Manhattan Marketing Maven

Optimizing the TV-Twitter Connection

 

Twitter has become a companion medium to TV. People watch their favorite shows, with a computer or mobile device at hand, tweeting reactions to the characters, the plot, the action sequences and the story line. They also tweet about brands while they watch. 

The volume of brand tweets can now be correlated with specific TV shows to create a new double-barreled channel for brands to engage their fans and more selectively target likely customers or brand advocates. Bluefin Labs, the social analytics firm associated with MIT Media Labs, has been keeping track of tweets as they relate to TV viewing. 

They found links between brands and the shows their fans watch most, which they call Social TV Analytics. For example Wal-Mart fans are most likely to tweet about America’s Supernanny on Lifetime or the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders on CMT or Las Vegas Jailhouse on TRUTV. In contrast, Target buyers tweet about or during CMT’s Top Secret Recipe or HGTV’s My Yard Goes Disney. 

It has always been assumed that there is lifestyle linkage between TV shows and the people who opt-in to watch them. Apparently this affinity dynamic is true for Twitter as well. 

The data can be correlated by brand and by category according to Bluefin.  For example,  3 of Coke’s Top 10 tweeted shows are on ESPN. But there are no sports shows among the Top 10 tweeted shows for the Pepsi faithful. Some of the results are predictable. Beer drinkers tweet during sports shows and wine drinkers tweet during fashion and relationship programming. TV programming and commercials have always prompted talk. Now everyone is a TV and a social critic with instant digital access to an audience on Twitter and beyond. 

It’s a chicken-and-egg question; do people with lifestyle preferences tweet about brands because they advertise on these shows and networks? Or is there an organic subject matter trigger that drives brand tweets within specific content? 

The relationship between TV and Twitter provokes 4 new thoughts. 

1. Should brands better align with highly tweeted shows and invest in added commercials and product placement to optimize fan engagement? 

2. Should brands anticipate heavy brand tweeting during particular shows and staff social communities to respond in-context and in real-time to fan comments and posts? 

3. Should networks merchandise tweets as a way to expand fan bases and better harvest brand advertising budgets? 

4. Should consumers expect increasingly integrated commercial messages in programming that intertwines their TV watching and tweeting habits?

Twitter is adding a new dimension to TV. It will be very interesting to see how it plays out and which brands leverage this dynamic inter-media relationship. 

 

A 2011 Perspective on Media Mix

It’s a new year and a new fiscal budget cycle. Marketers now must turn those approved yet swag numbers into operating tactical plans, purchase orders and cash flow models. This necessitates choices focused on channels, media mix and targeting strategy. Creating the right mix is a puzzle that is unique to each brand. 

In approaching the task, several truths need to be considered:

• Each channel has its identified strengths, weaknesses and optimal uses.
• Business objectives must drive the process.
• Clarity is critical. You have to know what you’re going after at the outset.
• Matching target customers and prospects with media use yields efficiency.
• Social and mobile media are ascendant.
• Smartphone penetration, prompted by tablet PCs and Android, will drive use.
• Search and E-mail are proven performers year over year.
• Facebook advertising, promotions or engagement is on everyone’s list

A new way of conceptualizing the marketing mix is emerging that looks at three lines of attack orchestrated to operate independently and inter-dependently. Online and offline marketing are planned together and synchronized to insure that the brand speaks with one single voice to achieve maximum reach, frequency and impact. 

Owned Media are brand assets and tightly controlled real estate represented by brand websites, Facebook or Twitter pages, unique games or functionality deployed across the web, a consumer database and its attendant opt-in permissions. These assets become the canvas for presenting the band story in all its nuanced detail and for creating or using content to systematically and continuously engage customers and prospects. 

Paid Media are a variety of ad units in a mix of contextual landscapes purchased from third parties, that give brands the opportunity to integrate themselves into customer lifestyles and/or work flow patterns. Paid media can be integrated or interruptive and can use a wide array of tactics, including content creation, to drive traffic to owned assets or engage and enroll customers directly. 

Earned Media is the result of consumer engagement and resonance; those added impressions and viral pass-alongs that happen when a brand genuinely connects with it’s customer base. This can be partially planned but is often serendipitous. Earned media is the report card for how well a brand orchestrates its owned and paid media. 

This new model is being implemented against a cautious economic outlook for 2011. A StrongMail survey of 900 businesses found that only half expect to increase ad spending in the new year. In a similar survey of agency and client executives, RSW/US found that 56 percent of clients expect spending to be flat or down. In this environment dollars will be shifted from traditional channels (e.g. TV, print, radio, direct mail, events, banner ads) to emerging digital media. The question is --- how much and where to? 

The disparity between consumer media usage and the flow of ad dollars as documented last summer by Mary Meeker is confirmed by data assembled by eMarketer which shows sharp increases in mobile use (though from a low base), increasing use of the Internet, mostly driven by social networking, and steady but morphing TV/video patterns, especially among Generation Y, 42 percent of whom watch TV, movies and online video on their computers. These patterns are roughly the same whether you count percent of total media use by medium or absolute time spent with each medium. 

That said some of the growing channels are not instantly available or fully mature. Mobile access is growing exponentially as is the desire for deals, yet not all audiences are eager to check-in or download coupons and many phones aren’t yet equipped to facilitate these interactions. Demographics dictate mobile readiness. The older your audience; the less likely they are ready for mobile campaigns. 

In the same vein, only 5% of Americans have used location based or check-in services so being an early adapter necessarily means targeting a niche. Similarly there is no standard for QR codes nor is there any real penetration of QR code readers so brands using them will trade off first-mover bragging rights against modest reach and uncertain customer experiences. 

In the race to grasp new advertising opportunities, the likely reach, frequency and effectiveness must be evaluated in terms of the overlap between channel users and a brand’s most likely customers and prospects. Then the trade-off from what worked in the past to what might work in the future must be forecast. In this context, Facebook, with its enormous reach and selective targeting capabilities, looks like a safe bet in spite of their aspirations for ultimate control of advertising and their lack customer service and data sharing for most advertisers. 

As you structure your marketing mix for 2011, consider four vectors for evaluating the effectiveness of your choices. 

Business Effectiveness. Nothing counts if you don’t sell what you need to sell. Marketing expenditures need to be measured against business goals by plotting the return on investment, calculating the margins and assessing the cost of sale in comparison to the anticipated profit. 

Communications Impact. Is your message getting through? These are the classic brand measures of message relevancy and persuasion, A&U, brand awareness, preference and intention to buy. 

Media Efficiency. Are you getting the most bang for each buck?  Measure the effective reach by counting the cost-per-thousand and the click-thru rates. Then calculate the impact by looking at the cost-per-acquisition/retention/sale and by comparing this data ith cost-per-click. 

Brand Equity. Are you winning hearts and minds? The Net Promoter Score is becoming the benchmark although many marketers also assess customer satisfaction and calculate brand loyalty based on repeat purchases, referrals or redeemed offers.

 

Radio Redux

When I was a kid everybody listened to baseball and rock and roll on portable radios. From the time I was 12 till I went away to college I fell every night asleep listening to the radio tucked under my pillow. I had favorite stations and personal relationships with disc jockeys. 

Years later as a radio network and radio industry executive, I sold radio as a highly personal, targetable, mobile, local medium that was eclipsed but not killed by TV and cable.  I argued that radio has a unique psychological connection with its listeners that other media can’t duplicate. Now in the digital age, radio’s exclusivity on mobility is gone and its place as the launching platform for bands and musical artists has been steadily diminishing, but radio continues to morph and survive. 

And if you don’t believe me, take a look at recent national telephone survey of 1753 people (12+) conducted by Edison Research and Arbitron. Where 78% of respondents agreed that people will listen to as much AM/FM radio as they do now and where 27% or 70 million people admitted to listening to radio online in the last month. 

Other salient and life-affirming (at least for radio) facts that emerged are …

40% of young people (12-24) would listen to more FM radio if their cell phones had an FM tuner. More than half said they’d be very disappointed if their favorite station went off the air. 

Radio listening is done primarily over the air (74%) versus 23% online via computer audio streams. A third of respondents had heard of HD(high definition) radio and 3 out of 4 were familiar with SiriusXM satellite radio. 

39% still expect radio to introduce them to new sounds, new artists and new musical genres, though the Internet with 31% is closing fast. Pandora is a big factor. 

43 million people listened to online radio in the last week. Yours truly is one of them. Evidently listeners like me, who tune in on their computers at work, can cherry pick the best stations in their favorite format from across the dial and across the globe. It’s about control, variety and fewer commercials. 

Online radio is attracting 15% more listeners than AM/FM listeners combined. Cars, MP3 players and cell or smartphones are the preferred reception devices. Not surprising, big radio listeners listen more over the air and online than the average listener. Yet only 1 in 3 have ever visited a radio station web site. 

The online radio audience is worth selling to. More than half of online listeners (55%) are college-educated men and two-thirds are 25-54 and employed full-time with almost 1 in 5 earning $100K+ HH Incomes. 

As a guy with a face made for radio, there’s goodness here. Nothing has ever killed off the radio star because the audio medium has a distinctive psychology which pushes buttons and provokes memories and stirs emotions in ways other media don’t. Radio has a unique and personal  “method of action” which is its hedge against invention, fads and technology.

6 New Insights Into Media Usage

In a world of continuous, always-on media consumption and endless media hype, most marketers think they know what consumers like, what consumers use most and how often consumers are engaged with different media channels. Yet every-so-often new data challenges our assumptions.

 

That’s case with L.E.K. Consulting’s 2009 Media Consumption Survey, an online survey of 2000+ households, conducted in December 2009, that addressed media use in 28 media types. This study sought to identify changes in media consumption habits, find opportunities in new media and cast light on how the recession has affected media consumption. The data and the implications weren’t what I expected and made me think.

 

Here’s quick summary:

 

Channels Cross-Pollinate. Thirty-eight percent of consumers said they’d pay an extra fee to get content from cable channels on their computers or on their smart phones. This data validates the “content is king” notion and supports the business strategies driving Yahoo, Google and others. It also implies that marketers should orchestrate and integrate campaigns across channels and that video-to-go will soon become a common expectation which will dramatically increase demand for portable bandwidth.

 

Radio isn’t Dead It’s Gone Online. One third of respondents listen to Internet radio services for 5.8 hours each week; a third more than listen to satellite radio. Interestingly 83 percent still listen to traditional radio for an average of 8.1 hours each week. Neither TV, cable nor the Web killed the radio star which is a testament to its portability and targeted content offerings. Fifty-two percent of survey respondents listen to the radio and listening to music is second only to TV, ahead of the Internet, in terms of time allocated to media. Americans craft individual soundtracks to their lives and use music as a mood elevator.

 

E-Readers Are Heavy New Media Users. Not only do E-Reader owners drive the market for books but they consume significantly more new media than iPod owners and the general public. It’s probably not much of a stretch for educated literate readers to invest more disposable time and discretionary income using emerging media. E-Readers are four times more likely to see movies online, play more Web-based games and listen to more Internet radio than iPod Users, Facebook fanatics or the general public. Think of E-Readers as the vanguard of the digital proletariat.

 

50+ is the New Black. Don’t forget or ignore the power of the Boomers who still wield great numbers, great enthusiasm for new or revolutionary ideas and great wealth even as they age. The 50-64 year old age group uses new media almost twenty percent more than 25-39 year olds. Boomers do the most e-mail, play the most online games and pace every other age group in doing online tasks.

 

Everyone Multi-tasks. It’s no longer just teenagers who text and play online games with opponents in China while watching TV. One-third of consumers responding to the survey, watch TV and go online simultaneously. Nineteen percent listen to the radio while surfing the Web and eleven percent talk on the phone. Look for smart marketers to design campaigns to leverage and capitalize on this behavior in real time.       

 

TV is Still Our Mass Medium. Online TV is just starting and in spite of the growth of DVRs and time shifting, TV represents the biggest gross audiences and the most time spent with media. The margin is big – 38 hours per week for TV versus 7.6 hours online. TV is still the place to launch new ideas and revitalize brands.

Valuing & Validating Video Online

If video online is any indicator; on the web, seeing is believing. The number of videos viewed on YouTube -- 10.3 billion -- in September 2009 exceeded the number of core Google searches by a full billion. That's billion with a "b". 

Then consider the scale of use. More than 168 million US internet surfers watched nearly 26 billion videos online in September -- an average of 154 videos per viewer. Where did they find the time? That's roughly 84 percent of the total US internet audience (comScore says 81 percent) watching an average of 9.8 hours of video during the month where the average length was 3.8 minutes. Imagine how many of others tasks, demands, attractions and people vie for 10 active hours a month of your time! 

The number of people watching video online is up year-over-year by 46 percent. And the use of video on mobile devices is up 70 percent to 15 million Americans watching 3 hours and 15 minutes of mobile video each according to The Nielsen Company. And all this is going on while TV usage hits an all time high of 141 hours per month. We are more addicted to the tube than ever before but now the tube is following us around, available 24/7 and luring us with more memes every day.

The implications of this data suggest that every marketer better grab a video camera and get cracking. Consider these realities.

Video is the expectation. People expect to see it and hear it. They use YouTube heavily for search and younger people default to YouTube as their first point of web entry. 

Video is ubiquitous. Facebook, MySpace, Hulu and hundreds or thousands of sites feature all kinds of video. Production is cheap as is distribution. Anyone can shoot, produce or edit and grab 15 minutes of fame and many achieve different levels of virility.

Video validates. If you aren't producing video you aren't serious, real or as big as you claim to be. Video is becoming table stakes for online marketers. Presence trumps production values. Marketers are re-purposing all kinds of video assets in service to a growing appetite for online viewing. 

Video varies. Production quality ranges from childish to expert. Angles, animation, narration and new forms of story telling are emerging all the time. Reality can be dissected or distorted in service to abstract points of view or commercial messaging. 

OLX.com Aims for the Global Classified Listings Crown

French born Princetonian Fabrice Grinda built hiscareer as a serial entrepreneur by taking online business concepts developed in the US to global audiences. Now as Co-CEO of OLX.com he aspires to offer the best free global listings site on the web; "a Craigslist 2.0 for the world with functionalityy as good or better than listings on vertical subject sites."

With online marketing experience in southern and eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin Americaand $23 million in venture capital from the likes of General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund and DN Capital, OLX.com is operating in 39 languages and countless dialects providing strong competition for newspapers all over the world.  

The global recession, eBay's consistent missteps with sellers and Craiglist's move to charge for high value listing categories all give Fabrice reason to believe he can build a consistent growth business on the back of this universal transactional utility. By asking for just an e-mail address, providing cross-site AJAX search tools and enhanced tagging, a fast WAP application that circumvents limited infrastructure in many countries and empowers zillions of cell phone users and by keeping everything free to both buyers and sellers, he expects to take share from the US leaders even though OLX is hardly known in the US. Simultaneously he is expanding the reach of his classified sites to under-served and under-penetrated geographies. His strategy of PPC-driven growth combined with seven acquisitions in places like Spain, Denmark, China, Argentina, Italy and Russia, position OLX to exploit emerging markets and take on established western European classified leaders.

The business model is hedged by providing white label listings applications to as many as 20 social networks around the globe. OLX is behind classified listings on Friendster.com and Sonico.com;the Facebook of Latin America. Using these tactics and revenue streams the site expects to break even by early 2010.

From the search-and-find perspective humans are "shockinglysimilar globally when it comes to using classified sites," Fabrice says.  And while there are local differences among categories and different kinds of merchandise or services are more active in different areas, the utility model offers scale at predicable operating costs and margins. Bad times accelerate the number of listings and the number of searches in selected categories; especially jobs and real estate. But the biggest challenge or complication is digital security to ward off endless attempts at spam and scams. On a global basis OLX deletes 66 percent of the 2 million listing attempts made each week and uses a wide array of security tools and tactics to protect users and escape hackers. 

The bottom line?

To be a successful entrepreneur you don't have to invent or re-invent the wheel. Sometimes you just have to expose it to people who haven't seen it yet or can't get or make one themselves. 

Getting Started Using Mobile Marketing

Prudent forward-looking professionally paranoid marketers should get started and get smarter about mobile media and marketing now. During the ascent phase (especialloy during the recession) prices are low, content and merchant partners are flexible and open to experimentation. The trick is to get an oar in the water before anybody gets a lock on a killer app, rolls out a game-changing technology or corners critical markesegments.

Here are 5 tips to get started in framing your own mobile marketing program.

Focus on Core Apps. Lead with your long suit. Decide which of your core products or services are most useful while customers are on the go and start there. Don’t try everything at once. Try one thing. Start with the service most in-demand by customers or prospects, the items that is most closely identified with your brand identity or your unique selling proposition.

Start Small. The first step puts you squarely in test-and-learn mode. Ask customers to do one thing. Ask them to choose, vote, get a coupon, set an alert, or take an exclusive offer. The idea is to validate the channel and test your ability to influence incremental changes in behavior. You want to get them to do one thing, easily and quickly so that they like it it, appreciate the effort and add to their warm and fuzzy feelings about your brand.

Market Across Platforms. Prepare for a range of phones and systems. Also prepare to have responses to mobile creative on the web, in e-mail or even by phone. Mobile apps are critical for a few but the real value-add for customers or prospects is rounding out the brand experience. Use a mobile test to get customers to respond to an e-mail or to an ad, to view and vote or to offer opinions about something they see or hear in another media channel. The idea is to associate your brand with your customers’ lifestyles in a way that they can easily interact with you.

Make an Time-Sensitive Offer. In return for taking a mobile action within a fixed time frame customers should get a reward. Rewards can take the form of contest entries, discounts, and exclusive access to people, places or things or things of value like freebies or coupons. Mobile media is a direct response platform. Many customers come to it with expectations set by DR marketers.

Ask About It. Do a post-action customer satisfaction survey using e-mail and mobile media to gauge customer reactions and gather customer input and feedback. Mobile marketing is evolving and who better to help you plan step number two than the folks who responded to your initial foray?    

 

Re-Imagining My Morning Newspaper

I just read a blog at NYTImes.com and it struck me that I must be the last Luddite who blindly clings to the print version because I can read it on the subway or in the can. 

This belated revelation is ironic not only because I know a bunch of guys at the Times but because I[ve always fantasized about having a personal newsroom that could monitor and report on the stuff that I either desperately care about or casually stumble upon 24/7. And yet its been happening for a while with a richness that approaches my fantasy and I've ignored it even though I get several e-mail alerts each day from the Times and have signed up for mobile election night alerts..

It finally dawned on me that the stories in the paper are the tip of the iceberg and that audio, video, still images, impressions, reactions and corrections to almost everything I read is a click away. Plus there are options for sharing, interacting, reacting and enriching the experience. If only I had the time to invest in paying attention to all this stuff!

Maybe I've missed this because I hate staring into that cathode ray tube. Maybe I'm too old or too blind to read the paper online. Or maybe I missed it because I'm trapped in a 19th century print paradigm fed by myopia and the nostalgia of having been a paperboy. Or maybe I missed it because the Times hasn't really opened my eyes to this digital world because its marketers are trapped in a print cirrculation paradigm and haven't reached me with either direct or digital marketing.

Now that I'm learning to use social networks and helping clients get their arms around the digital world, I guess I have to re-imagine the daily newspaper and see it as a hub of information and interaction rather than just the great gray lady that arrives on my doorstep every morning.

2 Personal Productivity Tools: Desperately Needed

In a self-service 24/7 digital world I need some serious help to keep my data in synch and to get all my fabulous gizmos to work with me rather than against me.

There are two tools that I desperately need. They may or may not exist. If they exist and you know about them I implore you to call, contact or cue me about how to get them. If they don't exist I beg you to invent them, mash them up or get somebody in India to create them fast. I hereby renounce all claims and future royalties.

Universal Address-book. The idea is to update things once in a single place and then quickly and easily share the data across platforms. I want a tool that will allow me to data enter and store my personal database of addresses and contacts on the web and download it with a click to every computer, phone, PDA and other intelligent device I have. I've tried to concentrate all my updates and changes in Outlook and though Plaxo claims to have a tool like this, I can't download it and can't seem to use it.

Global Cellphone Dialing Software. I want a software program that will know when to dial the extra zero and when to dial the access codes necessary to use all the stored numbers in my phones. Unfortunately the numbers I enter are keyed to the national system or to my providers' protocols. But when I travel, there's always an added access code or you have to dial 08 in-country versus 8 from abroad. I want a patch that will suss out this stuff digitally and automatically understand what I've got stored and do whatever is needed to make the connection, save me time and reduce my anxiety. 

If I could get, find or discover these tools, I'd have a lot more time to contact, connect or converse with all those people at all those numbers I've been madly collecting, storing and updating.     

Media Never Dies

TV killed the radio star. Cable knocked off TV. The Internet killed cable. Thus said the pundits. But real people add to and adjust their media use. Media never dies.

Now according to Knowledge Networks SRIs couch potatoes are being eclipsed by "Streamies"  --- video addicts chained to their computers who are much heavier online netizens than the average American. These people are fascinated by the growing quantity and quality of video choices. As evidenced by the heavy male skew -- 2/3rds more young adult men, twice as many older adult men-- the number and variety of moving porn images available online keep them coming back.

Teens are the biggest "Streamies." Forty-three percent of boys 12-17 and 40% of girls watched streaming video at least once during the past week. These teenagers spend 28% more time online than the average teen but their online viewing is not diminishing their TV/cable addiction.

For young adults (18-34) 36% of men and 16% of women are madly streaming video and spending 41% more time doing it than their online counterparts. And for real adults (35-64) 21% of men and 11% of women are investing time in online video, a whopping 67% increase over the non-streaming members of their age cohort.

A healthy amount of this viewing takes place during daytime, a testament to either the growing appeal of business content or the appeal of taking care of business on the boss's time, bandwidth and keyboard.