Digital Hive

LIVE! From Martha Stewart!

Live from the audience of the Martha Stewart Social Media & Tech show!

 - Running through pre-show checks, trying to get people connected to the Internet (I'm all fitted out with a Sprint card!) 

Martha sitting with Biz Stone of Twitter. Can't tell who's more nervous. 

Martha asks "Does the world need Twitter?" 

Martha says you haven't made a dime - Biz says, but I feel rich. 

Biz says "We will be a profitable company." 

David Pogue was an AWESOME guest - spoke about his book the wisdom of Twitter (which we are all getting a copy of.) 

Martha asked about the best Twitter tools and David said "search.Twitter.com" and then they flashed an image from that page FEATURING ModaMags (that's me) and David Pogue said that's someone who's here and I waved. Super dork I am. I fully admit it. 

Chris Hughes from Facebook is adorable (and as Martha herself said, he looks like he's 13.) 

Martha chatted about Facebook's beginning (dorm room) and success (300 million subscribers.) 

Chris spoke about the actual usefulness of Facebook (family updates from the Virginia Tech shootings, Mumbai hotel bombing.) 

Martha now welcoming Heather Cabot the Web Life editor from Yahoo! 

Heather talking about all the tools that can help streamline your web experience on Yahoo! 

Martha returning with the full panel for questions!

Martha Stewart & Social Media: A Good Thing!

I am pleased to inform you that I will be live-blogging/live-tweeting/Facebooking and whatever else I can fit in from the Martha Stewart Show on Tuesday, September 29th.  

The show is a special Social Media and Tech event and I'm pysched to be able to join the in the fun. I was not the only one that was surprised by Martha's bold move with regard to letting the audience send outbound messages from the show.  ArtofTalk.TV was also surprised by the move and wrote a brief kudos piece to Martha. 

Having attended the Jon Stewart show (whom I LOVE) last fall, with it's surprisingly tight restrictions on, um, everything, I am delighted that our domestic goddess is welcoming the tech tornado with open arms. (Bravo to her staff for leading the way!) Peeps from Twitter, Facebook, The Google and Yahoo are scheduled to be a part of this event. 

The show is set to air October 2, 2009 - I'll update if it changes. Please Lord, let there be cupcakes too?

McD's and Starbucks: here's the skinny latte

Starbucks response (going on the offensive, challenging its rival's "quality") doesn't make sense - it makes them looked scared, and they're actually in a position of strength: they're the premium brand. Economies go up and down, premium brands stay beloved, but only as long as they seem up to date.

McD's will upsell the new beverages to existing young (particularly ethnic) target - which is a cheaper and easier way to drive increased topline sales in a recession. That is, if people can understand the campaign. I think the campaign really lacks "conversationality" - the "e" thing is hard to say, the idea's not intuitive, it's even potentially a socially risk (what if you mis-pronounce it?)

Starbucks behavioral problem is consumers cutting out a visit a week. Consumers are doing this because they feel guilty about the sneaking suspicious they might have been wasting money on coffee for the past several years. McDonald's prices aren't lower enough to induce a brand switch, or probably even trial. Plus the McD's brand is all wrong for Starbucks - it's too young, too trendy and pop, not sophisticated enough. It's not a badge for young professionals grasping for prestige in a contracting economy and dreading potentially dwindling career prospects. Buying McDonald's is an admission that the dream hasn't worked out. People don't want to go there.

Starbucks needs to give brand lovers a reason to visit the store that's cheaper, or at least makes them feel like they're not wasting as much money as they have guiltily been for the past several years. That addresses the guilt thing. What if Starbucks invited people to come by the store even when they don't need a coffee, just to come on by, hang out, use the WIFI, whatever. Build the community piece of the brand, not the product piece. Remind the core Starbucks consumer of the value the brand brings to their lives - to inoculate them from the visit-cutting guilt they are feeling.

Better yet - what about sponsoring some online networking for folks looking for work? Unlocking the power of Starbucks nation around an issue that's driving the decrease in visits makes a ton of sense.

TV ads aren't the answer here. Starting with the customer is.

This WSJ article has the creative as well as a number of thoughtful points:

WSJ article

Photos of the recession - NYT project & Flickr too

Ali Considine turned me onto this wonderful NYTimes project where consumers submit photos (with annotated comments) representing how the recession is impacting their communities. It's a bold, unvarnished look at how real people (not policymakers or spokesmonkeys) are noticing, perceiving and reacting to the recession. Great stuff!!

And, Alyson Stevens shared a link to an analogous initiative on Slate.

Friend me! I am publishing short bits and bytes on FaceBook these days

Peeps - sorry for the recent brownout, been busy, but also have picked up a nasty habit of posting stuff on FaceBook. If you're a Digital Hive fan please friend me on FB to get those updates. And I  also pledge to get back to the Hive with new stuff soon (starting today). XO

WOMinomics - or why it makes economic sense to stimulate positive WOM

Mega thanks to my buddy and WOM guru Jackie Huba for a super post about the economics of word of mouth. You guys know how much I loves the math!

According to Satmetrix, who developed the Net Promoter Economic Framework, which determines total customer value based on buyer and referral behaviors of "Promoters" (those who are highly likely to recommend a company and/or its products) and "Detractors" (those who are unlikely to recommend a company and/or products), in a wireless industry study they did (Net Promoter Economics: The Impact of Word of Mouth), each Promoter was worth approximately $1,700 and accounted for roughly one-half of a new customer acquired through positive word of mouth. In comparison, each Detractor accounted for the loss of 1.3 new customers through negative word of mouth.

The lost business associated with their negative referrals subtracts the entire value of their purchase behavior and then some, creating a net cost of $300. Compared with the value of a Promoter, each Detractor is worth $2,000 less than a Promoter.

OK, so, this seems like common sense to me. But what I think is really interesting is to see the economics of WOM quantified. Now, what can we do with this info?

First off, know who you are targeting. Don't acquire detractors. In addition to being bad sources of long term revenue, they'll facilitate losing other customers. If there is any way to excise them from the acquisition process, DO IT. I do not know how to do this, if you have ideas please share.

Second, identify your promoters and encourage and equip them to share good stuff. Enable them to tell their friends they love the product or experience.

Other ideas?

Repurposing: the new purchasing?

I found an interesting article on WSJ.com  that I wanted to share. It's about taking older fashion items and repurposing them in new ways to mirror current fashion trends.  The video from the piece helps give you an idea of what this is about.

The overall point about not buying new stuff initially got my attention, but I think a bigger point (unaddressed in the article) is what brands can do to respond to this. On one level we're talking about people not buying as much stuff as they used to, and why on earth would we want to encourage that. But I think there's opportunity in tapping into the notion of working a new purchase into what you already have, helping the consumer get the most from his/her overall collection of items, buying something will stand the test of time and go with lots of other things, etc.

This is a great time to revisit the idea of brands adding value for consumers. If what they want is the ability to make their dollars go further, let's help them with it. And not just by discounting the uber-trendy.

Instead of just pushing new for new's sake, I wonder if a new spin on purchasing would work better in these troubled economic times.

Consumers' changing attitudes about consumption: learnings from American Greetings

Check out this great article in the online WSJ about how American Greetings has been tracking consumer sentiment about spending and revising their expansive product line (3,000 cards!) to reflect what they're learning. A few interesting quotes from the article:

An early clue to the new direction: During brainstorming sessions held late last year for the 2008 holiday collection, nostalgia for simple holiday traditions like cookie-baking, walks through the snow and tree-trimming kept coming up among the writers, artists and trend experts in attendance. Then, amid the glitzy, festive tone that dominated last year's holiday-card designs, American Greetings noticed that traditional cards with heartfelt messages were selling surprisingly well.

By early this year, as the housing downturn accelerated and gas prices rose, the Cleveland-based company's research showed that consumers, spending more time at home, were focusing on personal relationships and reminiscing about happier times together.

The product implications are interesting:

A definite no-no this year is expecting too much from Santa. "The cards with a lot of shopping bags or gifts piled high, the excess we thought was so cute last year, doesn't work now," says Candace Corlett, president of New York consulting firm WSL Strategic Retail. "We don't want to be reminded of our aggressive consumerism."

So the greeting-card giants, never known for radicalism, are playing it especially safe. Nontraditional holiday shades, such as pink and light blue, are being used sparingly. "This year you could add accents of pink with red or green, but you need traditional icons, like trees or snowmen, to do it," says Ms. Sliede of American Greetings.

The text is deliberately long-winded. Before, cards had shorter, snappier messages. "Now people want longer copy," says Rochelle Lulow, creative director of American Greetings' editorial studio. "During difficult times, we see people wanting to connect on a deeper, emotional level that goes above and beyond." Another executive said: "We started seeing that at Mother's Day."

Embedded in the article is a great slideshow of some of their latest designs that reflect these insights.

Creating ideas, 21st century style

You guys probably already saw this great story in last weekend's NYTimes magazine but if not, check it out. It highlights some of the critical aspects of developing ideas for today's brands and consumers. And during the course of the article they actually come up with some interesting ideas, unprompted and (presumably) without preparation (the Facebook overalls idea is pretty awesome).  

Participants in the roundtable: BENJAMIN PALMER is the C.E.O. of the Barbarian Group, an Internet advertising and marketing firm based in Boston. He helped create the ‘‘Subservient Chicken’’ online campaign for Burger King. LARS BASTHOLM is a chief creative officer at AKQA, where he has worked on campaigns for Xbox, Coca-Cola and Motorola. ROBERT RASMUSSEN is the executive creative director of the Nike account at R/GA, an agency that specializes in digital media. He has created campaigns for ESPN, Sega and Jet.

Loved this quote: Most media, like television, used to be a kind of flow. You’d sit down, you’d turn it on and you’d watch. The reason advertising is completely broken is that the flow doesn’t exist anymore. There’s no prime time. There’s no such thing as must-see TV. Everyone’s composing their own flow. And once you start becoming the composer of your own flow, you can’t go back. You’re like, Why would I have somebody dictate to me what I watch when I’m used to programming for myself? 

Also loved this riff on how to take Katie Couric at CBS and actually make her relevant: 

Palmer: What Katie Couric is not giving us, as a mainstream evening-news anchor, is an invitation to participate. So what if we changed the format of her show? Every day she gives us a sneak preview of whom she will interview over the next week. And you can go online and post your own questions. Maybe two or three user questions end up on the evening news, and you’re like a big star if she uses your question. She says your name: “This is Robert Rasmussen’s question.” You’re totally psyched. You feel awesome. And then on the Internet we post the other 17 user questions and their answers. We put those on the Internet, so there’s actually like an hour of content. A half-hour is on TV, and the other half-hour is on the Internet. You start involving people in the conversation. You start using television as the theatrical component to the Internet. Because what TV offers that the Internet doesn’t offer is a guarantee of fame. You know that millions of people saw that bit of you on television.

Also: 

Bastholm: She also needs to change from being a persona to being a person, and that’s what digital is best at. I’d begin with a Twitter feed where she’s talking about what she’s actually doing during the day. She’d talk about all the behind-the-scenes stuff that you don’t see when she’s interviewing, say, Sarah Palin. Talking very openheartedly about how she experienced that the second after she’s done with the interview. So you kind of start to feel you know the person who’s doing the interviewing versus just the anchor posing the questions. 

And: 

Palmer: There’s a difference. A Super Bowl ad is broadcast and everybody sees the same ad, and it comes from a single source. And so you may have a preference as to whether you liked this ad in comparison to this other ad in the block of ads that you just saw. But when you feel like you’ve discovered something on the Internet, it’s a different relationship to the brand. Say I was one of the first thousand people who saw that Cadbury gorilla ad — where he drums along to Phil Collins — and I send that out to all my friends. There’s a pride that I have in having discovered that, a connection that you actually can’t get with broadcast advertising.

A few key takeaways for me:

• Benjamin Palmer had the best comments; interesting, considering he runs (what I consider to be) the most forward company represented. Would love to see how he'd respond to leading a scale agency. Will his ideas and way of working become mainstream, or will big holding companies resist?
• Ideating at its best is free form - people build on each other, based on insights. It's not arduous, it's fun. But it starts from an understanding of (and empathy with) the consumer and brands' reality in connecting with them
• Yet another reminder that what makes an old school TV-led campaign "go" can be very different from what drives campaign success these days

Good lord what have we come to?

Good lord what have we come to? This is a DRTV response page for for a product (I think at least) targeted at scrapbookers. I always thought of scrapbookers as Little House on the Prairie types - "hey Laura, I just made a scrapbook out of that filthy old potato sack." Relaxing, simple, blissfully uncommercial. But apparently there's just as much marketing targeted at them as the rest of them. There's nowhere to hide.