Digital Hive

"Reality marketers": paparazzi for hire

A recent Time magazine article details a disturbing new extension of paparazzi mania - hiring your own personal faux paparazzi. I suppose this evolution is logical in a world where pop culture's favorite lens magnet Britney Spears has selected a paparazzo as her new paramour.

The website for one of the new enterprises capitalizing on this trend (Celeb 4 a day) offers "your very own paparazzi experience" in Austin, TX, LA and San Francisco - including a mocked up publication with your photo on the cover (see example). Britain's Personal Paparazzi offers similar services but a tad tamer - they appear to specialize in taking photos of guests at parties which are then uploaded (the photos, not the guests) to a photo hosting site for later access.

According to Time, "The trend is driven by the twin obsessions with chronicling one's life and experiencing fame. 'We live in a culture where if it's not documented, it doesn't exist,' says Josh Gamson, a University of San Francisco professor of sociology who studies culture and mass media. 'And if you don't have people asking who you are, you're nobody.' University of Pennsylvania sociologist David Grazian, who wrote On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife, calls personal paparazzi reality marketers, who make the act of being photographed more meaningful than the actual photos. 'The goal isn't to produce a product,' he says. 'It's to heighten the experience of the event. In that sense, there doesn't even need to be any film in the camera.' "

Interestingly, comments on the ONTD page where I noticed a posting about this (having seen it originally in Time's latest print edition) nicely illustrate society's collective ambivalence about this phenomenon - half are asking where this service can be bought (and if there's a budget version), and half note how sick it is.

I can't help but be struck by this phenomenon's resemblance to the broader trend we've seen in marketing - the most successful brands are no longer stalking their consumers paparazzi-like with a long lens, they're being invited in by people who want to experience the brand, share it with their friends, etc (without paying the brand, but offering an exchange of their time and attention).

On a more tactical level, I wonder how we can harness this manufactured desire for pop culture validation with big creative marketing ideas. Certainly recent campaigns which let you get your photo or text message onto a huge digital display in Times Square are an obvious step in this direction, as are the perennial promotions offering prizes to live like a star for a day (perhaps with an actual star in tow), but I haven't yet seen a brand thoroughly embrace this trend. Is there a way to translate this phenomenon into a more powerful marketing platform?

At minimum we could paparazzi people as a prize?

Politics unusual - Bloomberg for President

I saw an interesting poll in the online WSJ today (click at left to enlarge) - about Bloomberg potentially running for president. Now we all know WSJ readers are NOT a nationally representative sample of likely voters, so take this with a grain of salt, but I was intrigued to notice that the largest % of respondents (38%) want Bloomberg to enter the race and are likely to vote for him (or so they say).

I find it fascinating that this independently wealthy mayor of New York is so well regarded for a bigger role, without much of a national stage track record. He's Giuliani with a fortune and without the 9/11 halo, right?

Perhaps this is just an extension of the Fred Thompson mania earlier this year - when an undeclared candidate was near the top of the polls. I'm not sure if this indicates general malaise with the "products" officially on offer at this point (Giuliani, Romney, Hilary, etc.) or people really really love Bloomberg or what.

Thoughts?

Digitas planning is famous!

Check out this great Huffington Post blog posting by our very own George Scribner!

His thesis is very compelling: the Internet is now the most trusted medium for news.

"In a world where you have to consult and cross-reference multiple sources to decide what's true about anything (whether it be a news event, a mutual fund, or a movie), the Internet is the best -- and only -- medium that allows one to do this."

A highly worthwhile read.

What planners can learn from criminal profilers

On a recent transcontinental flight I was catching up on recent issues of the New Yorker and discovered a very interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell in the November 12th issue.

We've all heard about criminal profiling - the process of using factoids about an unknown criminal to get into the offender's mind and motivation in order to capture him or her. I'm interested in profiling because it's so often been likened to account planning (interestingly, an APG conference about 10 years ago had a leading criminal profiler as a guest presenter).

Gladwell's article is a fascinating read for anyone who likes puzzles and problem solving. It was particularly interesting to me because it debunks the credibility of the long-worshiped craft of profiling - and therefore raises some issues about how we planners pursue our craft.

He reveals: "In the mid-nineties, the British Home Office analyzed a hundred and eighty-four crimes, to see how many times profiles led to the arrest of a criminal. The profile worked in five of those cases. That's just 2.7 per cent." Clearly profiling has gotten more credit than it's due.

He cites a number of specific failings of profilers' typical techniques. First off - vagueness which masks a lack of logic and rigor. He writes about a number of investigations where the profile - compiled by an "expert" - was ill-defined, and outright wrong, in part because the profiler relied too heavily upon intuition rather than facts.

A key driver for error: incorrectly ascribing motivation to action. He quotes Brent Turvey, a forensic scientist who has been highly critical of the FBI's approach: "The fact is that different offenders can exhibit the same behaviors for completely different reasons. You've got a rapist who attacks a woman in the park and pulls her shirt up over her face. Why? What does that mean? There are ten different things it could mean. It could mean he doesn't want to see her. It could mean he doesn't want her to see him. It could mean he wants to see her breasts, he wants to imagine someone else, he wants to incapacitate her arms—all of those are possibilities. You can't just look at one behavior in isolation."

Unlike criminal profilers, we planners aren't solving crimes, and our role is seldom a matter of life and death. And it doesn't inspire Big Ideas to quote facts - using our imaginations and being playful help us to inspire the team. But we need to strike the right balance of inspiration and information. So we have something to learn here.

First off, rigor is critical. We can't just pontificate and make stuff up, we must study consumers to truly understand why they do what they do. Second, we need to be careful when assuming what rationale is driving a behavior; that's why we blended behavior and attitude in our recent WebDotDigitas work. Finally, we need to constantly track how successfully our impressions of consumer motivation translate into in-market results - and continually improve our approaches. This means paying attention to measurement results and thinking about how we can use them to improve the work.

You can download a PDF of the article here: Download malcolm_gladwell_dangerous_minds.pdf

ad:tech NY - some interesting tidbits

I attended part of ad:tech NY last week and learned some great stuff.

Marc Landsberg, President of Arc Worldwide, shared an interesting case about how to engage consumers online with a high consideration purchase. 500 days before the launch of the new Fiat 500, the marketing for the vehicle began, with the creation of a social community, members of which could vote on colors of the vehicles, develop their own customized designs, etc. This consumer engagement translated into major business impact, specifically an increase in pre-orders and desire to visit a dealer. I found an interesting NYT article with more details about this interesting case.

Social networks mean different things in different cultures (kind of a no brainer, but a helpful reminder). In Spain, for example, people don't disclose as much about themselves, which makes "friending" a different experience. If you violate the local norms, you can't build a successful social network. Another interesting cultural nuance - in Africa, the most popular digital download is love poems.

Mobile was another hot topic. Panelists agreed the future of mobile content is digital and local. And it will continue to evolve as an expression of identity and way to transact.

Across mobile technologies, the biggest human challenge we are helping consumers with is overcoming loneliness. Kind of a profound human insight, if you stop and think about it. It's always good to keep in mind the human need we are addressing.

I discovered a new phrase - "brand browsing" - a catchier way of talking about the consideration phase of the purchase funnel.

NY's Jonathan Adams spoke on a great panel (moderated by TNS/Cymfony's Jim Nail) about social media and consumer generated content (a few days ago I posted the MySpace research "NeverEnding Friending" that several of the panelists discussed). Really exciting to learn about how the use of WOM is super-charging the performance of campaigns, and how measurement has finally developed a way to isolate the performance of the WOM element.

Finally, as always it was a pleasure to see Arianna Huffington speak. And interesting to note how she consistently focuses any question onto Huffington Post's key points - this is the second time I saw her this month, and she's a remarkable spokesperson for her brand. The 3-way joke also killed - again.

Introducing WebDotDigitas - a proprietary take on how people use the internet

Earlier this year we undertook our first ever proprietary research about internet consumers: WebDotDigitas.

There's a lot of great research out there about how folks behave online. But the approaches we reviewed all either took a behavioral approach, or an attitudinal one. The two approaches were never combined.

We had a strong hypothesis that online users with similar behaviors may well have very different motivations. And that people with the same attitudes might behave very differently. At minimum, we thought we could generate deeper, actionable insights about online consumers if we considered the 2 together. So we took a unique approach with WebDotDigitas - we evaluated internet users with a combination of attitude and behavior, for the first time ever (we believe).

We partnered with Compete to get detailed online behavioral data on 3,000 online consumers - the top 700 sites they visit, along with page views and session length. We then surveyed those consumers to better understand their expectations, attitudes and desires. We assessed the data in aggregate, and also developed 6 segments of internet users.

You can download the white paper Tina Bronkhorst wrote about the study here: Download WebDotDigitas.pdf

Some of the key findings:

• Online behavior significantly impacts overall brand experience and attitude; it's not a separate experience for the consumer
• Nearly 40% of online users would prefer to sample a product before buying it
• 8 out of 10 people forward emails on, to an average of 10 people; the most forwarded emails aren't about sales/coupons, they're about humor and inspiration
• About half of internet users say they've never read a blog - but their behavioral data reveals they've been regularly visiting sites like TypePad
• About half of internet users still have a very functional relationship with the internet - they don't surf, they don't do social networking, they use the internet for tasks like banking and travel planning, and some of them don't even like the 'net very much

By examining behavior and attitude together, we truly deepened our understanding of how and why people use the internet. We now know that users' online time and tenure (time online) tell only part of the story - users' attitudes and expectations also provide important insight into their motivations, and help us segment users into actionable segments.

As consumers increasingly use digital channels to learn about and interact with brands, it is critical that brands understand more about their audiences than just where they go online, and how much time they spend there. To be successful, they need to understand and deliver upon online users' expectations, and enable their behaviors and preferences - for example, the expectations to be able to sample a product before buying, and their desire to share humorous and inspirational content with their friends.

We are now preparing wave II of WebDotDigitas - let us know if you have hypotheses you'd like to test.

Handmade is back! Check out Etsy

I'm a huge fan of Etsy, an ecommerce site where everything is handmade. From their about page (which also has a super cool video with the founder explaining his inspiration):

Etsy is an online marketplace for buying & selling all things handmade. Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers. Our vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice: Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.

I have a hypothesis about why Etsy is so successful (93,000+ sellers at this point) - people are tired of cookie cutter choices (even at the high end), and want something a little unique. Also, most of the products we have to choose from in stores these days are fairly generic, designed by "professionals" for large faceless audiences and made somewhere off shore. It's kind of refreshing to buy and use a one off made by an actual person. It's also cool to be able to connect with a creative person who does something completely different from what I do.

All the sellers I've dealt with have been enthusiastic and grateful for my business (has that happened to you buying anything lately?), many including special extras with purchase. For me, it's re-introduced a sense of exploration and delight into online shopping, which frankly had become a bit mundane for me of late.

Etsy's UI is renowned for simplicity and engagement. The homepage regularly refreshes with a curated set of items (drawn from the vast number on offer), all coordinated in some way - by theme, color, pattern, etc. Every time I visit the site I'm welcomed in a refreshing new way.

Etsy has recently launched a feature which enables you to dynamically "publish" the items you are considering buying (if you're a buyer) or the items in your online store (if you're a seller) to a personal website, blog, MySpace page, etc.. Here's what's on my shopping list these days (bear in mind the holidays are approaching, people):

Etsy: Your place to buy & sell all things handmade jflemings.etsy.com

What I like about this is - it's a great way to let buyers integrate other people into their buying (or consideration) process - by showing off and getting feedback to their discerning taste or good shopping luck (hey look what I found!), and integrating their potential purchases into their online "identity." Your friends can comment on what you're shopping for, encourage you to purchase something, etc. Shopping goes from a solitary experience to a shared, community one.

Check out Etsy, I think you'll be a convert.

PS - I learned about a cool "movement" from Etsy, called Buy Handmade. To join you just have to pledge to buy handmade this holiday season and request that others do the same; there are 5,000+ pledges so far. More info also here.

Twittering explained - at last

You've got to check out this fantastic NYT article about Twittering. Prior to this I had a less granular understanding of Twitter's functionality and frankly had dismissed it as trivial. But the article helps clarify what it is (did you know all the twitters are recorded on Twitter.com for later viewing?) and what it means (people have "real" relationships with people they Twitter with - that is, only communicate with digitally in short bursts). The Twitter blog is a really interesting resource as well; great for learning about cool new things you can do with the service.

The Polygamous Marriage- Connection Planning

This past week I had the chance to attend the inaugural Connection Planning conference in New Orleans.  Many others have blogged about it, so I won't repeat them here, but of course I echo the many thanks to the ringleaders at Trumpet.  (see http://garethkay.typepad.com/brand_new/2007/10/the-wedding-day.html, http://www.polygamousweddings.com/blog/)  But, I do want to share how inspiring it was to see and hear that we at Digitas really "get it".  Jeff Flemings and I ventured to establish what "connection planning" meant in the digital space and for Digitas nearly 12 months ago.  After listening to some inspiring thoughts by real innovators like Lisa Seward and John King, I was thrilled to walk away from the conference thinking Connection Planning at Digitas is right on track.

While many agencies are using Connection Planning as a means to advanced, creative media planning, at Digitas, we've brought Connection Planning upstream as a means to inspire big creative marketing ideas.  We mine for insights about reaching our consumers, integrating into their lives, leveraging influencers and creating brand evangelism and combine them with traditional Account Planning insights.  In doing so we're fueling creative marketing ideas from the beginning with insights around both context and content.  In the digital space this is a key distinction, since every client deliverable could come to life in infinite ways based on the unique context of the space.

The conference appeared to be a big success, so I'm looking forward to the second annual event next year! 

A helpful reality check

Thanks to the ever-insightful Jackie Huba for calling our attention to this great cartoon from Tom Fishburne, whose words are timeless and worth repeating to clients:

I have to remind myself sometimes that my brand is not the most important thing in a target consumer's life.  I think a lot of brand positioning statements are written as if the consumers are constantly thinking and obsessing about the brand.  When I hear the description, "brand loyalist", I envision a groupie with a logo tattooed on her forehead.

Obviously, even "brand loyalists" have complex lives completely separate from our brands.  As marketers, I think it's good to remember the actual role that we play in consumer's very human lives, and not overstep the significance of a brand of, say, "pickle relish".

Thanks for the insights (and fabulous cartoon) Tom! I frequently cite this mantra to clients and internal teams; usually to blank stares or even hurt expressions. I ask, "do you need a tissue?" Yes the agency believes in the client. Yes we use the product. Yes we love the brand. But our job is to create marketing that works, which has to start with reality. So please bear with us as we let the consumer's true feeling wash over you.