Posts from — May 2008

Of all social media outlets, the one that may get most of the buzz this year from a marketing potential standpoint is one that’s been around for a bit already, YouTube.

As the viewership of YouTube becomes more mainstream, its potential for buzz marketing is becoming more viable as well. Unlike something like Facebook and their Beacon program, the buzz marketing potential for YouTube seems more organic and less intrusive, since in many ways it falls along the lines of traditional television advertising.

As this article by Tameka Kee at Online Media Daily outlines, Google is piloting some very interesting tools, including the placement of in-video ads through use of their buzz targeting algorithmn:

“YouTube buzz targeting works on an algorithm that looks at a number of viewer activities, including how many times a video is chosen as a favorite, how favorably it’s rated, and how quickly it picks up views, to determine which clips are about to ‘go viral.’”

One of the pilot participants was Lionsgate, which utilized buzz targeting for its April 18th launch of the movie, “The Forbidden Kingdom”. Danielle DePalma, Lionsgate’s director of digital media feels the potential of buzz targeting with YouTube will be strong:

“With so many videos going viral on YouTube at any given time, buzz targeting allowed us to reach a very large, diverse audience….It) was an amazing opportunity for us to capitalize on the most popular videos on the site.”

In addition to their in-video advertising, Lionsgate went beyond the obligatory movie trailers and included an interactive video mixer tool, which allows viewers to create their own clips with sound and video transitions from provided footage from the movie.

It’s these type of viewer engagement tools that makes Google CEO Eric Schmidt bullish on the increased marketing potential for YouTube for 2008.

“We believe the best (YouTube) products are coming out this year,” Schmidt said, in an interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo. “And they’re new products…much more participative, much more creative…much more interesting in and of themselves.”

If 2007 was the year that the marketing potential of Facebook flashed on and off with Beacon, 2008 may be the year that YouTube gets it right with buzz targeting and other tools.

If you put any well known brand name of a consumer good into a free keyword tool such as WordTracker, you’ll generally find the word “coupon” among the top keyword search terms associated with that brand.

Especially during times of recessions, downturns, and economic stagnation, consumers tend to look for good value and deals. What’s different about this latest downturn in the economy, is that many are turning online to find them.

This behavior is leading to growth in online printable coupon sites such as RetailMeNot or Coupons.com. Viewed as a group, you can see the recent share growth in these type of sites in this graph from Heather Dougherty at Hitwise Intelligence:

During recessions, making sure that brands are providing a good value at shelf has always been a critical task for marketers when consumers are watching their dollars and cents.

What is new is that consumers are increasingly looking online as they look for good values in the brands they buy when budgets are tight.

Like peanut butter and chocolate, if ever there were two trends that were meant for each other, Social Networking and the Mobile Internet are them.

Cell phones and smart devices are inherently social devices to begin with, and unlike home and office locked PCs, they can blend virtual and physical social networking in all environments.

While I’ve written previously that cell phone usability and their current data plans have held back full development of the Mobile Internet, the iPhone and the Blackberry (and all its clones) are beginning to turn the tide.

From a recent study, eMarketer is predicting that that mobile social networks will rise from 82 million users in 2007 to 800 million worldwide by 2012.

Much of this growth will come from existing social networks shifting their coverage to the mobile space.

According to Brandon Lucas at MySpace, who is their senior director of mobile business development, MySpace recorded over 7 million unique visitors to MySpace Mobile in the US in the six months since launch. “It wasn’t until we rolled out m.myspace.com that we got a sense of how powerful demand was for MySpace on cell phones”.

There are also dedicated mobile social networks that are growing as well. For a complete list of 38 different mobile social networks, check out this post by Social Media Trader.

With the ability of mobile devices to operate in many different social spaces, both virtual and real world, the expectation that mobile will be the future of social networking is not as far fetched as it seemed only one year ago.

To paraphrase Bartles (or is it Jaymes?) I thank you for your support for Insight Buzz.

The latest rankings just came out from Junta 42, which ranks the top content marketing blogs on the Net, and Insight Buzz just joined the list at a very respectable #30.

If you get a chance, check out the community that Joe Pulizzi is building at Junta 42. He has assembled a great resource for those involved in content marketing, which is the art of communicating with customers and consumers in a way that goes beyond just simple selling, in order to provide useful information to a loyal base of current and prospective users.

To use a quote from the Junta 42 site:

“Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent.”

And by rewarding consumers with valuable and relevant information, marketers themselves are rewarded with a consumer’s business and subsequent loyalty.

All of which are best practices in a Web 2.0 world.

Has “going green” in marketing and advertising got consumers “seeing red”?

Everyone from whom you’d expect (Method home products) to whom you wouldn’t expect (British Petroleum) are crafting messages that play off people’s growing awareness and concern around environmental issues.

However, as this study in Marketing Charts from Burst Media shows, consumers aren’t necessarily buying into all that green messaging:

• Only one in five respondents (22.7%) say they “usually” or ”always” believe green claims made in advertisements.
• Two-thirds of consumers (65.3%) of respondents say they “sometimes” believe green claims made in advertisements.

The reason for consumer skepticism is simple, and it has to do with authenticity. For the vast majority of products being marketed, “going green” is a tactic rather than something central to its brand or design.

Does that mean brands and products shouldn’t go green? And if they do, how should they make meaningful and believable communication?

Seth Godin suggests that marketers should give consumers a number:

Stick with the lightbulbs you have throughout your whole house until they burn out: 175.
Replace them all now with something better: 142.

or

Drive to Philadelphia: 150.
Take Amtrak: 22.

His reasoning is that seeing a number attached to environmental behavior gives people something to work towards, which then motivates them towards more green behavior.

“The power of a number is the effect we saw when they put a number on restaurants (Zagats) and wines (Parker) and gas mileage (the EPA). People notice a number, and they work to improve it. If every car sold in our country had a real-time gas consumption meter on the dashboard and the rear window, things would change very fast.”

Focusing on a tangible number is certainly more effective than some vague “green” platitudes.

However, until more transparency and authenticity permeates environmentally conscious marketing messages, consumer skepticism around “green” advertising will only continue to grow.