Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

I was chatting this weekend with an Organic alum about the value of entertainment content online. One of the cardinal rules I learned in working with clients like 20th Century Fox is that movie promos have permission to be much much more intrusive into the digital experience than any other form of advertising. In 2004 or so, Organic developed a lot of really aggressive takeovers for the Yahoo homepage, for example, and people tolerated and even embraced this content. Picture Wolverine slashing out from behind the homepage for XMen, and you'll get the idea.

A couple of years later, you started to see media platforms leverage movie content as a kind of reverse product placement tool. Google, for example, has partnered with blockbuster titles in Summer 2006 (The DaVinci Code) and 2007 (The Bourne Ultimatum) to promote the launch of Google Maps, Google Earth, etc.  In each case, the film content drove interest in trying out new online tools.  I'm surprised not to see a major studio-web portal partnership (yet?) this summer.

Now Papa John's pizza is using movie previews to drive traffic to its site, in this case partnering with The Mummy franchise to offer an exclusive trailer. It's a smart relationship given the overlap in their audiences - I guess Adam Sandler wasn't available. Even though the basic value proposition of the web is ubiquity, it shows that exclusivity can still mean something online, particularly for premium content like movies. This campaign would have been even more powerful if the only place you could see a Mummy trailer was on Papa Johns.com

Misha Cornes

The world needs more loveable college scamps looking to make a quick buck on this Internet thing.  Part Google AdWords, part Million Dollar Homepage, two Irish Masters students have created an ingenious value proposition:  "redefine" a word by buying it from them (at $1 a letter) and then linking it to the website of your choice.  This is also known as buying a search term.

Hurry!  Viagra and Britney Spears are still available.

http://www.thebigwordproject.com/

Misha Cornes

Behold wis.dm, a site for those of us seeking the instant gratification of public opinion.

Anyone can ask a question, however your post must be answerable with a blunt "yes" or "no". Questions range from the inane "Do you like to lemon in your water?" to the philosophical "Is mankind capable of obtaining overall peace?". Intriguing questions can spark discourse in the comments section and users are ranked on their dialogue contributions. Based on your answers over time, you begin to see which members you are most compatible with (could this emerge into a potential dating site?)

Marketers' dream or screen suck? You decide.

Angela Di Pietro

When big brands lose some of their luster, there are a few common culprits.  One is the inherent pressure of growing too fast (think Starbucks).  Another is a kind of institutional inertia that sets in as a company ages.  Smaller, more innovative companies step in and steal away market share (think Gap).   

But can sticking it to the man play a part in brand switching?  According to the Underdog Theory of Marketing, it can:

"When you’re an underdog, a scrappy new company, your core customers can identify with you. When you get big, your earliest customers have trouble identifying with you anymore, and they drift away to find another brand can be meaningful to them again."

As long as the underdog can provide equal functionality, some people will defect.  There are a lot of examples in the world of interactive, most notably Google and MySpace.  In this article I discuss the Underdog Theory in greater detail, and offer some techniques that might help growing companies sustain their relevance and appeal.

Misha Cornes

Last week, we looked at the very progressive community strategy involved in the redesign of USA Today.  Now that it has been live for a while the feedback from their readers is rolling in, and it is not all good.

It seems that every week we are having conversations about how brands can harness the power of their communities. We are also having conversations about being prepared to receive criticism when you open up your brand to the public.

The strategy is sound and well implemented, but as Charlene Li at Forrester says, they can't afford to ignore the swell of negative feedback on the redesign from their readers.  The real test is what they do next. They are in a perfect position to respond to the very direct feedback from their most active members. A lack of response could damage the integrity of the whole strategy.

Their readers are loyal and have been trying to live with the new design but seem to be giving up fast. When you dissect their comments they are giving very direct feedback. They miss elements from the old design and identify problems with the new design. USA Today has opened a channel for their brand, but need to take advantage of the fact it is two-way.  I know they value their readership so they should respond to the comments in the forum, and defend their design decisions.

Once I got past my own issues with the layout, the new features have a lot of gravity. I find myself now scanning for the most recommended and commented articles.  It is safe to say my time on the site is extended by these features, but I haven't taken the leap to create my own profile. I  think overall it is a very brave strategy in a changing industry. I just hope that now they have given their readers a way to respond, they actually listen. Their site experience is as important to their brand as their content.

Conor Brady

About a week ago, I renewed my ski pass online for Keystone Colorado, a Vail Associates resort. The process was simple and reliable.  OK so that was the expected bit.  The thing that impressed me was what happened today.  I received a short and enticing email, welcoming me and linking me to a Resort Explorer.  This nicely designed flash site shows off all the cool aspects of the Vail Associates resorts.  Basically, it’s designed to get me excited about the vacation I have just invested in.

It does a good job.  It’s easy to navigate and the content is pretty good.  A few minutes on the site I am even more excited about this vacation.  The only call to action is to send a postcard to other people who will be going with me or to download a “Snowmate” desktop app that lets me know about snow conditions and events at my resort.  Usually I don’t use these but this one is truly useful to me and as it gets closer to my vacation I will be looking at it daily to figure how deep the base is at Keystone and what’s happening that week.

What impressed me most about this is what they didn’t do.  Normally when I get these post-booking emails, it is to offer me money off on something I don’t want yet.  It might be something I will be interested the week before I go but right now it would just be an annoyance.  Typically when I get these, the sender goes into my sub-conscious spam filter so that whenever I seen an email from them I automatically delete or ignore to delete later.  They have blown it with me from the outset.

In this case, the experience was so good that I will be looking out for offers or events in Keystone as it gets closer to my vacation.

My lesson from this is that by being patient early on in a customer relationship and investing in giving something valuable without expecting anything back from, they have bought my trust - even a bit of love. They will never be in my subconscious spam filter and I will most likely spend more with them as a result.

This seems so bloody obvious but how few companies actually do this.

I compare this with a cruise vacation I was investigating.  The company will remain nameless but I had to give them my email before I could get anything useful out of their site.  I was then bombarded by emails from one of their representatives offering me big discounts on vacations I had never shown any interest in.  It turned me off the whole category of vacations.

Adam Turinas

A report card published recently in the Seattle Times states that out of 500 major American corporations, only 10% of them received an acceptable rating (grade C or above) in how well they dealt with customers over the phone. Only nine companies (that's the number 9, not 9%) received an A rating. The article goes on to state that entire industries (cable and satellite TV, insurance, software) are failing to meet minimum standards for telephone customer service.

The report card was compiled by Paul English, creator of the brilliant gethuman 500 database. It rates companies for such criteria as:

• Can you hit zero to speak to an operator?
• Does the system let you know how long you will have to remain on hold?
• Does the caller have to repeat information such as names and account numbers?
• How easy is it to understand the human customer representative who eventually answers?

Some companies have begun to respond to complaints about confusing menus, hard-to-find operators and other annoyances and started to make changes. For the rest of them, the volunteer-run web site at gethuman.com provides a constantly updated cheat sheet for how to avoid hold rage and actually speak to a human being. Whether or not you'll be able to understand them when they answer the phone is another issue.

Daniel Modell

Google Maps now offers an interesting feature called Connect for Free that lets you call any listed business in the US. Using VOIP technology, it makes an instantaneous call to your telephone number (land line or mobile). Upon answering, the second call is placed to the business.

It worked perfectly when I tried it out for the first time today, and saved me the strenuous task of entering eleven numbers on my phone. It also offers to remember your phone number for repeat usage.

To hush potential concern over its abuse by pranksters, Google writes in its help page: Google takes fraud and spamming very seriously. We use technical methods to prevent future prank calls from the same user within a reasonable period of time. You won't be charged for any such calls.

Still, there's nothing to prevent the occasional one-off prank. There also doesn't seem to be an opt-out feature yet, or a Google account login requirement.

Daniel Modell

Earlier this month, we posted about the New York Times web site showing the date and stories from a few days before.

This isn't quite as strange, but today I encountered a banner placement on the Washington Post where the 728x90 and the 300x250 unit were mistakenly swapped.

Then again, it certainly was eye-catching. Keep that in mind next time you want your campaign to stand out.

Daniel Modell

I got on the sleeping pill kick (from a marketing perspective, that is) after I seeing a quirky print ad for TheyMissYou.com on BART.  It turned out to be part of a wider integrated campaign for Rozerem, a challenger brand in the so-called Insomnia Market from Takeda Pharmaceuticals of Japan.

It's not a bad way to peak pique your curiousity, but the intial video front-end leads into a disappointing, text-driven experience.  Prescription sleeping aids are a $2 billion a year business.  Surely, I thought, better-known brands would be using the web to add depth and color to the vague and hurried narrative of the typical drug spot.

How wrong I was.  Market leader Ambien's site could serve as it's own sleep aid (its patent is due to expire this year, opening the door to generic competitors).

Lunesta, the number two brand, seems to have spent most of its $215 milllion advertising budget (TNS Media Intelligence) on those butterfly-themed commercials.  The site is flat and corporate, designed in-house by Sepracor.

Why the reluctance to make the web a priority?

Can we expect more from Pfizer, currently in the last stages of approval for Indiplon, another prescription sleeping pill?

Misha Cornes