on the threads to be effective on the site, but without much to say, started attacking and flaming the regular contributors. Many of whom merely shrugged shoulders and moved on.
• The owners decided that they needed a better return and blocked most of the existing functionality except those who were prepared to pay R75 monthly as paid up members, to take on Genius status as its known.

I decided not to continue with my subscription and stopped paying and was accordingly downgraded. I took this step partly because the quality of interaction had already decreased dramatically but also because in comparison to other online networks MyGenius now didn't offer value. Furthermore I believed that the move would result in a fall off of members and a therefore even a further reduction in value.

I wrote a discussion thread to inform my followers that they would need to contact me directly or follow me at other places and leaving my profile up just “in case” and still a member of the community moved on.

Last month I received a call from one of the MG members who wanted my assistance by being the speaker at an event organised at her initiative to promote one of the member's undertakings , a Spa and lodge outside Johannesburg. I agreed to do so and even waived my speaker’s fee completely. I also booked the lodge for the Flying Solo unconference in September.

As part of the promotion to MG members it was suggested that I write a “blog” from “beyond the grave” so to speak and invite my supporters to attend the event. I did this in the style of an update and was posted by the member who had suggested it, as I was no longer a Genius I had lost that functionality.

The resulting furore, malicious and downright rude posts as well as the hate mail which both I and the organiser both received were flabbergasting. But are not isolated incidents. I was even insulted by being accused of having questionable ethics and being of low class by the MG owners. The reason was that instead of them seeing the value offered by a professional speaker speaking at an event for FREE the focus was on a perception that I had set out to avoid paying the R75 membership in order to make the post, and that someone else had used their membership to do so. I still battle to understand the logic.

This and because of the threat of a boycott of the event being organised I was asked to withdraw my participation which I did. The event was today.

Is there soemthing to learn? Communities only exist because they offer value to their members, quite possibly MyGenius still offers value, I suspect mainly to those who have already lost the ears of the gossips in the school car park. Often outwardly brave but actually insecurely hidden behind their computer screens disconnected from the people they are addressing, they say stuff they would never say face to face.

But consider this:

• Even online communities are brands and unacceptable language and attacks should be rooted out.
• Online comments are still subject to the normal laws protecting individuals against defamation. People have been sued.
• Quality contribution should be encouraged, even incentivised.
• If you are going to charge make sure that you offer real value, much more than what members can get for free say on LinkedIn, ecademy and Plaxo.
• Online communities are fickle, with a short attention span and with low exit barriers and massive choice, and can and will easily leave.

It is possible that I haven’t understood what the site owners wish to achieve, maybe the they felt the more supportive environment doesn't work for them. For people like me and a number of the previous more supportive community with whom I have spoken the current ethos is not what they want and they are reconsidering their involvement.

I've already made that decision and one thing is for sure MyGenius is one place online where you won’t find me!

(The failwhale is the error screen image that appears whenever Twitter has a technical problem)

UPDATE:

LOL: it apears that on Nov 18 a link to this blog was posted on MyGenius and - Once again there is a hurricane in a teacup - with discussion threads discussing me . "small things amuse ..."

Why social media should be impacting your thinking.

Crowd Policing, originally uploaded by Dom Dada.

South Africans are connected. If you are connected to the internet you are likely to be participating in social media. If you have a cell phone in your pocket, you could be connected.

South Africa has one of the highest penetrations and usage of cell phones in the world and international ad servers rank South Africa in the top three countries internationally as consumers of mobile advertising, just as once we were one of the top five most connected countries in the world. If you are a marketer and you are ignoring social media you may already be a dinosaur. Maybe not a dinosaur yet, but certainly perched precariously on the edge of the tar pit!

Technology has created the ability for people to connect, any people and all people and on a massive global scale. It has also allowed information to be accessed, accumulated, stored and shared in a manner we could never have dreamed would have been possible. What is more we don’t even need to look for information – it finds us through sexy RSS feeds.

The control of information has always been an important source of power. In the commercial world information about products and services has been carefully managed by the business, brands built and positioned with advertising and carefully controlled PR spin for so long that we think that’s the way things are, that business owns the brand?

What the social web has done is effectively shift the power in the transaction. The customer is now irrevocably in control, information, opinions and thoughts are now all in the public domain, people sharing their opinions with not only their immediate circle but with the world. The most important market conversation now is not the conversation between the business and the customer it is the conversation between your current customer and your prospective customer. The power in the transaction is being transferred to the market, which is talking amongst each other. That power of controlling what they read is gone, and will never be back.

What this does is fundamentally change the way we must think about markets and how we think about marketing and branding and how we engage in the market conversation instead of trying to manipulate it, or instruct it.

Social media enables us to identify our target markets to the unit of one, the individual. This implies that the widespread use of mass media will continue to reduce in effectiveness not only because of the lack of trust consumers have in the process of brand manipulation, but also because products and services can be customised, personalised and delivered economically and profitably to market segments that were previously just too small to identify.

Social Media changes the way we coordinate, motivate and manage our staff, whom we can see as url’s in an organisational cloud rather than a block on an organogram. Check it out, your business, probably already has staff pages on Facebook, where your employees are hanging out.

There are many who feel that social media is just another buzzword, a fad soon to fade away like many others have. Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 are not just technology, they are a response to a fundamental change in the way society connects, how information is understood and how perceptions are being formed. Adapting and changing to them mean a complete rethink in the way we understand data, information and customers. It means a rethink in the way we coordinate and build businesses. It even forces a rethink in the way we measure organisational performance.

For the real marketer this represents a huge opportunity to deliver value, because nothing else is going to cut it in the new marketing landscape.

Google is a great brand

photo by marcos papapopolous

In my view Google is a great brand. My views contrast with those of brand consultant Patrick Carmody who in a recent article on Bizcommunity, states that Google is not a strong brand at all it is merely “the name of a phenomenal search engine” and could easily be replaced by another as in the new connected world “ we are loyal to a value delivery system, not a brand”, and in a follow up comment refers to the new Cuil search engine as an example of a how “we can shift our loyalty instantaneously and en masse from a very established global brand to a brand new brand (like Cuil)"

Reviews of Cuil have been disappointing although it claims to index a greater proportion of the web and organise in a more logical manner than Google my own experience and those in my twitter stream don’t bear that out good but certainly not great is the overall verdict. In fact leading technology blog TechCrunch refers to Cuil having turned from potential Google killer to Google lunch in an instant. Cuil has in fact fallen victim to the most basic of branding mistakes by building massive hype without substance and in my opinion has a long way to go before it is even recognised in the same competitive frame as Google.

It probably worth discussing what brands are, they are essentially a collection of perceptions in the mind of the customer or other stake holder. The easiest way to understand brands is to see them as “reputation” in this way the brand concept can be applied to anything from products and services to people. Reputation is gathered from a number of sources including advertising but most importantly performance and the most powerful way of building a brand is by the consistent delivery to the customer of value. "Your brand is created out of customer contact and the experience your customers have of you." - Stelios Haji-Ioannou, EasyGroup.

In contrast to Patrick’s view I believe that Google has engaged in extensive brand building, the guiding principle from its inception has been “focus on the user and all else follows” brand building is not brand mantra’s, doctrines and advertising, these are tools to understand and spread the word. Brand building has got to do with delivering value to customers.

The presence of the internet especially the social web is often put forward as a reason why branding is changing. What is actually happening is that it is forcing brand management to be even more vigilant on how brands deliver value. The real power of social media is found in its ability to connect people and that this connection leaves a searchable history. So networks have grown, both numerically and geographically and the opinion of the more than 184 million bloggers worldwide can be easily sort. Brands and the companies creating them are having to understand that they do no longer control the flow of information.

A recent twebinar “Who really owns your brand” and the accompanying tweets discuss this view, a view concludes that brands are a partnership. Brands have in fact never changed in their essence; they are the opinions of the customers and other stake holders of the performance of the product or service. For a more in depth discussion refer to the “The Economist eBook on Brands and Branding"

Google is in my mind without doubt a strong brand. Google is recognised as the predominant search engine in the world, it is the automatic choice for millions, the majority, of internet users. Google is also a collection of other advanced web based services, from superior email, document collaboration and social networking services that have certainly made it a very significant and routine part of my day. But I’m not the only one, Millward Brown rate Google as the biggest brand in the world with a value of $86bn and Superbrands announced Google as the top brand in the UK last month. Around 9 out of 10 internet searches in the UK are done with Google

Patrick, I agree with what appears to be the main thrust of your article that the branding landscape is changing, but on this point. Not at all.

This is repost of an article I wrote for bizcommunity.

Social Media is Archaic

Social media is archaic. It is pushing the world back from a process focused efficient market place into the village based economies that existed before the Industrial Revolution. A really big village, the world. In the village craftsmen made products and deliver services for customers they knew and understood, mostly they produced customised products for specific requirements.

Crowded market street
Originally uploaded by Charlie Hudson

Then came the industrial revolution – bringing prosperity and consumerism to millions. The industrial revolution was all about efficiency. The rules of that game was to drive profitability by productisation, the more standard the product the cheaper to produce and the greater the margin. Mass products to mass markets, promoted using mass media, and to make it work - brand management.

But people have never really been mass consumers, the average Joe is largely a myth. People are all individuals. Except for the basics people have always wanted products designed to suit them specifically but routinely buy average mass produced products and never use most of the features in them.

The internet has created a new market space, a market in which it can still be efficient to build customised product in volume.

It also turned the one way mass communication into a conversation. Because millions upon millions of people are connected. The connection by internet or by mobile phone, has also recreated the buzz of the village, people talking to one another.

This connection between people has threatened the traditional thinking of branding as a process of manipulating perceptions. People trust people more than they do corporates and bureaucracies.

So it’s ironic that technology has taken society in a full circle – from communities and then back to communities again.