Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

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Fact and Fiction Behind the Fickle Teen Girl Demographic
When it comes to reaching teen girls online, traditional marketing efforts are as relevant as MySpace. They're not only a bundle of contradictions, they're still building their identities and moving among these different identities every day.

This target audience -- let's call her Caitlyn -- changes identities as often as she changes ringtones on her phone. At 13-years-old, Caitlyn has several different online identities: a scholastic identity, a church identity and others for volunteering, family time and, of course, her BFFs. So who's Caitlyn? She's all of these and more. How can you possibly craft long-term marketing campaigns around that? The situation gets more complicated: Three years from now, just when you thought you had her figured out, she turns 16 and the process starts all over again.

Our research into this fickle communications target has uncovered many insights.

For one, many marketers believe a teen girl is hyper-connected, that she's always online sharing everything -- including the good, bad and ugly about your company. But brands rarely enter teen girls' minds unless they are top fashion brands. Truth be told, they're much more preoccupied with their own social activities than marketing messages.

Teens are also believed to be early adopters of the latest technology tools. While this is true to a degree, teen girls are also insecure, so purchasing decisions don't always come down to the latest, greatest products. Caitlyn, for example, spent an hour in the Verizon store before deciding on a pink Razr instead of the Sony Ericsson W580i. Why? She trusts the Razr and she doesn't want people to think she's trying too hard to look cool.

Another fallacy is that teen girls need constant stimulation due to attention deficiencies. The assumption is they're almost all doing something else while they browse and that they leave sites they find too difficult to figure out. Yes, they multitask, but it's because they're so busy balancing homework and social lives; doing five things at once makes them feel they have a semblance of control.

And while many believe this generation is more socially concerned than any other generation, some teens are not ardent social activists. Many are not quite ready to abandon their fast-food lifestyle, so social posturing plays a small part in some teens' altruistic tendencies.

Lastly, it's widely believed that teen girls can filter information they find online, but this isn't always the case -- especially when it comes to information regarding mental, sexual and general health issues. She might end up on Yahoo Answers or WebMD, but Caitlyn is also guilty of Googling her health questions, which leaves her susceptible to misinformation.

Given the realities, here are some best practices for marketers:

1. See teen girls as social entrepreneurs and create a cause. While parents may no longer be the targets of teen rebellion, harmfully perceived ideas/organizations/ brands are. Teens want to make a difference and are susceptible to cause marketing because of their generation's innate altruistic sensibilities. The key is to incorporate charitable campaigns within the context of their day-to-day lives, so marketers can capitalize on teens that are genuinely interested in social issues and those posturing with personal gains in mind.

2. Unless you're Coach, Apple or Juicy, understand that as a brand, you're mostly irrelevant. When it comes to fashion, they're conscious of wanting to associate themselves with leading brands, but have little time for anyone else. If you don't help with teen girls' personal image, then they want to know, "What can you do for me?"

3. Plan to lose them and have a strategy to reclaim them. Rarely will you find loyalty with this target. You will lose them -- probably more than once. The trick is to find new strategies to bring them back.

4. Enable digital schizophrenia. We call this the "thousand points of light" approach to marketing. Choice leads to fragmentation and teen girls love to try new things, though not necessarily purchase them. The best marketers help facilitate this rapid form of marketing prototyping by offering teen girls free samples and online demonstrations to help them envision how the product fits into their busy lives. Just remember it's not about you, but what you're enabling the teens to do.

5. Don't forget mom and dad: Sometimes they're your real target audience. Sixty-three percent of teens say they go to parents/guardians for information on health and nutrition, according to the Scarborough Kids Internet Panel's Teen Health Perceptions Study.

Marita Scarfi

Editor's Note: This piece also appeared in Adweek.

Consumer Technologies, Ideas and Trends in Europe and What They Mean For Brands
The year 2010 is a date from science fiction.  By now we were supposed to have hover cars, paper clothes, android companions and be happily holidaying on the Moon while robot television cameras kept us safe and secure. 

CCTV may be live and well on most London streets.  But what is really happening in 2010 with regards to Internet technology?  Organic's team in London has been reviewing digital in Europe, looking at what the big themes are and thinking about what this means for brands at the start of this new decade.

Pizza Will Always Be Pizza No Matter How You Toss It
I was talking with my wife this weekend about the whole Domino's rebranding. What strikes me is that even the whole idea that their pizza was not great was THEIR idea.

Here is what I mean. When they first marketed themselves it was about efficiency and value. Which is exactly what they delivered (no pun intended).

Now all of a sudden Domino's is saying that people don't like their pizza when last time I checked, no one expected to get a good tasting pizza for 4.99 from ANY pizza business. Delivery pizza has been and will always be OK tasting pizza... But nothing to tell everyone about.

So now Domino's goes out and finds a few people who don't like their product (which is easy for any company to find), couples that with a story around how heart broken they are about it and guess what folks???? We have us a new marketing campaign!

Now take their "new and improved" pizza to the front door of someone who said they didn't like their old pizza with lights, cameras, and most importantly a HUMAN face and ask their opinion... Of course the person will say it's good...they have to. People don't want to badmouth others to their face but have no problem doing it to a corporation. Most people would crush under the pressure of bad mouthing something in front of someone who has claimed to have made it better just for them. It's the whole human face in place of the corporate business racket (companies have been doing this for ages... Ford, GM, the list goes on).

Now as for the whole UX testing I get it... But I think there are so many other factors that need to be addressed as well as to why any campaign works or fails. It's the parts -- UX, marketing, strategy, research, design, and human UN-ITELLIGENCE, etc. -- that make the whole.

And, yes, their new pizza tastes just as crappy as their old pizza IMO.

Casey Riggleman

image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/malkoff

There's a war going on in the ebook arena between Amazon and Apple. Now that Apple has forced the issue of price, by offering books at a higher price than Amazon and with the help of Macmillan temporarily withdrawing titles from Amazon, why are consumers going to choose a device with a singular focus as opposed to one that functions as a reader and groovy netbook?

In a post this week, blogger Bob Lefsetz argues that rights holders, particularly in music, are fighting against the inevitable - a business model which moves from a la carte pricing to subscription. He cites the example of two videogame makers, one of whom sells games through traditional channels, and another who offers games for free, then gets consumers to buy added features after. The former gamemaker is going out of business, while the latter is thriving.

Apple absolutely cares about the price of content. It simply takes different approaches to pricing depending on the competitive landscape. It was through its aggressive initial pricing of songs on (.99) that helped establish the iTunes music store as the dominant player, iTunes as the dominant software and, most importantly, the iPod as the preeminent device.



In the case of ebooks, which Steve Jobs initially dismissed as insignificant ("people don't read"), Apple recognized that it needed to unseat Amazon's "first mover" leadership position. Here, it knew that it couldn't simply undercut Amazon's price; the publishers wouldn't go for it, plus it would most likely require each sale resulting in a loss, potentially far greater than the profitability of the iTunes Store for music. Instead, it introduced the iPad with higher individual and variable book prices, which "coincidentally" happened at the same time of Macmillan's very public pullback. Amazon caved, and now other publishers are going to start insisting on raising the prices of books, particularly popular ones. (This actually could be good for the industry, as people will pay more for the hits, but catalog items will be value price. Yet, per the New York Times, many readers are complaining loudly.)



Ultimately, as Lefsetz notes, it is all about selling hardware, but Jobs must know how important it is to have a steady stream of content - whether music, movies, podcasts, games, apps, etc. - for people to use on their devices. I'm sure Apple hates the fact that it had to raise prices for iTunes Plus to $1.29 per track. It means less people will probably buy music there, because most consumers thought .99 was too expensive and will just steal the music.

Regardless, I wouldn't count Amazon out. With the addition of color, and some more interactivity, the Kindle could quickly become a pretty cool device to compete with the iPad.

Are ebooks just as valuable to you as your printed ones?

Jonathan Cohen

image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beauteous/

Consumers Are Choosing Life
In advertising, campaigns - series of messages that share a single idea and theme - have for decades been the central concept for forming promotional activities.

The advertising industry has been rooted in the idea of the campaign - that is what agencies, by and large, do. And campaigns come and go, while a few overarching themes in them are constantly refreshed with new pieces of creative.

Now, even as ad agencies have been migrating into the digital space, most of them have continued to approach what they do through the idea of a campaign. And the idea of a campaign is the idea of ups and downs. When the campaign is running, there's media in the market, and the audience grows. But as soon as the media ceases or as soon as all the people have seen the campaign, the audience breaks up and drives off. And then the agency and the client are on to the next campaign. That's what the entire advertising business has largely been about.

But those who see the future of this business in the digital age are starting to see the rise of platforms. Platforms that are built to last. Platforms don't necessarily go into the market with a bang, with lots of media buy, but they grow over time. Platforms are rooted in utility, and they provide something that the customer, the audience, will feel like using, and using again and again. The best and most pervasive platforms become a part of the audience's lives. They're more like services and tools than a 30-second spot or a clever billboard ad.

And when the platform encourages the audience to create and distribute their own content and when it aggregates it from various sources, it then becomes a media engine for the advertiser. The content, the comments, and overall enthusiasm from the audience feeds back into the platform, which can then churn out the content back to the audience again. And that content is much more real, much more authentic than traditional advertising material, because it comes from the audience itself. That content is what is called earned media.

The most well-known example of this kind of platform is the Nike+ which Adweek awarded as the Digital Campaign of the Decade (noting the irony).

The problem with these platforms to many in the advertising and media buy+sell industry is that they don't match the idea that we've had for so long of what is advertising. To envision, design and develop these platforms, it takes a different kind of a team, a different set of talent than what's been used in traditional advertising. And it takes a different mindset. The way that people consume media, the way that they connect, is now driven much more by technology than it was before. To develop platforms, a new breed of creative technologists need to get a real seat at the creative ideation table. And, perhaps even more importantly, to make sense of all the different connections, links and experiences across different technologies and devices, agencies need Experience Leads to replace the old definition of Creative Directors. It's an opportunity, rather than a threat, for all of us, whether we're coming from the "digital" or the "traditional" side, to grow and explore new things.

Sure, old style campaigns will most likely still be made for a good while, as this giant industry slowly changes, just like VHS tapes were sold for a time after the coming of the DVD. But forward thinking individuals, agencies and clients have started to realize the change that is taking place. And this change is driven by the consumer, the audience, who, ultimately, is our real source of income. If we lose the attention of that group, we lose our business.

Change is often scary, but think about it: wouldn't it be nice to get away from the ups and downs of the campaign era, and enter a new era of sustainable growth?

Karri Ojanen

A couple weeks ago a bunch of my female friends began posting colors -- and only a color -- in their Facebook status updates. "Nude and turquoise." "Black." "Pink." I didn't really think much of it until about the fifth unrelated friend did it. Was this supposed to describe some sort of emotion or mood they were in at the time? I had to know, but wasn't about to look like the clueless idiot by asking them.

So I Googled "why are people posting colors on facebook?" Here's what I found out. Women around the world are posting their bra color on Facebook in order to raise awareness for breast cancer. Nology noted that it took place over the course of January 8, 2010. Though women were still posting a week later.

No one really knows how it started. I've heard it started in Michigan. One news source states it could have been overseas. I asked my girlfriends how they heard about it and they told me fellow Facebookers. Organic colleague Leah Salt thought it stemmed from the UK because she saw it from her friends there first. "It's funny because all my British friends started posting their bra colours and it took a whole 24 hours before my Canadian & American friends caught on."

One thing is for sure, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer foundation didn't start it, but it's surely caused a spike in their followers.

Last week my colleague Craig Ritchie started a thread talking about the success of the campaign. The Dallas News reported that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer foundation had 134,000 fans on their Facebook page before this trend started. Today they have 164,481 fans.

Komen is happy that the viral message has prompted women to schedule mammograms. One woman posted "My revealing my bra color made me remember to schedule my Mammogram for this yr....Nude!"

Men have even joined. One male posted this on the Susan G. Komen's wall:
"fresh & white [MEN for breast cancer awareness]" and another "green [MEN for breast cancer awareness]."

The trend not only prompted individuals to speak out, it spurred community on all fronts. The creator of the Facebook group "breast cancer awareness ♥ I updated my Status with my Bra colour ♥" started on January 7, 2010 claims she didn't start the bra color campaign. Though she definitely helped to keep it going. The Group is now up to 93,652 fans.

The awareness "campaign" -- if you can really label it a campaign since there's no known root or long-term strategy behind it -- has both supporters and critics (though seemingly much fewer of the latter).

I think it's a pretty creative way to get people thinking, talking and acting on something that affects so many people. I wonder if because it began so obscurely that it really took off. I feel that when a brand ties itself too closely to convincing people to take action that fans are more often turned off. So if the Foundation actually did start it and just gave credit to the people, that's one heck of a smart strategy. And if they didn't, they definitely did the right thing by supporting it.

Sarah Jo Sautter

Is Community Management for You?
The digital era is creating new jobs that recruiters are having difficulty finding talent for. One such area of job growth is social media and the evolving role of a "community manager". This role may be an ideal career succession for out-of-work copywriters or journalists because many already possess the key components of being a community manager: excellent writing skills, an understanding of marketing, and strong research experience. But, where most traditional copywriters fall short are having a solid understanding of on-line cultures and trends.

Considering a job as a community manager not only requires writing skills and social media know-how, but it also requires a passion for the brand you'll be representing.

Can You Play The Role?
Recruiters approach community manager hiring as part job interview + part casting audition. Finding the right fit of person based on the brand persona can be just as important as writing skills and social media knowledge.

Here is a checklist a recruiter might use to consider you as a candidate:

__ Do you have a presence on social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn,
      Twitter, FlickR, or You Tube?  Does the content on your profiles reflect that
      you have a good understanding of etiquette in the social media space?  

__ Do you have a blog?  For how long?  

__ Do you use a book-marking site? Which one?

__ Do you have writing samples - including headlines?

__ Do you have examples of generating story ideas and editorial strategy?   

__ Do you subscribe to RSS feeds? Which ones? What are your favorite blogs?

__ Have you done community management for any other organizations? What was your approach?

__ What email service to you use? Does it reflect your brand? Are you using a cutesy email handle? Are you using an outdated email provider?

__ Is your personal brand a good fit for the brand you will be representing? Will you be able to relate to the demographic of the community served? Are you passionate about the cause?

What would you add to the list?

Check out tomorrow's post for ways to help you build your expertise.

Traci Armstrong
@tannarmstrong

A couple weekends ago, while my newborn daughter was sleeping, I had ample time to sit in front of the TV. I cycled through the channels on Time Warner Cable  -- all 2,000 of them -- and thought to myself how absolutely ridiculous it was that despite the vast offering, my family watched about 20 of them, max. I know that many of the channels repeat or are HD versions of standard broadcast and cable channels, but it is still mindblowing and mindboggling. Wasn't it just a decade ago that Bruce Springsteen sang "57 channels and nothing on"?  In the words of a famous TV theme song, those were the days.

Evolving TV
Consumers should have the right to NOT receive 2,000 channels, when they only watch less than 5% of them and increasingly watch programs on demand, some free and some paid. We should be able to cherry pick which channels we want to watch. Isn't that the spirit of the Internet? Isn't that the promise of content on demand? Isn't that what digital is all about?

Consumers Might Choose The Web Over Cable
It's quite possible that consumers will increasingly choose an option that will give them the content they want at a more reasonable price. Many consumers are forgoing cable altogether and just watching content that streams or has been downloaded for the web, much to the dismay of cable companies hoping to bundle "triple plays." In the past few days, I've noticed numerous Facebook friends (shout out to Matt Rosenberg) talk about how great the Roku box is.

Give Consumers What They Want
If wireless providers can figure out a way to increase the bandwidth capacity of their networks (far beyond 3G), they might be great new entrants into the space. Their limited capacity might force them to offer a menu of content options as opposed to loading the network with content few people are watching.

There needs to be a compromise solution between the content providers, the delivery systems and consumers. Like my friend Andy Pimentel, I agree that TV isn't going away anytime soon, but it will definitely evolve, hopefully to something that makes sense for all parties...and is not built on outmoded, legacy monetization models.

How else can cable companies compete with the options of watching programs online?

Jonathan Cohen

A new campaign by LG hopes to get the message out to teens -- particularly females -- to think before they text. The PSAs are pretty humorous and the site is simple, direct. The iPhone app grows a beard as you text. The message even boils over to Twitter and Facebook.

Great Twitter advice:
Some folks say that you are what you text. Well, I don't know about you, but I don't want to be a picture of a giraffe scrotum.

Taking back mean texts is very difficult. Like trying to get a 4th wish out of a chintzy genie.

Forwarding mean texts is kind of crazy. Like accusing a cloud of being racist.

Their message is smart and flavorfully spot on. But I'm not sure they are reaching the teens as well as they could. How many of PonderBeards's Twitter followers are really in high school or college? Doesn't appear to be many, if any. The videos are hilarious, but the print -- what I suspect most of the teens will see first (if positioned in schools strategically) -- leaves me...pondering what the heck is that supposed to mean? But I'm not a teen, so what do I know?

It's good to be social, but I'm not sure Give It A Ponder is socializing in the right crowd. Do you think LG hit their target?

Note: Thanks to Teresa Nord for the link.

Sarah Jo Sautter

How do you engage an audience that is barraged with marketing messages and are not interested in hearing about your brand?

The answer used to be disruptive experiences which often led to more annoying and shocking ads in more places (see above).

Thankfully marketers are moving away from disruption and toward adding value as the means to engage a potential customer. Now the question becomes:  What can you do to add value and how do you successfully integrate this with your brand or product?

One answer is to add elements of play to your marketing, or more appropriately, adding elements of marketing to a fun customer experience.

At a recent conference I attended I had the pleasure of hearing Ken Eklund speak on "The Seriousness of Play".  The talk underscored what I experience firsthand in playing games with my kids: play is a great enabler of creative thought, social interaction, memory and learning.  "Gaming is common ground, it allows marketers to engage with customers and change their relationship with them.  Think about the Olympics impact on foreign relations." says Mr. Eklund.

To give you a sense of what I am talking about below are a few examples of using games to engage an audience: