Clearcast Digital Media

More on the marketing secret you probably don't know

"Viral" is the new holy grail of marketing. Leaving aside for a moment that the idea of creating a viral campaign is akin to making a note in your agenda like, "3:00-3:15 p.m. Be spontaneous," I did want to share a brilliant piece of advertising for a company called Lastminute.com. Similar to Hotwire or other such services, they sell last minute plane tickets, theater tickets, spa packages, etc. This piece was created by London-based Rubber Republic.

In our last post, we talked about content being the most cost effective and meaningful way to connect with users. Give them something of value BEYOND the 30-second spot, and watch what happens. This is a concrete example of what we're talking about. Why does it work? I think for two main reasons. First, it does not claim to be something it's not, so it passes the authenticity test. The beginning of the video clearly explains that this was done with hidden cameras and actors. At the end, there is a tag that shows the name of the company and what they're selling. By the time the video is over, however, you are dying for the payoff. The second reason it works is because it's relevant to what is being advertised. It is theater about going to the theater. (Or should I write "theatre.")

The lesson for advertisers and marketers is the one we talk about non-stop: be relevant and be authentic. As of this writing, this video has been viewed on YouTube less than 170,000 times. Check back at the end of the month and let's see where that number is.

The marketing secret you probably don't know

The competition for eyes, ears and wallets is more fierce everyday. In this blog, we often talk about the migration of all three of those things to the web. But the challenge is, as Kurt Cobain so brilliantly put it, "Here we are now. Entertain us!"

Savvy marketers are starting to figure out that engagement comes from creating quality content. Not from commercials, sales pitches, or top-down blogs or podcasts that pretend to be authentic. The secret is to build loyalty solving problems or providing services that do not NECESSARILY relate back to your core business in a straight line. (We'll talk more about this in future posts, or you can check out our podcast for more details.)

Enter online media in the form of an audio or video podcast. Entities as diverse as BMW, Amazon.com, the Los Angeles Opera and even (ahem) Clearcast Digital Media have all figured this out. Marketing budgets seldom allow for TV campaigns, which are ephemeral, at best. But hear this: we are not talking about campaigns, we are talking about STRATEGIES. They're long term, they're lower cost and they last (virtually) forever.

We decided a long time ago that we were going to try and add value and cut through the clutter by providing valuable information that was useful to current clients, potential clients and casual observers. By exploiting our passion for new media, technology and production, we regularly publish this blog and its companion podcast for two reasons, one altruistic and one purely commercial. On the one hand, we LOVE talking about this stuff, analyzing it, trying to predict where things are going and trying to help our readers and listeners understand why they should care. On the other hand, we realize that by establishing our thought leadership, we become a considered source for that client who is looking to take the new media/social media plunge, but might not be sure how to get started.

We will talk a lot more about this in the future because I am convinced that this is the best way forward for marketers large and small. The cost of entry is much lower than a traditional offline media play, and the upside is limitless.

Too Lijit to quit?

We made a couple of housekeeping improvements to make the blog a bit more useful. TypePad, our blogging software, has added a few new fonts and features, among them they have made it possible for links to open in a separate window. Like most good bloggers, we provide lots of links in our posts, but this way you won't navigate away from us every time you click a link. We want to keep you around for as long as possible and we like anything that makes the layout prettier and more useful.

On that subject, thanks to our pal Jason Falls, the Social Media Explorer, who told us about Lijit, which does a couple of cool things rather well. Chief among them, it offers robust search within our blog. We have 100+ posts and trying to find what you're looking for can be a little tough. Another thing it does well is create what I would call a "trust tree." (They don't call it that, but they can steal it if they like it.) If you click on "Explore" you will see a matrix of other blogs in my network, the assumption being that if you're a fan of my blog, you might also like these other ones. Finally, there are little chicklets that represent all the places you can find me online so you can follow me on Twitter, friend me up on Facebook, see my history on LinkedIn or watch some videos we've produced on YouTube. Find their widget over on the right hand side, just beneath the "Email me" link.

I'm just getting started with it, but I think it is a cool little tool. Tell me what you think. Or better yet, tell Lijit what you think and install it on your blog if you like it. They make it pretty simple to do. Not a major overhaul, but we hope you like the changes.

Social media is stupid

When you work so closely in the world of blogs, social media apps, new media, etc., there is a tendency to get lost in the echo chamber. We all spend so much time staying on top of what's new both for our own sakes as well as to be able to provide reasoned and educated solutions for our clients. Yet so often, many of us are still met with the same kind of resistance, skepticism and just plain lack of understanding when we venture out into the real world. I wrote awhile back how we, as podcasters, had made the mistake of going a little ga-ga over all the tools available to us and taking our eye of the ball of "why is this new medium a game changer for our clients?" When you take your car to be fixed, you don't really care what the mechanic had to do to get rid of that pinging sound. You just want it gone. That's how your clients feel, too. They don't want or need to see how the sausage is made.

There was a great post on Read/Write/Web last week about using social media for social change. Blogging for the victims of the Chinese earthquake, supporting social causes on Facebook and MySpace, using YouTube to promote charities and using your mobile phone to spread news and effect change were just some of the suggestions. The point is, the only limit to the uses for social media are your imagination.

The next time I get the eye roll, exhale and 1000-yard stare about how dumb blogging, Twitter and YouTube are, I plan on removing this arrow from my quiver.


 

TV viewership down- and it will stay down

The television upfronts concluded in New York last week and the news was sobering. Six million viewers seem to have vanished and it is unclear if they're coming back. Back in January, right here on this very blog, we predicted that viewers who were alienated by the writers' strike might not come back they way they did after the previous writers' strike. The Business Day headline from the May 12 New York Times wondered "In the Age of Tivo and Web Video, What is Prime Time?" And finally, FOX Entertainment head Peter Ligouri had this clear eyed assessment of the state of prime time TV: "But we should all look at what happened to those viewership levels and be shocked into being more aggressive about our thinking."

The revolution is being televised. Just not on TV.

Minorities and New Media

I have been hearing a lot lately about how minorities are huge consumers of new media. An interesting study from BIGresearch was revelatory.

Their survey of nearly 16,000 participants showed, among other things, that minorities have a higher regular usage of new media than whites and they are more likely to use iPods, text messaging, play videogames, IM and watch videos on cell phones.

President of BIGresearch, Gary Drenik says, "Minorities are using new media in higher percentages, providing marketers with unique opportunities to create specific marketing plans that integrate non-traditional media options into their digital ad strategy."

Drilling down even deeper, online Hispanics, independent of their language and acculturation levels, are heavily engaged in technology. Hispanic-American internet usage is greater than that of the general US population.

Last time I checked, all money spends the same, no matter who is spending it.

Create value, print money

The fifth and final episode in our podcast series about how to best employ the myriad new media tools that are at your disposal is fresh out of the oven.

We try and give you some actionable tips, a couple of good book recommendations and some guidance on how to make your marketing voice heard.

Subscribe in iTunes, or listen right here on the blog .

How to take advantage of Big Brother

In the US, we worry about our civil liberties under siege from our increasingly secretive government. FISA laws being violated, phones being tapped, e-mail surveillance and the like. What we don't have (yet) is a national network of video cameras. If we did, I wonder if we would have come up with a clever idea like the band the Get Out Clause. (Not a great website, guys. They should have been more ready for the onslaught this might produce.)

Unable to afford a video crew, they set up their gear in 80 different locations (drum kit and all) around Manchester, taking advantage of Britain's 13 million closed circuit cameras. And they just played and played and played. My personal favorite is the footage from the back of the taxi. Under a Freedom of Information request, they asked for the footage from all of those cameras. Some companies complied, others didn't. But they got enough to make a pretty cool video. Snide aside: apparently FOIA requests work slightly differently on the other side of the pond than here. But perhaps that helps explain why it took nearly 9 months for the video to be released. Note that the time stamps (when legible) read March or April 2007 and the video was first posted to YouTube in December 2007. The article in the Guardian, however, did not appear until May 8, 2008. Whoever coined the phrase "news travels fast today" had no idea what they were talking about. Of course, FOIA requests in this country can take years so any bands in the US considering this tack, you'll most likely be on your 30th anniversary reunion tour before your first video sees the light of day.

ANYway...the point is, this is a pretty clever use of someone else's bandwidth, don't you think?

Who do you trust?

The issue of trust has been on my mind lately. For all the changes that the internet has wrought on our society, the basic question, "Who do you trust?" has not changed at all. We trust our friends, peers and family members. And research would suggest that those with a lot of "social clout," that is, people with hundreds of "friends,"  contacts, or followers from the (new) usual places like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or Twitter rank pretty low on the old trust-o-meter.

I am talking about trust strictly as it relates to comments and reviews you might seek out when you're heading out to the marketplace to buy a product or service.

It's refreshing to see an old world remnant like good ol' word of mouth still going strong in this digital age. Authenticity rules the day and consumers own brands today as never before.

We've been blogging for a year?

Well, actually 13 months. Our first post went up on April 11, 2007 and this one you are reading now is post number 100. By themselves, those numbers reveal nothing. They merely chart progress which, in itself, is important.

I am grateful to those of you who are loyal readers, linkers, commenters and forwarders. For me, writing this blog has become a way  to sort out my thoughts, analyze trends and offer up what I hope is some useful and actionable knowledge to my readers. For you, my hope is that you take away some solid information about how trends in new media affect you on a day-to-day basis, not in some ethereal or theoretical way.

As we move into year two, I wanted to restate what this blog and podcast are supposed to be about. (I really hate the term "mission statement." I write a blog. I don't attempt to put people on the moon.)

As I stated above, the overarching goal of keeping this blog is to help people of all digital faiths, skill and engagement levels understand how trends in new media directly relate back to their daily lives and how these trends are shaping the future of communications, advertising and television. The blog has pretty much stuck to that mantra for these past twelve months and pace of digital change does not look like it will slow down anytime soon.  My goal is to post twice a week (usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays) but I never post for the sake of posting. If I don't have anything valuable to offer up, it may just be once a week. People seem pretty happy with that rhythm and as a piece of side advice to would-be bloggers: setting yourself up with a posting schedule that is not overly ambitious is a way to keep your own interest up as well as not fall behind and then feel as though you have somehow "failed" because you didn't post 24 times in a week. Set yourself up to succeed from the get go.

We also try and keep the posts short and pithy (which this one most certainly is NOT but, hey, I'm allowed. It's our anniversary for goodness' sake!), and that seems to be appreciated by the readership as well. We're all busy and I try and respect that.

So, I say thank you again for your faithful support. I really love seeking out and synthesizing the information contained here on the blog. I love your comments and, once again, I am grateful to those of you who think enough about it to forward it to your friends, family and co-workers. Keep it up, and I will, too.