Digital Hive

Looks like we're the only ones who know it's paid for

Search engine marketing is huge these days. Something we're avidly encouraging clients to invest in - because search is where so much online consumer behavior begins.

But what's the customer perspective? A fascinating recent study provides some interesting insights.

92% of consumers recently surveyed in a Pew/Internet American Life study felt confident in their search abilities. And 68% say internet searches are "fair and unbiased" sources of information.

So search is credible and people feel confident doing it. Probably why search activity is raging like never before.

But we marketers are apparently far savvier than consumers about the distinction between natural and paid search - which raises some interesting questions:

• only about 1 in 6 searchers can distinguish between paid and unpaid (e.g., natural) search results
• only a third are even aware there is a distinction (Important caveat: veteran searchers are both savvier and less trusting of 'net searches)

Searchers are actually OK with paid results - 70% approve of search engines providing some paid content, because they understand this is how their "free" searching is paid for. So maybe consumer ignorance means nothing; and as more folks become expert searchers, nothing will change.

But - I think consumer ignorance about what they're seeing does have an implication on how we counsel our clients to use SEM. Do we try and take advantage of the consumer's ignorance - or is it better to be more honest? Do we try to educate people about what they're seeing or just let them figure it out on their own?

Post your thoughts - let's get a dialogue going.

Kudos to Owings Stone for this referral......

Click here for the full study - http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/146/report_display.asp

Here's the full PDF: Download PIP_Searchengine_users1.pdf

Active Branding Means INTER-Acting!

A new book adds to the clamour that traditional approaches to persuasion just don't work any more.  As marketers, we need to realize that we never really own our brands, the consumer does.  New media are just giving consumers more voice and more choice.  The days of "telling them" are over!  The days of working with them are just beginning. 

A Book Review of Alex Wipperfurth's "Brand Hijack" From Booklist

In an age of marketing saturation, consumers are pleading with advertisers to "tone down the relentless yammering; you're talking too loud for us to listen." As backlash to constant media hype, products sometimes become "hot" when consumers ignore corporate America's overt advances and embrace independent products such as Doc Martens, Red Bull, Napster, and Starbucks, creating a cult following and effectively hijacking the brand as their own. Even Pabst Blue Ribbon beer has made a comeback recently precisely because it is the antithesis of a microbrew. So how do you market to an audience that rejects marketing? Wipperfurth explains how to walk this thin line by "seeding" the right audience to create a buzz and patient development of brand recognition. Of course, there is no guarantee that any of this will work, but Wipperfurth has the expertise to give you an advantage over the big guys. He has been called "a marketing subversive . . . The guy who will make your brands cool" by Adweek and is a partner at marketing boutique Plan B in San Francisco. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Here are some tips for "getting hijacked"

- Let go of the fallacy that your brand belongs to you. It belongs to the market.

- Co-create your brand by collaborating with your consumers.

- Facilitate your most influential and passionate consumers in translating your brand's message to a broader audience.

- Lose control. Free yourself to seize sudden opportunities that only last for moments.

- Resist the paranoid urge for consistency. Embrace the value of being surprising and imperfect.

- Respect your community. Draw the line between promotion and the adbusting trinity of manipulation, intrusion and co-option

Ode to Malcolm Gladwell

So I'm mid-way through Blink - the latest in thought provocation from Malcolm Gladwell and - aside from thinking this book should be handed out with each DTAS employee GDP assessment - I marvel at the implications for the web medium.

The premise of the book is about the power of snap judgements, gut reactions, "thin slicing" in the face of an abundance of data driven decisions.  Cut to the web - a mecca of detail, information, literal bits and bites.  While there is tremendous opportunity to feed the brains of those hungry for data to the nth degree, there is also a huge opportunity to reach our consumers' emotions.  To connect on a visceral level and deliver something that - without tremendous need for examination - they simply "know" to be true and relevant to their lives.  (This is true for our clients as well.  We see so often the power of a truly great :30 TV spot - it garners enthusiasm, brand advocacy within corporations, large sums of money for marketing investment....all without the need for extensive matrices of back-up and support.)

Acceptance and proliferation of broadband only helps this case - we are embedded in the details, the data, the niches of consumer lives - all the more reason that we can reach them succinctly, emotionally and with impact that moves them.

Hey Let's Just Show the TV spots online!

So I was at a famous general advertising agency the other day and they were just so excited about broadband because it gives them an opportunity to show not just 30 second TV commercials online but also 60 second TV commercials and - you saw this coming, didn'tcha - 90 second TV commercials.

That kind of sums up their view about the opportunities broadband is creating for customer communication - transfuse their tired old product into the brave new world of the internet.

Which I disagree with. Even a cursory command of online customer insight makes the case.

If you're on Edmunds.com in the final 2 weeks of an arduous multi-month vehicle purchase process, the last thing you want is generic brand pablum. You want features, comparisons, concrete reasons to select the Envoy Denali over some other SUV. A TV spot just doesn't make any sense there.

Also, TV spots aren't (usually) at all interactive. Which means you're missing out on one of broadband's big plusses - the ability to create customer experience through interaction. Sure there are times and places where you want to sit back and just click play; unless the creative is "must see" (e.g., Honda Cog) you're not going to do this with a 30 second TV spot.

I hope the general agencies keep their POV on broadband - because it means opportunity for folks like us who know how to use it right. More news as it happens.....

I am loyal....to everybody

This in the online media news today:

According to a recent analysis of customers from the BIGresearch's December Consumer Intentions and Actions survey, "The idea of customer loyalty, where consumers shop exclusively at a particular retail store, ceased to exist long ago," said Gary Drenik of BIGresearch. Loyalty has been replaced by cross shopping. Your 'customers' are also your competitor's customers," he said.

So forget trying to create loyalty programs where your customers love you so much, they never talk to the opposition, because it probably ain't gonna happen! Of course, the dyamics vary by industry, and retail is probably an extreme example, with frequent transactions and ubiquitous competition, but the point remains.  Rather than focusing on lofty ideas about building "the ultimate loyal customer" how about getting 'tactical'? It's time to pare down loyalty to its bare bones....when are we most at risk for losing existing customers?  How do we keep that relationship on the boil at key times, places and throughout the lifecyle?  Tell us what you think.  What makes a good loyalty program and what makes a bad one....share your (disguised) experiences with us here.  Post a comment.

What works in Viral? Google v. MSN

Google continues to steam ahead with innovate products; meanwhile MSN is throwing down the guantlet with a MONSTER ad campaign for its own, newly launched search product.....The MSN Search campaign is running in 25 markets in 10 different languages, concurrently.

The big question is, will MSN be able to use good ole-fashioned advertising to do anything about Google's dominance at this stage?  Can a traditional ad campaign (full multi-media) trump Google, a great product with almost no traditional marketing to date?  (Thus far, Google has been all word-of-mouth and viral stunts, though that may change soon.)

While none of this really involves us here directly, Employee X would like to ask, what are we doing in the viral marketing arena?.......it sure seems to work for giant-slayer Google.  Post here with your thoughts and stories about your experiences trying to 'start a virus'.  Is it really just about having a great product?  How can a digital marketing agency get in on the act?  What works, what does not?  Comment here and, without breaking client confidentiality, be as specific as you can.

The working concept

Big (and not-so-big) ideas injected into our cultural realm, spreading like wildfire and replicating like nanobots.

Genesis

In the beginning, Gore created the internet and the World Wide Web.  And the web was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of Gore moved upon the face of the electronic sea. And Gore said, let there be sites: and there were sites. And Gore saw the sites, and they could have sucked more: and Gore divided the internet from the intranet. And Gore called the light the internet, and the darkness he called 'Corporate Content' and other dull-sounding names.....and that was how it was until about the sixth day (or thereabouts) when a more light-hearted approach to sharing ideas about our craft was born: welcome to "Digital Hive", the not-quite-official approach to knowledge (the fun kind), without so much of the 'management'.