MediaCom Blink #4 - The Consumer Issue

BLINK #4

MEDIA TRENDS CONSUMERS PUBLISHED BY

THE CONSUMER ISSUE

dell.com /domore

©2011 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

Powering 25 of the world’s most popular websites.

#4

INTRO WELCOME

What is the best way to reach consumers today? Are brands ready to meet the demands of digital natives? Will technology be a carriage or a barrier for messages? And what can we do to prepare for further changes in consumer behaviour?

#4 Winter 2011 Circulation: 8.907

These are just a few of the many important questions that every advertiser should be asking themselves.

Empowered by choices, we now live in a world of opportunity where everything is just a click away. As consumers, we expect to have our needs met immediately and nearly effortlessly, and more than ever, we are not afraid to share information to get there. And with every online interaction, we are creating a footprint.

Tel.:

+44 (0)20 7158 5500

Email: blink.magazine@mediacom.com Web: www.mediacom.com

For advertisers, this has created huge opportunities and challenges. On one hand, the doors have been opened to a world of consumers, making it easier to speak directly and relevantly to audiences. On the other hand, however, consumers are now in charge of their own media consumption and are enclosed in interest-specific filter bubbles created by search engine algorithms. It is even harder for brands to get noticed in the first place, and brands need to tackle both the consumers and the technology.

Editor-in-Chief: Signe Wandler, MediaCom signe.wandler@mediacom.com

To break through, brands need to look closer at the data that consumers leave behind and think about what makes them tick. Get it right, and the rewards will be worth it; consumers will love and trust your brand. Get it wrong, with no focus on the consumer, and your brand will be left outside the bubble.

Printed By: Vilhelm Jensen & Partnere

In this issue of BLINK, we recognize that the shift in power from advertisers to consumers is a noticeable one and that many questions still need answering.

Inside, we identify what advertisers are doing right, what they are doing wrong, and what they will need to do more of in the future.

I hope you find it interesting, useful, and ultimately, empowering.

Regards,

Stephen Allan MediaCom Worldwide Chairman and CEO

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MediaCom Global 124 Theobalds Road London WC1X 8RX UK

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

Design & layout: Propellant, www.propellant.dk Art Director, Martin Dahlbeck Cover art: Stephan Walter

ISSN: 1903-5373 The opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors.

Minor textual contents may be republished as long as the original author and publication are cited.

Find BLINK in the “News & Insight� section at www.mediacom.com

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STATUS UPDATES

PHOTOGRAPHY GETTY IMAGES

By Dennis Grzenia and Daniel Bischoff, MediaCom Germany Consumption is still a way of displaying social status but digital is changing the game. What does this mean for brand communication?

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WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP LIKE? Take the quiz to test if your brand communication is up-to-date.

#4

CONTENT 02 Welcome 06 Please Me Now 10 Status Updates 18

Cases: Dell & EA

20 Hacking the Meme Code 26 The Data Wars 28 M:Files: The Power of Empathy 30 Finding New Magic 34 M:Files: What is your Relationship like? (QUIZ) 36 Interview: A Crowded Place 40 Digital Persuasion 44 Digital: Retailers’ New Path to Purchase 48 Interview: Time to Get Active

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A CROWDED PLACE Interview Why crowdsourcing is a powerful tool.

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DIGITAL IN RETAIL

By Tricia Nichols, Managing Partner, MediaCom US The unstoppable march of digital marketing is forcing retail brands to fundamentally transform their relationship with shoppers.

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MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

THE CONSUMER ISSUE

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HACKING THE MEME CODE

By Joerg Blumtritt, MediaCom Germany Social media and sophisticated algorithms make it increasingly difficult to get your message across.

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DIGITAL PERSUASION

By Mauritz Kaptein Persuasion profiles will help create more effective messages and valuable, trade-able data.

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THE DATA WARS

By Daniel Nye Griffiths Who controls information about where consumers go online and what they do there?

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PLEASE ME NOW

By Aimar Niedzwiedzki, MediaCom Beyond Advertising, Norway Are you entering the Customer Satisfaction Treadmill?

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

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PLEASE ME

NOW!

CUSTOMERS ARE AN INCREASINGLY HARD AUDIENCE TO PLEASE AND BRANDS MAY HAVE TO APPLY SOME TOUGH LOVE. HAVE WE FOUND THE RIGHT BALANCE IN THE RELATIONSHIP?

BY AIMAR NIEDZWIEDZKI, MEDIACOM BEYOND ADVERTISING, NORWAY Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Laureate and the father

Are you really ready to fulfil that demand? Are you

of behaviour economic theory, described a principle he

going to be there for the customer, mountain high

named The Customer Satisfaction Treadmill. The faster

and valley wide? If not, you’d better not please every

we get it, the faster we want it. The more convenient

whim that we the customers express via these new

it becomes, the more we realise just how convenient

social channels. Because most likely my barking has

it could be. The more our unreasonable demands are

no specific aim. It is more often than not, an attempt

met, the more unreasonable they become.

to get attention from my surroundings, not you (the product) specifically. I am saying you suck because

Every time you go out of your way to please

I want recognition from my friends. It is a modern

a customer you are adding weight to creating

game of “forget me not”. You just happen to be

unreasonable demand. But it doesn’t have to be this

the content.

way: there has never been a need for IKEA to include a carpenter in its flat packs. Because we have been

Many brands are now using Facebook as a customer

trained in regards to what we expect from IKEA.

service platform. Ask yourself what the purpose and consequence might be. Airline companies that

An important force that shapes brand strategy today

deliver personal flight services on Facebook are in

is the threat of substitute products or services,

fact creating a feeling of a personal assistance that is

according to Professor Michael E. Porter from Harvard

massively missing when they get to airport and on the

University. This factor leads business managers to

actual flight.

believe that loyalty should be bought and included in automated programmes. With the entrance of the

As a secondary effect is that their Facebook wall ends

social net where the individual voice suddenly becomes

up as spam since everything is about 1:1 experience.

visible, real-time support has become the latest trend.

They have lost a good tool for communication to many

But how smart is it to “be there, everywhere” for the

people in their attempt to satisfy their customers’

customer? And what is the purpose?

imagined needs. Brands that take this route are repeatedly solving the same problems over and over

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UNSTRUCTURED DATA

because the answer in not available as a simple query

When someone shouts out into thin air via Twitter,

for the customer. Most questions are repetitive and

that something is wrong with your service or

basic. Things consumers should be able to find in a

product, and you reply without thinking through all

good database. A good structured database. So the

the consequences and possible snowball effects, you

same message doesn’t have to be sent hundred times

are about to embark on a dangerous trail.

to different people on the same wall.

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

CONTENT PLEASE ME NOW!

GET SATISFACTION?

Twitter mob says their new logo is ugly. Considering

Even worse. You train your customers that they

the general public’s level of knowledge the process of

can shout in the woods and be heard. There are

logo creation I am certain that one should be cautious

online platforms that actually help customers

about making such decisions based on ephemeral

without creating increased demands on the brand.

popular demand.

Getsatisfaction.com, a community-based support platform, gives fans of companies and their staff a

Here is what a good business leader should do.

place to share their knowledge of certain products

Monitor and track conversations on the web with

or services so the pressure on customer support

a suitable social analytics tool. Acknowledge the

decreases. Swedish music service Spotify has done

frustration on the subject publicly. Find out if the

this with great success. Spotify’s customer community

99,99% of customers who did not join the mob like

PHOTOGRAPHY GETTY IMAGES

I AM SAYING YOU SUCK BECAUSE I WANT RECOGNITION FROM MY FRIENDS. IT IS A MODERN TIMES GAME OF “FORGET ME NOT”.

YOU JUST HAPPEN TO BE THE CONTENT routinely receives more than 100.000 visitors per

your logo or not. Ask your employees. If the logo

week. This traffic provides support to Spotify’s 10

is liked by the silent majority, then fight for them.

million registered users, and helps the Spotify team

That will earn respect from the mob over time. And

remain lean despite an exploding customer base.

give you something to talk to fans about: The actual reasons why you run the business the way you do. By

RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS

having an open and honest strategy most critique will

Treadmilling isn’t only about support. It is first and

most likely become an asset.

foremost about creating situations where expectations are adjusted without a specific purpose or strategy.

This is what happened when JetBlue (not an airline,

Business owners tend to spend more time looking

but a happy jetting company) left many passengers in

for threats than opportunities. Jumping if the angry

a horrible situation during a blizzard some years ago.

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

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CONTENT PLEASE ME NOW!

The angry mob went ballistic on Twitter, media picked

customer service training in two of their first four

it up, and the company’s CEO put on the mad hat and

weeks of work, regardless of department and position.

made a YouTube video. He gave a public apology but most importantly he made a promise on how JetBlue

All employees are expected to drive a wow-effect

would deal with similar problems in the future.

through service. To make a lasting impression you must do something above and beyond what’s

The next thing JetBlue did was make sure that all staff

expected. Make someone smile. But Zappos staff do

members tried really hard to make every passenger

this over the phone. Not via 140 characters or less.

feel special. Not by replying on customer service mat-

Seeing a problem online does not mean it must be

ters on Facebook. They actually state pretty clearly that

solved online.

they don’t respond to specific customer service issues posted on this platform. Instead they perform random

The more I research customer service, the more

acts of kindness; like staff members performing as an

important the human factor becomes. This is about

a cappella band at their JFK Terminal, or instantly mak-

humanising the brand or company. Our power as

BUT HOW SMART IS IT TO “BE THERE, EVERYWHERE” FOR THE CUSTOMER? WHAT IS THE PURPOSE? ing their Caribbean flights freely available for rescue

customers via the social net will affect the business

workers from the US when the terrible earthquake hit

strategy of the core business. This needs to be under-

the islands in 2010.

stood by the C-suite, the CEO and his friends up there.

If they don’t see any danger in automating satisfaction

Real human attention gives your employees the

in measurable programmes or being present without

power to become autonomic. This is how you make

understanding why, for us the customers, treadmilling

true champions of positive customer satisfaction.

will continue. That was key to the success of Zappos.

Loyalty programmes, and similar schemes, don’t

com. Delivering happiness came from the CEO. It was

work as well as the human touch because they create

a core element of the strategy.

expectancy. When customers start to expect gifts or bonuses they don’t value them as highly anymore. It

It is possible to love data and show some love to the

is bought loyalty. We are running on the customer

customer simultaneously. But only when a clear busi-

satisfaction treadmill.

ness motivated strategy is in place, and not without a clear understanding of what tools to use. Being service

TAKE IT TO THE C LEVEL

minded and making sure that you help your customer

Customer service can be immensely powerful for

is very important. But know when, where and how.

a brand if used correctly. Just ask Tony Hsieh of

Why and with what isn’t such a bad idea either.

Zappos.com, the CEO who built the world’s largest online shoe store by delivering happiness. To really

So if you want to please me now, I don’t mind. But I

understand the value of customer service as an asset,

didn’t expect you to, before you just did so. And now

all Zappos.com’s employees are obliged to attend

my expectations just went up a notch. Good luck.

AIMAR NIEDZWIEDZKI Aimar Niedzwiedzki, Marketing Entrepreneur, MediaCom Beyond Advertising.

Author of marketing blog tasteasreal.com.

PHOTOGRAPHY GETTY IMAGES

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

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PHOTOGRAPHY GETTY IMAGES

I CONSUME, THEREFORE I AM

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MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

CONTENT STATUS UPDATES

STATUS UPDATES CONSUMPTION IS STILL A MEANS TO DISPLAY SOCIAL STATUS, BUT DIGITISATION IS CHANGING THE GAME. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO BRAND COMMUNICATION?

BY DENNIS GRZENIA AND DANIEL BISCHOFF, MEDIACOM GERMANY Cars are one of the world’s strongest

them based on their appearance, their

demarcation such as nationality, religion,

signifiers of social status and give everyone

clothes, accessories and cars. We

or education no longer work as they did

an opportunity to compare social standing.

are all exposed to the consumption

in the past.

Today many of the signifiers of our place

patterns of those in our reference

in society can be seen in the goods we own

groups – and seek to replicate the

Instead people search for new reference

which provide helpful, and often instant,

patterns. That is why people consume

groups, which results in a more fragmented

indications of our place in the social order.

to keep up with their peers and to

affiliation. You can be a banker at day

impress people in lower social classes.

and roaming World of Warcraft as an orc at night. One does not rule out the

In 1899, Thorstein Veblen, a US economist and sociologist, who became well-known

Richard Centers, author of The Psychology

other, since the current profile depends

for his ‘Theory of the Leisure Class’, shaped

of Social Classes: A Study of Class

on current reference groups. And in every

the term ‘conspicuous consumption’.

Consciousness, defines social class as

situation and every area of life, we can use

That is, spending money on visible goods

follows: “A man’s class is a part of his

different symbols to display our status.

for the purpose of displaying income

ego, a feeling on his part of belongingness

or wealth – or social status. According

to something: an identification with

FROM PHYSICAL TO VIRTUAL GOODS

to Veblen, the consumption of goods

something larger than himself.” This

As in so many other areas, digital is

not only satisfied basic needs but also

definition still holds true but, accord-

providing new ways to consume, display

provided a means to build reputation.

ing to the report ‘Middle Britain’, the

and build reputation. In the past, you had

traditional markers of social class like

to pass my house to see my car. Today, you

This not only promotes and justifies

job, family background and wealth are

just have to Google me! On the internet

limitless consumption since you can always

fading away. Often people even assign

anyone can find enough information

climb one step higher on the social ladder

themselves into the wrong social class,

to determine the status of others.

but also makes consumption a way of

e.g. 36% of builders classify themselves

communicating our – hopefully rising -

as middle class and 29% of bank

And there is a shift from physical

status. For instance, we know that owning

managers say they are working class.

status symbols to digital ones. Of course, physical status symbols retain

a Mercedes Benz indicates high status The traditional boundaries of social

their impact but status is now also

classes are fading and they are becoming

conveyed by my Facebook profile and

Just think how you react when you meet

less significant. The reason being that the

the amount of friends I have or by

someone new. You instantly categorise

traditional ways of differentiation and

the magical sword I own in World of

based on income, education, and prestige.

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

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Warcraft. This is also the reason why people

NEW CURRENCIES FOR A NEW WORLD

upload photographs of their (posh) meals.

When we talk about virtual currency, we mean objects in digital environments like game items

The enabler of these new digital status symbols is the

(the magical sword from World of Warcraft or

smartphone (a status symbol in itself). It is the physi-

the tractor from Farmville etc.), that can be

cal manifestation of my ability to show my consump-

traded for real – that is, the old - money.

tion to the whole digital society within seconds.

Taking this idea one step further, social media In addition, if you post something on a social network-

platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube also

ing site, you reach a minimum of several hundred

provide their own virtual currencies, namely ‘likes’,

of people within a second. Digitisation provides the

‘followers’, ‘views’ and ‘subscribers’. Likes and

capability to communicate to an infinite audience.

followers are sold for real money, and an increasing number of people have already ‘paid with a tweet’.

On top of this, virtual goods can also in themselves be used to display my social status and who I

While the digital immigrant may still distinguish

am. Digitisation has become an accelerator of

between virtual and real money, digital natives

consumption. And all goods must now submit to

view this distinction obsolete. In the future,

the mechanisms of this new way of distribution.

it will make no difference, whether I own 1.000 Facebook credits or US$100 because

Physical goods need to offer a fast, ergonomic

money is nothing more than an enabler.

and effective way to distribute themselves via digital media such as Facebook. This need to

The business of virtual goods – especially within

show off my physical goods online means that

(social) browser-based games – has exploded in the

the design of products is becoming even more

last few years. Even if we can play the game for free,

important, because my possessions have to

costs occur if the gamers wish to add to the game, be

look perfect in the pictures that I share.

it with a bigger farm or a superior spacecraft. Such virtual items have the potential to become the new

Tools like Instagram have responded to this need

status symbols. In the US, the virtual goods market

by providing multiple filters that can be used to

already reached US$1,6 billion by the end of 2010,

enhance the pictures. Everything I photograph

while social gaming contributed US$835 million.

looks great in no time, whether it is a retro sports

PHOTOGRAPHY CUBAGALLERY

bike or a meal at my favourite restaurant.

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MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

CONTENT STATUS UPDATES

ON TOP OF THIS, VIRTUAL GOODS CAN ALSO IN THEMSELVES BE USED TO DISPLAY MY SOCIAL STATUS AND WHO I AM

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CONTENT STATUS UPDATES

A BRAND NEW PERSPECTIVE

self-produced homemade video content can

or “aspirational” brands tend to stress

This development not only has an impact on

find its way on the TV screen, as seen in

individualism or even ego (“look what I

products and goods, but also on com-

the Deutsche Telekom’s Million Moments

can afford and you can’t!”) – which is not

munication. The advertising industry needs

campaign. All these brand communications

helpful in the formation of a community.

to embrace this new need to communicate

help the user look good to his peer group.

status. This happens both on the creative side – that is design and embellishment – but also on the structural media level.

And let us not kid ourselves: Most people

THE FUTURE: FROM ASPIRATIONAL TO MEANINGFUL BRANDS

wouldn’t care if 80% of all brands disap-

In Germany, there is currently an

not as attached to brands as we may think.

peared tomorrow. Products and services are

By integrating portable devices and cloud

intense debate about forbidding the

services into our everyday life, we have

‘like’ button. The key argument being

There are already clear signs of people

already entered the next level in the evolu-

that it stores data about consumers

liberating themselves from the paradigms

tion of media. Media barriers have been

who are not Facebook members and

of the previous decades – individualism,

lowered and every piece of information (on

have thus not agreed to the storage.

consumerism, mass society – as shown

signs, ads, products, buildings, and even

in impressive ways in the uprisings in

people etc.) is linked to further content via

There is very little probability that

Spain, UK, and recently with #occupy-

constructs such as QR codes, augmented

the ‘like’ button will be banned, but

wallstreet in the US. These netizens,

reality, or Shazam, to name but a few.

critical voices have been raised and it

digital natives, pirates - or however they

has already caused suspicion. This is

might be labelled - are highly suspicious

Facebook has become a diary of status

one of the reasons why the ‘like’ button

of the old economic structures without

symbols – or a ‘museum of me’ as seen

should not be seen as the holy grail of

being “left”, “green” or any other form

in Intel’s campaign (see QR Code). All

advertising. It goes beyond the likes.

of classic anti-consumer-ideology.

using the omnipresent like button. This

Brands that glue people together in

In this new environment, trust is

mechanism is already heavily used by

communities go beyond the fulfilment

established through mutual experiences

brands, especially in campaigns with a

of conspicuous consumption. To be part

which take place on social media, no matter

participatory aspect. People can integrate

of a community one has to identify with

if it is politics, brands or products. The

themselves into movie sequences and even

others. However “classic” prestige-driving

way that these new consumers “tribalise”

relevant content is easily gathered by

DANIEL BISCHOFF (*1981) Research Director at MediaCom Germany After studying Theatre, Film and Media as well as Philosophy in Frankfurt, Brussels and Berlin, Daniel started his professional career in journalism before heading to the Berlin office of Trend Research Company TrendONE. He joined MediaCom Germany in 2010 where he founded and heads up Innovation Science, a research unit dedicated to applying trends and innovations to media planning. He and his team work across a broad spectrum of clients and industries.

into communities over social networks

LITERATURE

means brands need to be less pretentious, and make fewer grand promises, and instead donate value and meaning.

Conspicuous consumption by Thorstein Veblen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen Definition of Social Class by Richard Centers

In the future, brands will still be able

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1388331

to leverage the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption, yet they will have to tap into the accelerated opportunities offered by digital media by becoming meaningful brands.

Middle Britain Report by William Nelson http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/7053761/ Were-all-middle-class-now-darling.html Virtual Goods and Currencies by Vili Lehdonvirta http://vili.lehdonvirta.com/

So we see a shift towards brands that give meaning, support consumers who show their sympathy with others and thus foster community. As long as a brand focuses on

Monetizing digital media by Ernst & Young http://www.ey.com/Publication/ vwLUAssets/Monetizing_digital_media/$File/ Monetizing_digital_media.pdf

being aspirational rather than humble, it is highly vulnerable to negative news that gets spread fast over social networks.

Rethinking the Idea of the Brand by Umair Haque http://blip.tv/harvard-business-publishing-video/

STATUS UPDATE QR CODE

rethinking-the-idea-of-the-brand-4826346

A brand that instead positions itself in the community by helping, doing good, being of real value for the community’s members is more robust and less likely to be harmed if someone posts a negative comment.

DENNIS GRZENIA (*1979) Research Analyst at MediaCom Germany After graduating in economics, business studies, and social psychology, Dennis started working for MediaCom as a media planner. Thus he came in touch with various clients from categories like telecommunication, FMCG, and insurance. In early 2010, Dennis became Research Analyst at MediaCom Science and is now responsible for trend research, social media, and communication consultancy.

SS:

Will Critchlow HARDtalk is the flagship programme on BBC World News that asks the difficult questions. In this special series of interviews for Blink, Stephen Sackur, one of the BBC’s most respected journalists, adapts the same uncompromising style with moguls and figureheads shaping the worlds of advertising, sales and media. This issue, Stephen goes head to head with Will Critchlow, the co-founder and Director of Distilled, a London-based SEO and search engine reputation management (SERM) agency. Well-known across the industry, Will regularly blogs and speaks at conferences.

Do you accept that what you do amounts to a manipulation of the Internet?

WC: It really isn’t about taking what is already there on our clients’ websites and manipulating things so they appear higher up in search results. It’s actually about helping them change their business, change their website, change their online marketing so that they end up appearing there.

I would say that there’s a misconception that what we do is an external thing to our clients. In other words, they do their thing and we just tick away in the background manipulating things. Actually it’s much more integrated than that, or at least it should be, and we push our clients hard to let us be integrated into what they do. What we do is very much a mixture of technical consulting, helping them produce an excellent website; content strategy, in other words helping them decide what they should be writing about; and promotion strategy which broadly speaking tends to look a lot like online PR.

SS:

Let me ask you about one particular aspect of your business, that is your work on search engine optimisation (SEO). It is possible to cheat isn’t it, when it comes to this optimisation process? You can tag links across the web on unrelated content, for example. Do your clients ever want you to do that?

WC: Firstly, what do we mean by cheating? There’s a whole spectrum of things ranging from the completely legitimate with perhaps unintended consequences. There are some things that you might do completely naturally and normally that have an unintended influence on how you perform in the search engines. All the way through to things that are slightly worse than that. There are things that Google, for example, don’t like you to do that actually have a perfectly innocent explanation.

Through to things that are very distasteful - alternative methods like spamming blog comments which just creates work for the owner of the blog in cleaning those things up. All the way through to the actually illegal, hacking websites, breaking into computers, that kind of thing.

SS:

You mention Google and as you suggested, it has a pretty strict set of guidelines. It has things it says are acceptable, and many things it says are unacceptable. Do you think that their guidelines are sometimes too strict?

WC: I wouldn’t say their guidelines are necessarily too strict. I think that they are occasionally a little bit vague and open to interpretation. They leave themselves leeway to say that they don’t like something after the fact, very often. I personally would like to see them tightened up and I would also like to see some kind of appeals process. They’re very much judge, jury and executioner at the moment, especially in the markets where they have such a massive market share.

SS:

I just wonder whether this SEO process is as complex and multifaceted and as difficult as some people inside the industry seem to say it is, because obviously it serves your interests to have people believe that, because your business is all about selling your service?

WC: I would challenge that actually. We put a huge amount of effort into educating our peers and our clients on what it is we do, why we do it, how we do it. We run conferences to explain, we don’t hold back our secrets. There definitely are people in our industry who would rather it be seen as a dark art and a mystery, but we are not among those.

We believe that the biggest challenge, the biggest thing we need to overcome as an industry and as a business ourselves is fear of the unknown.

BBC WORLD NEWS is a trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation, © BBC 1996.

preached to my clients is step one: stop doing the stupid stuff. We have taken on clients in the past who have still been doing the stupid stuff and it’s never worked out well for anyone. When there’s a constant flow of new stories that they don’t like, it is pretty much impossible and a fool’s errand to try and pretend otherwise. The web is simply too good at uncovering interesting stories.

SS:

HARDtalk presenter, Stephen Sackur What we need to do is educate businesses that this process is not rocket science, it’s not horribly complex, it’s not horribly risky. There are definite rewards, and it’s usually seen as part of a modern marketing mix for any business doing business online.

WC: It is definitely one way of phrasing it. I prefer to work with people who want to do new and interesting things that are more interesting than their past and promote those. Thinking about what ranks when somebody searches for your name is, I would argue, a good activity for pretty much everyone because it is, these days, how you get a job.

When you apply for a job, very often they want to know who you are, what you’ve done before and they want to know the real you, and they are going to creep around and see what’s out there.

SS: Just how important is it for a business selling itself today to be at the top of the search list? To be either number one in any keyword Google search, or at least, to be on the front page?

WC: It very much depends on the business. If you are a business to business organisation selling entirely through personal networks and relationships, you could maybe get away with not even having a website. But if you’re selling online or you have an e-commerce operation, appearing in search is absolutely critical. It is literally a question of survival for many businesses.

One of the key realisations for our business was that it very often isn’t actually about helping our clients rank for a specific keyword. That activity is often misguided and a low return on investment. Often it’s much more valuable to help them build up a website that ranks for many new key words, and that can actually bring higher returns to their business. It is also more valuable, in my opinion, to the consumer than the activity of fiddling around as to whether something ranks at number three or number one in a highly competitive niche, because you’re actually adding new value to the internet; you’re creating new content and you’re allowing search engines to index content that they previously couldn’t get to.

SS: Let me switch focus now to another important element of your business, search engine reputation management (SERM). Is it right to regard this as your clients wanting to bury bad news and accentuate the positive?

WC: That’s a pretty close description of what they come to us asking for.

The first thing we say to them is that in the modern, connected, socially-networked world, it’s pretty much impossible to bury bad news.

SS: You can bury it pretty deep down the web though can’t you?

WC: Depending on what it is and depending on what the alternative news is out there. The very first rule of reputation management that I’ve always

“There definitely are people in our industry who would rather it [SEO] be seen as a dark art and a mystery...”

Assuming that they stop doing the stupid stuff, it then comes down to how effectively you can cover up the embarrassing behaviour that they displayed in the past?

“In the modern, connected, socially-networked world, it’s pretty much impossible to bury bad news.”

SS:

They want to know the real you, not the airbrushed you, but your job is really to promote the most positive view of you or any subject and that isn’t always the most truthful is it?

WC: So the activity we would be doing is promoting the new stuff, whatever it might be. But that is not an activity that hides anything else. It’s simply presenting both sides of an argument. There is no way to remove existing stories from the internet once they’ve finished.

SS:

Are you saying that if a client approaches you saying, “my priority here is to ensure that it is as difficult as possible to access information about x, y or z, that I’m rather unhappy about”, are you saying that you’ve refused to do that for clients because that wasn’t truthful or morally right?

WC: No, what I would say to each of them is that you have to realise that stuff is always going to be able to be found. We can’t remove it, we can’t make it that hard to find. To be perfectly honest, the search engines these days are phenomenally good at presenting a variety of views of someone. When you search for a particularly controversial subject on Google for example, you will find that they actively return differing views on that first page the search is on. So, I do counsel my clients that you can definitely put a good story forwards but you can’t remove the other stuff, and that definitely has resulted in us not working with some individuals.

Interview conducted with Will Critchlow October 2011.

For further information on advertising and sponsorship on BBC World News and BBC.com please call +44 208 433 0000 or e-mail internationalsales@bbc.com

Advertising feature sponsored by BBC World News.

TARGETING GENERATED MORE REVENUE THE CHALLENGE: Dell’s website had swarms of visitors…but too many were leaving without making a purchase.

We needed to find a way to leverage stored data from cookies—which could clearly indicate which products or type of products each shopper was interested in or maybe even intending to purchase—to increase engagement and keep their Dell.com experience top-of-mind after they left the site.

OUR SOLUTION: We mixed cutting-edge technology with creative ingenuity to totally cut out inefficient advertising!

We drastically improved the customer experience by increasing the relevancy of the advertising message seen by individual users, while minimising wastage and increasing engagement.

HOW WE MADE A DIFFERENCE: In an industry-leading move, we developed a model that merged behavioural targeting technologies capturing prospects’ visit history with dynamic creative tools that built customised messaging.

Ads feature products from each consumer’s visit history, keeping them fresh days after visiting Dell’s website.

We tagged hundreds of pages within Dell’s site—something few other blue chip advertisers have done—to pinpoint the reason for each visit, based on the products the visitor viewed, searched for, placed in their shopping cart or purchased.

Our model recognised these prospects via a cookie, then retargeted them with customised ads on their next visit to an outside website running Dell advertising. So, if someone placed an Inspiron laptop in their shopping cart but exited before purchasing, that consumer would receive an Inspiron ad later on, for instance, Yahoo.com. Other visitors might see ads for products they were researching, or be cross-sold on products they had purchased.

RESULTS: Our targeting produced outstanding improvements across the board—click through rates, conversion and ROI. •

•

•

•

Online ads with behavioural targeting converted nearly THREE times more than those without behavioural targeting!

Behavioural targeted ads account for 42% of Dell’s online impressions…but they drive an amazing 83% of online advertising revenues Behavioural targeting impressions generate almost SEVEN times more revenue per impression served than non-targeted impressions Online ads with behavioural targeting had a 70% higher click-through rate

This campaign also won the US 2010 Creative Media Award for the Performance Media & Marketing category.

18

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

CONTENT CASES

SMART USE OF DATA GAVE EA THE BEST SELLING SPORTS VIDEO EVER

BY PUTTING SMART USE OF DATA AT THE HEART OF OUR PLANNING, WE CHANGED EA’S COMMUNICATIONS AND BUSINESS MODEL AND CREATED THE MOST POPULAR SPORTS GAME IN HISTORY. OPPORTUNITY/PROBLEM: EA had a huge amount of data on people playing EA’s FIFA franchise – but weren’t doing anything with it.

INSIGHTS: 14 billion minutes of playing data told EA what people are doing within the game but not what would bring more people into the franchise. We convinced EA that if we created a YouTube channel for all their football content, the combination of internal telemetry and external YouTube behavioural data would be powerful enough to change the way they did business for good.

STRATEGY: For the first time we persuaded EA to launch the FIFA AV ad on YouTube and Facebook rather than on TV. This gave us data on 380.000 individuals, data that changed the way we approached planning in future.

MAKING IT HAPPEN: Data changed our approach in four ways: CONTEXT:

Distributing content and flighting media to coincide with engagement cycles, peaking

on Sundays and in August.

CONTENT:

More people engaged with ‘tips and tricks’ so we developed bespoke coaching advice

videos that delivered 1,5 million views in a week.

COMMERCIAL:

Reworking EA’s club agreements to get the most engaging content.

MOBILE:

Prompted exploration from EA to deliver the mobile game for free, as the data can prove

more valuable than any loss in income.

RESULTS: We delivered the best-selling sports video game of all time. And now EA need never use industry standard planning tools again.

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

19

ILLUSTRATION JACK HUDSON

CONTENT HACKING THE MEME CODE

20

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

HACKING THE MEME CODE THE SOCIAL NETWORK TIMELINE IS, IN EFFECT, A PERSONAL NEWSPAPER. OUR FRIENDS’ POSTS ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER OR GOOGLE+ TELL US WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THEIR WORLDS. BUT LIKE EVERY GREAT NEWSPAPER, THE TIMELINE ALSO LINKS US TO OTHER INFORMATION, NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT THAT WE MIGHT LIKE.

BY JOERG BLUMTRITT, MEDIACOM GERMANY It is often said that our timeline is, in fact,

filter bubble” by author and entrepreneur

hearder to reach some audiences through

a filter. We see only what our community

Eli Pariser. The word bubble in this case

the classic communication channels.

of selected friends post. If someone posts

has a thoroughly ambivalent meaning:

things on social networks that we are

a bubble that surrounds us, in which we

Advertising is perhaps more sensitive to

not interested in, we will “unfollow” or

are somehow trapped, because we no

this development than any other form of

“uncircle” him or her sooner or later –

longer see the reality outside clearly; the

communication. However, it also becomes

depending on our mood, on the strength

second meaning of course is that of a

increasingly difficult to reach out to

of our relationship and the “netiquette”,

soap bubble that will burst sooner or later

audiences, be it for advertising, political

the rules of courtesy in social media

like any other piece of online hype. There

announcements or any other kind of

that everyone has to obey to remain an

is concern that this bubble could not

communication. This filter bubble process

accepted member.

only diminish the quality of serendipity

will add a new dimension to the rising

inherent in networks such as the internet,

complexity of communications planning

Advertising, in particular, seems to be

but also the ability of advertisers to reach

that we have to take into consideration.

content that only very rarely passes

new audiences.

through this filter, if at all. Just as we would

Social media platforms provide multiple technological means to make this filter-

avoid people pushing unwarranted business

THE RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE CHANGES FOR MASS MEDIA

towards us. Thus, the timeline might be the

The rise of social media has been

invisible to their users. By organising our

toughest spam-filter there is.

accompanied by the decline of mass media.

contacts into groups, lists or circles, users

Although it is undisputed that the 30’’ TV

are encouraged to (re)create hierarchies of

This phenomenon of a highly sophisti-

spot is still the most effective means of

relevance (“inner circle”, “extended circle”,

cated algorithm combined with a social

advertising and is likely to remain that way

“nuisance circle”, “spam”). Thus content

prediction engine has been named “the

for a long time, it is becoming harder and

posted by someone from the “buddies”

in our “meatspace” communities, we try to

process even more seamless, effective and

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

21

ILLUSTRATION JACK HUDSON

circle might get a totally different amount

impact Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

edit the predicted preferences of these

of attention compared to content from

How will searchmarketing specialists

algorithms in the way that Google, for

someone in the “business partners” or

in the future be able to guarantee that

example, does on http://www.google.

“opinion leaders” circle.

you’ll get a top-10 search ranking? For

com/ads/preferences. This might become

SEO purposes it will thus also become

more common following the EU Privacy

MY INTERNET DOES NOT LOOK THE SAME WAY YOURS DOES

important to see the URLs of websites we

Directive that became effective in May

want to promote recommended as often as

this year and will be implemented in

A third layer – after the timeline and the

possible by being posted or tweeted.

national legislation soon.

reality” is created by Google and other

The targeting of display ads can be

Finally, the media consumption of the

search engines that use the selections made

improved in the same way. This is, of

classic channels is also affected by the filter

by users in their social media profiles (time-

course, a good thing at first, since cam-

bubble. Studies have shown that nothing

line, circles) as input for their algorithms

paigns will perform more efficiently and

influences a consumer’s choice more

to provide the most relevant results for our

the user will experience more relevant

heavily than the recommendation they

queries. These technologies take content

advertising. But, at the same time, the

get through their timeline, which thereby

posted by our friends to predict what would

inventory that addresses a broad audi-

becomes a screen that might preselect what

be relevant for us.

ence, maximising reach - a prerequisite in

someone would watch or read. It’s not only

building brand awareness - becomes

media consumption – our brand prefer-

more fragmented.

ences also start to be affected by the posts

circles – between the user and “outside

We can no longer expect to be shown any kind of objective search ranking, instead

22

from our community to our circles, friends

we will get our very own list of results

Thus social media works as a filter,

that might be completely different from

induced by the user, but also selects what

that of our colleagues or neighbours.

the user gets recommended by search

MEANINGFUL BRANDS

Google translates this into what it thinks

engines and display advertising. Very

One side effect is that the meaning of

we would find relevant. This will heavily

few platforms allow users to access and

brands in people’s lives changes. With

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

and our timeline.

mass media advertising, the most

Brands that contribute something of

Business Review, has coined the term

valuable brands would have been those

value to a community, something that not

‘meaningful brands’ in opposition to the

that gave their buyers a sense of prestige.

only the buyer but the whole community

more conventional ‘aspirational brands’ that

Conspicuous consumption is based on

can benefit from, will be the brands that

we previously bought into.

mass communication. It requires that

succeed. They will be more likely to show

others easily recognise what brands

up in their buyers’ posts, telling their

With the ‘meaningful brands’ we have a

we buy.

friends, “look, I care about all of you”.

first hint of how advertising within the

When the process of building brand

THE MEME

that, and in addition to the obvious - the

preferences gets somehow atomised, as

So far we have been mostly looking at

personal statements, the thoughts, and

we experience when enclosed within our

what gets filtered out. But what about the

emotions that people share with their

filter-bubble might still work. Apart from

THE FILTER BUBBLE WILL ADD A NEW DIMENSION TO THE RISING COMPLEXITY OF COMMUNICATIONS PLANNING THAT WE HAVE TO TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION filter bubbles, others may no longer notice

content that does make it inside our filter?

followers - there is a specific type of

the significance of our brand-choices. At

Since most users follow more people

content that gets propagated from one

the same time, it becomes increasingly

than they know in person, there must be

personal circle to the next, that is repeat-

important to show affiliation to your

something that gets through.

edly shared, retweeted, liked or whatever

community, to get acceptance and to be welcomed as a member.

4form of handling a certain platform Umair Haque, a writer for the Harvard

might provide.

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

23

You probably know what I am talking about

Two examples of how memetic images are shared within communities

when I mention these viral ideas: LOLCats, dramatic chipmunk, Nyan Cat, Sad Keanu, Goatse and Pedobar. Viral ideas and images like this can be described as ‘memes’.

But more often, memes consist of more mundane images, such as pictures of food or birds that spread across the web.

‘Meme’ is an artificial word. It was created in behavioural biology to describe the way cultural ideas, symbols and practices get passed from one generation to the next.

These ideas can self-replicate and adapt to a changing environment in the same way that genes do through the standard model of biological evolution. The meme is hence seen

The vertices represent the shared images, edges connect images posted by the same user.

The left graph shows a set of images that get propagated with almost equal probability in the supporting community, the right graph shows an image that made its path into two separate communities before spreading further.

to be the cultural equivalent of the gene.

There are different types of memes, depending on their way they propagate.

Some get spread very rapidly, globally and evenly. Others are shared only in their own community – which needs not to have been defined otherwise; these

JOERG BLUMTRITT

images just tend to stop at some invisible border. Some images seem to virtually infect one community and then, after some time, jump over to the next, creating bubble-like structures in the social web, while others fade away proportionally to the distance of their point of origin.

Before joining MediaCom, I did research with my long-time associate Benedikt Koehler, now COO of Ethority, to find out why some images and ideas had the power to become memetic. Even more interesting, we aimed to work out a way to brief creative people how to shape an image for a certain memetic task. So we set about hacking the meme code.

The results will soon be published. And of course we will deploy our findings to create campaigns that are seen to be valuable and meaningful, or at least entertaining for our clients’ target audiences.

24

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

Joerg blogs under slow-media.net and can be followed on twitter.com/jbenno

Joerg Blumtritt (*1970) is managing director at MediaCom Germany.

After his graduation in statistics and political sciences he started working as a researcher in behavioural sciences, focused on nonverbal communication. Projects were funded by EU Commission, German federal government and the MaxPlanck-Society. Subsequently he ran marketing and research teams for TV-channels ProSiebenSat.1, RTL II and magazine publisher Hubert Burda Media, introducing new qualitative methods like Netnography (< interNET ethNOGRAPHY) into media research. As European Operations Officer at Tremor Media, Joerg was in charge of building the New York-based video ad-network’s European Enterprises.

He is founder and chairman of the German Social Media Association (AG Social Media) and is co-author of the Slow Media Manifesto.

ILLUSTRATION JACK HUDSON

CONTENT HACKING THE MEME CODE

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

25

CONTENT THE DATA WARS

THE DATA WARS

BY DANIEL NYE GRIFFITHS

WHO CONTROLS INFORMATION ABOUT WHERE CONSUMERS GO ONLINE AND WHAT THEY DO THERE? TAKE A WALK IN THE NEW WALLED GARDENS OF THE INTERNET. An often-repeated statistic reveals that the

THE RISE OF THE DATA BARONS

buy, or look at, the better the personal

human race created 5 exabytes (5 billion

The Bulgarian politician and consumer

recommendations they can offer. As the

gigabytes) of data between the dawn of

representative Meglena Kuneva called

company has evolved from an internet

time and 2003. It’s now generating the

personal data “the oil of the internet.”

bookstore to a hypertext hypermarket

same amount every two days.

Some companies, either as an objective

and now to selling devices on which

or consequence of their business models,

to consume media from its own data

The numbers are open to question, but the

have established themselves as current or

centres, its needs have grown. Amazon

broad thrust is clear: we are creating a

potential “data barons”.

now adds enough server capacity every

mind-mangling amount of data. Data

day to contain the global infrastructure

that can be mined for meaning and

Facebook is often the focus of bitter

created in the first five years of its life.

value extracted.

disputes around data and privacy issues.

The amount of customer data it generates

This matters because of Facebook’s sheer

has grown apace.

Customer information has always had

size: it has reached 800 million members

an intrinsic and an extrinsic value. The

and nothing seems likely to keep it from ten

With the introduction of the Kindle Fire

intrinsic value lies in understanding

figures. Recently, 500 million people logged

opens an interesting new element to the

customers better, and being able to provide

into Facebook in the course of a single day.

way data flows through Amazon’s servers.

better products and offers as a result.

To compensate for the slow processor of The majority of Facebook’s revenue now

this media-focused tablet, Amazon plans to

The extrinsic value is sometimes in selling

comes from advertising - in 2010 an

use its own cloud computing resources to

databases of customer information –

estimated $1,86 billion, with estimates for

cut up the meat of websites before serving

although this is generally unpopular with

the full year in 2011 up to $3,80 billion. The

them to the tablet – compressing content to

customers and raises privacy issues – and

reason Facebook is raking in so much ad

an appropriate quality level.

in increasing the accuracy and thus the

revenue? Because buying the ads is the only

value of advertising opportunities.

way to profit from Facebook’s vast store

In practical terms, the page request will be

of customer data; you specify your target

made by Amazon’s cloud and then routed

As the web increased in popularity and

audience and they deliver the ads to readers

to the device from there, meaning that

usage, brands and media companies used

who fit the demographic profile.

even if the data is aggregated and stored

their web presences to gather information

26

anonymously it could theoretically be used

and recruit subscribers. However, web-

Amazon has always had a clear reason

to improve associations and even to deliver

native companies – companies built on

to gather customer information; the

targeted advertising – for Amazon products

and for the internet – arose and began to

more information they have on the kinds

or third parties – on the page that arrives

outperform the old guard.

of products buyers of product x also

on the user’s screen.

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

A cynic might point out that this makes the

across a number of high street and online

publisher a content provider, with Apple

retailers, providing material for profiled

owning the relationship.

data analysis.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

The sample numbers may not be as great

Unusual situations lead to strange bedfel-

on a global scale, but for brands looking for

lows. Google, which until it took steps to

analysis in specific target regions this may

hamper searches for file sharing at the

be a benefit. Loyalty programmes offer a

start of this year was regularly attacked

clear benefit to consumers in exchange for

for facilitating the death of the traditional

information – just as Facebook effectively

media, has emerged as a possible ally

rewards users for their data by providing a

for publishers.

social network.

In France, several news publishers have

Ultimately, brands and media producers

united to sell their iPad and iPhone content

in the physical world need to deduce what

through epresse.fr, an app outside Apple’s

will persuade customers to share their

Newsstand. Obviously it will be left out of

data, match the methods of the technology

what will presumably be the first port of

platforms and make smart alliances to

call for magazines on iOS 5 devices, and

approach their scale.

from the benefits of tight integration with US Congressman Edward Markey has

the OS. Instead they plan to expand the

The chances of replacing or forcing open

platform to other devices and to the web.

tech platforms do not look great, ultimately.

written to Amazon asking for clarification

Once established, a dominant player like

of what information the Fire’s browser will

The web could, ultimately, play a larger

Facebook (in social networks) or Apple (in

collect and how it will be used. As is often

role. “Web apps” - mobile apps that route

mobile media) can usually only be swayed

the case, there is a balance between deliver-

out to mobile websites instead of working

by concerted, unified industry action or

ing an improved service and maintaining

natively on the phone or tablet - are often

by legislation – which will usually seek to

privacy and confidentiality.

derided for their lack of offline function and

limit rather than facilitate the sharing of

one-size-fits-all structure. However, HTML5

customer data. There are, however, some

When it comes to owning the screen, it’s

– still in development, but supported

advantages to this situation.

impossible to miss Apple. In June 2011,

piecemeal on mobile devices – adds several

the iTunes store had 225 million accounts

elements to make the experience more

The technology and media sectors are

with credit cards attached. In common

“app-like”, including, vitally, offline storage.

full of “frenemies” – companies that are

with Amazon and Facebook, a key element

The Financial Times, with the advantage

simultaneously rivals and partners. The

of these accounts is that they are provid-

of a well-known brand, is a notable early

frenemy model might apply to these data

THERE IS A BALANCE BETWEEN DELIVERING AN IMPROVED SERVICE AND MAINTAINING PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY ing personally identifiable information,

adopter, directing readers to app.ft.com

aggregators as well. Their position at the

tied not just to music purchases but phone

rather than the Apple App Store and thus

head of the river may mean that they collect

apps, movies and increasingly media

avoiding the App Store’s regulations.

huge amounts of data, but it also mean that

through the App Store.

they have the resources to store, manage

LOYALTY PROGRAMMES

and analyse it to the point where its use for

With the Newsstand service in iOS 5, Apple

Apps, native or otherwise, are not the only

targeting on behalf of advertisers becomes

has raised its game, aggregating magazines

option for companies looking for enhanced

a salable asset.

into one place rather than hosting multiple

consumer understanding, of course.

apps, increasing the convenience for brows-

The walled gardens, in this light, are more

ers – and, the argument goes, the sales

Traditional consortium loyalty schemes

like the gardens of stately homes than

for content providers. But there is a price

such as Nectar have been doing many of the

feudal castles. You have to pay to get access,

to pay – not just a 30% cut, but the loss of

same things as Facebook and the like. Based

and you cannot take anything away, but,

customer data, which without an option

in Britain, Nectar cards can be used to earn

nonetheless, you are glad that someone else

click is kept in their Apple account.

and redeem loyalty points for purchases

is pruning the hedges.

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

27

M:FILES THE POWER OF EMPATHY

THE POWER OF

EMPATHY

BY SUE UNERMAN, CSO, MEDIACOM UK

28

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

AT MEDIACOM WE PUT CONSUMERS AT THE HEART OF OUR PLANNING. AND TO REALLY UNDERSTAND THEM YOU HAVE TO WALK IN THE SHOES OF THE END-CONSUMER. WE CALL IT METHOD INSIGHT. THIS IS A PERSONAL STORY OF HOW METHOD INSIGHT BEGAN IN THE UK AND HAS BECOME PART OF OUR WORK AROUND THE WORLD. There is lots and lots of data available to analyse

off to find out what really made the consumer tick.

path to purchase and give us a microscopic look at

This is now mandatory on every client brief. We

digital media behaviour. We now know more than

believe passionately that no great strategy comes

ever about the consumer’s decision-making process

without great consumer insight, and for truly great

from studies by marketing research companies and

consumer insight Method Insight is a must.

Google Analytics. But none of the information that we can get from any of these sources can replace the

And it’s incredibly simple to do. Our planners for

power of empathy.

Müller have spent time lurking in the chilled food sections of supermarkets, our planners for Met Police

At MediaCom London we have been encouraging every

have been to hairdressers in Brixton and our planners

planner to put down the data and walk a mile or two

for holiday firm TUI spent a day meeting holiday-

in the target market’s shoes. Funnily enough for some

makers at Gatwick.

of us who have been working at MediaCom for a while, or in my case at the company MediaCom acquired at

One outstanding example was when Nicola Jopling

the turn of the last century, The Media Business, this is

spent an evening with her sister’s National Childcare

real back-to-our-roots stuff.

Trust group to understand how to sell baby monitors to pregnant mums. Nicola, who is single and has no plans

Before we had the resource and budgets to buy all

to become personally involved in pregnancy, neverthe-

the exciting research that we do now, we had no

less immersed herself in the group and picked up lots

alternative but to go out and find out about real

of great insights. Those insights helped her persuade

consumer behaviour for ourselves. In fact, one of the

the client to ditch the existing strategy, which involved

first things Nick Lawson – now our EMEA CEO – did

daytime TV and parenting magazines.

when he first joined the company a couple of decades ago was go out to Euston Station in London and ask

She was convinced that the true target market for

rush-hour commuters about early evening drinking

Tomy’s new baby monitor, which had a very premium

(I should point out that this was for a pitch for

price and substantial technical superiority over its

a wine company not because he was looking for

competition, was not the broad mum audience that

someone to go to the pub with!)

standard research measured. Instead, she wanted to go for upmarket pregnant opinion forming mums to

However, as the UK office grew in size, acquired

be... not an audience easily measured by standard

more data and, dare I say, more professional

industry research.

expertise, we noticed that our planners were turning to our brilliant Real World Insight team for consumer

This upmarket target audience worked and therefore

understanding. It worked very well but it also tended

didn’t watch daytime TV. On top of that they found

to mean that the planners were outsourcing insight

mother and baby magazines patronising. Instead

rather than trying to empathise with what their

they were hugely swayed by what a few years ago

target audiences were feeling.

was still a newish trend... blogs by mums online.

PHOTOGRAPHY GETTY IMAGES

The new strategy involved winning over these Back in 2008 we were discussing how to cope with

bloggers by publishing their top tips for new mums

this situation – both the frequent bottleneck caused

in a leaflet that was then distributed via exhibitions,

by resources and the sense that there was sometimes

in-store and promoted by the bloggers themselves.

lack of emotional insight from some of the planning

And, of course, it promoted the Tomy monitor.

teams – when our strategy head Steve Gladdis came up with a brilliant solution: Method Insight.

It was an unusual solution that proved to be a huge success. And it was all because of Method Insight.

He suggested that we free the planners from their desks and the tyranny of too much data and send

Sue Unerman’s new book, Tell The Truth, which includes

them out to experience the consumer journey in

a fuller case study of the Tomy baby monitor,

person. So with a bit of guidance from Pauline

is now available for pre-order at Amazon.

Robson, head of Real World Insight, the planners set BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

29

CONTENT FINDING NEW MAGIC

FINDIN G NEW MAGIC HOW CAN BRANDS EARN TIME IN CONSUMERS’ LIVES? INNOVATOR FARIS YAKOB EXPLAINS HOW SCALE, EMPOWERMENT AND TECHNOLOGY CAN STILL DELIVER.

BY FARIS YAKOB Advertisers are in a bind. Many fear they have too

media industrial complex and the advertising industry

little to say to attract and hold consumer attention.

were able to create and distribute culture. So when

In the past they could rely on traditional media own-

you saw such elements of culture, you couldn’t help

ers to reach consumers. By advertising in commercial

but be impressed.

breaks around the edges of content they could take advantage of the audience that shows had aggregated.

The exponential impact of Moore’s Law means that the computing power of a bespoke Silicon Graphics

30

Fragmentation has meant consumers are gathering in

workstation, as used to create the special effects for

big numbers less and less and that the cost of taking

Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, can now be easily

advantage of the aggregation ability of others has

approximated on a consumer laptop. Digital techno-

become ever higher. The internet is the great disin-

logy has given every consumer the power to create

termediator, connecting everything to everything,

content. The monetary power of brands no longer

but this direct connection comes with a cost. Brands

buys them uniqueness. We can all make films, we

with little to say do not attract any attention in a

can all create web pages and we can all record our

world where communications are spread by consumer

own music. The magic that exclusive access to this

networks rather than broadcast ones.

technology used to deliver has evaporated.

However, the challenge isn’t simply about distribu-

Content producers – the role traditionally taken by ad

tion, it’s also about the means of production. Until

agencies in the marketing industry – no longer have

very recently, the ability to make something public,

exclusive access to the magic that is content creation.

to publish, to a mass audience, was a privileged act.

That isn’t to say the quality of “consumer-generated

The powers that be historically outlawed the ability

content” [a tellingly oxymoronic term] is on par with

to disseminate information – unlicensed printing

Hollywood production. Rather, the gap between not

presses were illegal, as they still are under certain

being able to do something and being able to do it is

modern regimes, such as in Malaysia under the

infinite, but the gap between being bad and excellent

Printing Presses and Publications Act of 1984. When

is simply one of degree. It’s hard to be amazed with

the age of mass media arrived, only governments, the

any technical wizardry on film when you grow up

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

with iMovie at your fingertips. But all is not doom

exclusively leverage the technologies for marketing.

and gloom for smart brands. They still have strategic

The problem with the blurring of the technology and

advantages in the eternal quest for consumer atten-

the communications industries, however, is that they

tion: technology and scale.

are divided by a common language. Words that should mean the same thing often mean something com-

Technology provides a canvas that is yet to be

pletely different to those on either side of the divide.

effectively colonised by the amateur and, as Arthur C. Clarke famously pointed out, any sufficiently

Take a simple word like platform. To a communica-

advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

tions specialist it means an idea or theme that all

Thus, technology provides a medium to amaze and

messages fit into, but to a technology expert it means

cut through the clutter of content.

an underlying technology that enables other products

IN THE AGE OF THE EMPOWERED CONSUMER, BRANDS NEED TO IDENTIFY WHAT THEY CAN DO THAT CONSUMERS CANNOT, HOW THEY CAN ADD SOMETHING TO THEIR LIVES Because technology companies often tout their latest

or services to be built on it. This means that collabo-

tools to brands and media owners to help drive

ration among disciplines can seem to be aligned when

uptake, brands have first user advantages.

it isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. At the extreme, creative directors trained in writing or graphic design find themselves being asked

The Pepsi TEN project is an explicit manifestation of

to review algorithms they canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand, as code

this advantage. The consumer packaged goods giant

becomes a creative deliverable.

established a venture fund to support and partner with early stage technology start-ups in order to

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

31

CONTENT FINDING NEW MAGIC

For brands to take advantage of technology

an old example but it classically leverages

In the age of the empowered consumer,

and their first-access rights to new develop-

the consumer’s ability to make films and

brands need to identify what they can do

ments, they and their agents need to develop

incentivises them to participate with the

that consumers cannot, how they can add

common understanding. Often it is the role of

opportunity to see their ad in the biggest

something to their lives.

the strategist to translate business language

TV event of the year.

into creative inspiration. Increasingly

Technology may be part of the answer, if

additional translations are necessary, evinced

Scale can be delivered via access. For all

brands and technologists can learn to speak

by the formation of new agency roles, reverse

their digital tools, tablets and laptops won’t

the same language, but it could also be via

mentoring, and management training from

get you close to the big stars, although

the appropriate application of scale that

groups like HyperIsland.

Twitter disrupts even this advantage.

gives consumers something that even the

Brands can leverage their corporate

latest laptop, tablet or mobile cannot offer.

BRANDS DELIVER SCALE

might to provide access to things that an

The scale and complexity of multi-platform

The other area where brands still have an

individual’s money can’t buy. Coca-Cola

content presents an novel twist on the

advantage over empowered consumers is

experimented with an example of this

traditional competency – if brands can

their ability to deliver scale. Ironically this

when they sponsored a live, online 24-hour

effective harness transmedia storytelling,

is often most powerful when delivered in

recording session with the band Maroon 5.

we may find a kind of content that consum-

traditional media environments. Digital

The band composed and recorded a track,

ers once again think of as magical.

channels may now deliver massive reach

aided by feedback and suggestions from

but the almost infinite nature of the web

people online in real time.

means it can lack the cultural impact of

@faris www.farisyakob.com

TV and the associated media that reports

Scale can also deliver empowerment. Pepsi

on it. Fragmentation leads to the counter

Refresh is an unconventional example

Faris Yakob is Chief Innovation Officer

intuitive fact that things can be incredibly

that allows consumers to get behind their

at MDC Partners’ kbs+ and co-founder of

popular on the internet and yet you may

favorite local group. Scale enabled them

creative technology shop Spies&Assassins.

never hear about it.

to gain access to funds that made a real difference to the causes their consumers

Scale can be delivered in terms of audience.

cared about and as a result the campaign

Doritos Crash the Superbowl campaign is

has been spread via their networks.

TECHNOLOGY PROVIDES A MEDIUM TO AMAZE AND CUT THROUGH THE CLUTTER OF CONTENT

32

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4 #3

For issues that matter to marketers Blink is just one of the ways in which MediaCom addresses the issues that matters to marketers.

In addition to Blink, MediaCom also produces a point-of-view newsletter, a webcast with a panel of prominent speakers and a white paper. Everything on the same topic for an in-depth perspective and for actionable recommendations for every marketer to apply.

BLINK

NEWSLETTER

Sign up today for the full range of MediaComs communications

WEBCAST

OR Scan the QR code (with e.g. scanlife) to go direct to the sign-up page.

WHITE PAPER

Visit mediacom.com Click on The Insider in the News & Insights section

M:FILES QUIZ

HOW CLOSE IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP? BRANDS NEED TO BE CLOSER THAN EVER TO THEIR CONSUMERS, BUT ARE WE TAKING ALL POSSIBLE STEPS TO UNDERSTAND, INTERACT AND ENGAGE? ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS TO FIND OUT IF YOUR BRAND COMMUNICATIONS ARE FIT FOR PURPOSE. When was the last time your brand conducted a social media listening study?

A In the last three months B In the last six months C Never

How many of your staff can interact with consumers?

A All our staff are empowered to tweet and post on social networks within clear guidelines B We have an intern who tweets for us C The people who work in store do that for us

Have you optimised your website for mobile?

A Yes, for Android and Apple B I think so C What website?

When did you last create some content?

A We’ve got a rolling programme of content and events B We run an event once a year and then try to spin it out for as long as possible C The ad agency posts our commercials on YouTube

What incentives do you offer consumers to join your digital community?

A Money off vouchers, bespoke content and invites to meet the team events B Money off deals C Business is about commerce not community Can customers return online purchases in-store?

A Of course and we give them a voucher for free postage next time B No, it’s too difficult for our internal IT system to tie the two together C All online sales go through affiliates What media channel is the most important for reaching your target audience?

A They all work together and are planned as whole B Online spend has just hit 10% but TV is still the strongest medium C We plan our TV and then see what money we have left

What are your customers really passionate about?

A We know they love sports so we sponsor matches and give them the chance to meet their heroes.

B We hope they are passionate about our products and services C I don’t care as long as they buy my stuff

WHO ARE YOU? Mostly As: Congratulations, you are a ready-for-action 2012 marketer. To stay up-to-date your focus should now be on content and possibilities of 4G mobile.

Mostly Bs: You are a Millennium marketer. You’re moving in the right direction but still have a way to catch up. Real World Insights can help ensure that your communications keep up with the expectations of modern consumers.

Mostly Cs. I know the 1980s are fashionable again but you can do much better. It’s time to ditch the shoulder pads, get some sneakers and go online. Visit www. google.com or any other search engine and type MediaCom. Call your local office and we’d be happy to help you become a marketer of the future.

ILLUSTRATION FERNANDO VOLKEN TOGNI

How much do you know about your most profitable consumers?

A We hold regular, exclusive events for our biggest spenders B I think they like us on Facebook C We have their credit card details

CHRISTIAN GODSKE Christian Godske is Head of Digital at MediaCom Denmark. One of his professional milestones was when, as EMEA Client Service Director for Nokia, he helped launch the biggest online multiplayer experience “Nokia Games”. Christian is an external lecturer and a much soughtafter speaker on social media, new media and trends.

A CROWDED PLACE STEPHEN BENSON IS AN EXPERT IN CROWDSOURCING AND HAS DEVELOPED A BUSINESS MODEL THAT INCLUDES A STRONG SOCIAL ELEMENT. IN THIS INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTIAN GODSKE HE EXPLAINS WHY CROWDSOURCING IS SUCH A POWERFUL TOOL. STEPHEN BENSON: Innovation Exchange is an

about who has the most gifted employees – because

online global innovation network that helps Fortune

we all know you can never have enough – and it

500 companies solve their innovation challenges in

is not about who has the best equipped Research

the broad business areas of product development,

and Development labs – because lots of companies

marketing, sales, operations, designs, supply chain

have those and lots of companies have failed. It is

and research. We do it by tapping into that collective

more about who has access to the most compelling

intelligence and resources of a proprietary network

innovation community and that just does not mean

global community of innovators and we believe that it

your customers and it just doesn’t mean one or two

is our understanding of the physics and the psycho-

strategic suppliers.

logy of online communities that makes us successful.

We make sure that the right people collaborate and

We believe it is a global community of resources and

with the right virtual teams on the right projects for

people that you need to have access to and so we’ve

the optimal results for our clients.

established the Innovation Exchange as a source for that whole process.

The Innovation Exchange platform is designed to

36

govern the process and create a community that

CHRISTIAN GODSKE: Crowdsourcing is noth-

becomes more productive the more that it is engaged

ing new and we have seen some great cases like

with, and a community where people network and

Wikipedia and even commercially focused ones, like

learn from each other too.

Dell Ideastorm. But why does it stay relevant?

We built this business model because we have a

SB: The actual concept of reaching out to people

firm belief that sustained innovation is no longer

for solutions has been around since the 1700s. In

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

STEPHEN BENSON

Q&A A CROWDED PLACE

Stephen Benson is the founder of the crowdsourcing organisation, Innovation Exchange. Since starting the business in 2007 he has worked with some of the world’s largest brands.

1714 the measurement of longtitude was a problem

things and certain challenges lend themselves better

that came into sharp focus as people began making

just having somebody solve it through an internal

transoceanic voyages. The British government

employee and some challenges lend themselves better

realised this was something that needed to be

to maybe look outside the company’s four walls.

unlocked and offered a £20.000 reward to anyone who could come up with a simple and precise method

CG: How does a company get started using crowd-

of determining a ship’s longtitud. Numerous awards

sourcing? And how do you motivate and initiate that

were given against the challenge.

crowdsourcing experience? Is that all done internally through the company or through a million dollar

So reaching out to people to solve problems is not

competition to come up with the best idea?

new. What is new is our ability to connect and our ability to communicate with people on a global scale.

SB: It’s not necessarily always a million dollar

I think social relationships have been completely

competition. We have spent a lot of time working

redefined by the internet and some of the techno-

with academics because we wanted to get a real

logy that is going on. I think who we know now is

understanding of how people operate in network

becoming much more important than what we own.

communities online. What motivates them? This

We are right now at a crossroads where the world is

has resulted in us developing a couple of algorithms

really too fast, too complex and too networked for

with between 120-150 variables that identify what

any company to have all of the answers internally.

motivates somebody to actually participate in a particular challenge.

I think organisations have come to the realisation that they need to look across disciplines and they need to

And the financial variable is sometimes weighted

look across sectors to find the innovations that will

fairly low. To get started we make a broad or narrow

matter tomorrow. It is not necessarily all going to

call to action to our community. But it is always

come out of their Research and Development (R&D).

a well-managed process, it is not just to throw something against the wall and see what sticks.

CG: Can crowdsourcing replace R&D? CG: Out of those 150 variables that makes people SB: No. I am a firm believer in saying that we do

want to join, what would you say would be the

not replace R&D departments we are just an adjunct

main incentive for consumers to participate in

to them. We are an extra tool in an organisation’s

crowdsourcing? And is it something that people can

innovation tool box. Crowdsourcing is just an extra

actually make a living of?

little tool that organisations can use to reach certain

BLINK #3 | MEDIACOM

37

Q&A A CROWDED PLACE

SB: Well making a living obviously depends. Do

financial piece being just one small component which

our incentives have the ability to make a life

has a different weight for different people.

change for certain people? Absolutely. We have a team in Romania who worked on a challenge and

CG: Is crowdsourcing something that can be used

were successful and our client purchased that for

by all brands and all sectors from consumer brands,

$100.000. $100.000 goes a lot further in Romania

businesses, business to business and that can be used

than in the US. We also have another team who used

for all challenges? So what’s really the range here?

their reward payment as seed money for a business they’d always wanted to start so they quit their jobs

SB: We are a firm believer here that certain chal-

and followed their dream.

lenges aren‘t designed for the Innovation Exchange.

If you need specialisation you might want to look

However, I believe that you will see the financial

somewhere else. We thrive on challenges that require

reward being taken out of the equation more and

a broad diversity of thinking. Here is a silly analogy

more as crowdsourcing evolves. Instead the whole

to make my point: I wouldn’t want somebody doing

WHO WE KNOW IS BECOMING MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT WE OWN social aspect is something that will grow and the

a medical operation on me if they have diverse

financial aspect is something that will diminish.

experience in all sorts of things. I want a person who

I don’t have to pay a $100.000 reward but I have to

is doing that medical operation to be a specialist in

do something else, something that is socially relevant

that specific area. So that challenge is best tended by

to the folks and the organisation that are working on

someone who is a deep specialist.

the challenges.

CG: Do you see any differences region by region?

Some of the motivating factors that we have seen

We know from commercial online behavior that

coming more to the fore include peer recognition

there is great variation in how much different regions

and just the creative and intellectual challenge of

participate. South America and the APAC are much

being able to solve something that a Fortune 500

more likely to be ‘content creators’ than Europe

might not be able to. Crowdsourcing is a creative

for example.

and intellectual challenge in and of itself and people get motivated by many different things with the

38

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

SB: We do not experience that difference. Our

community has 192 countries represented and we do get a significant amount of solutions coming in from Europe. It is probably because we are a community with dedicated participants.

CG: Do you think a business like Innovation Exchange is required, especially for more complicated crowdsourcing projects. Or could a company just put out a

SB: I think they are becoming smaller and I think

challenge on the internet and say here’s a banner, and

they are being integrated into very many different

here’s a million dollars if you solve that question?

areas. Initially when we started out it was the marketing guys who saw the value of this. Now we’re

SB: That becomes an electronic suggestion box and we

seeing all sorts of different elements of a business

are definitely not an electronic suggestion box. This

organisation getting involved and saying “hey, we

isn’t a technology play at all. So anybody can throw up

have an issue and a problem, I wonder if the com-

a piece of technology, which is an electronic suggestion

munity could solve it”

I BELIEVE THAT YOU WILL SEE THE FINANCIAL REWARD BEING TAKEN OUT OF THE EQUATION MORE AND MORE AS CROWDSOURCING EVOLVES box and say “hey... here’s a question”, here’s a million

CG: So there is no doubt that this is becoming more

dollars, give me your suggestions” and that is a viable

common, so it is becoming a part of any serious

thing to do and organisations have been successful

business toolbox for solving problems basically.

doing that. However, we have a much more managed process and although it is called open innovation, it is

SB: Yes, I fully see it as that.

open with a managed structure behind it.

CG: In general where do you see crowdsourcing heading from a more practical perspective. Are the projects becoming bigger more elaborate or are they becoming smaller and more relevant for everyday use?

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

39

CONTENT DIGITAL PERSUASION

DIGITAL PERSUASION TRADITIONAL SALES PSYCHOLOGY IS BEING UPDATED FOR THE DIGITAL AGE. MAURITS KAPTEIN EXPLAINS HOW “PERSUASION PROFILES” WILL HELP CREATE MORE EFFECTIVE MESSAGES AND IMPROVE RESULTS. What kind of shopper are you? Do you

What “persuasion profiles” potentially tell

communications raises a number of

always buy the most popular items? Do you

brands and governments is whether you

wider issues.

look to see what your friends are buying?

are more likely to respond to a message

Do you look at the newspaper reviews

based on authority, whether you are more

WITH US NOW

before buying a new book?

likely to respond to scarcity or whether

The use of psychological strategies is

you are more likely to respond positively

already part of the world we live in. They

to someone you like?

are used in DirectLife, Philips’s health and

Questions like these lie at the heart of a new set of techniques that are just starting to

weight management tool, which guides

be applied to e-commerce, lifestyle changes

They can be applied across all aspects

and almost any facet of your life.

of your behaviour and ultimately could

consumers towards a healthier lifestyle.

become tradable data valued on the basis

They can be seen in apps like MyZEO, which

Such “persuasion profiles” differ from the

of their ability to boost conversion rates

is designed to help people sleep better.

personal recommendations we know and,

and improve take-up of other changes

Devices and tools such as these rely on

sometimes love, from Amazon and iTunes,

desired by governments, service providers

what are called influences strategies, which

which are based on purchase patterns and

and campaigners.

are designed to increase their effectiveness.

an understanding of our psychology rather

In essence, they are the digital equivalent

Some researchers specify more than 100

than the relevance of a particular book or

of the salesperson’s skill in sizing up a

influence strategies or ways to convince

music track.

customer and working out what message

people to adopt a certain pattern of

about his or her product is most likely

behaviour but there are six core principles

They are also a step beyond online

to convince them to buy. But while

of persuasion.

behavioural targeting in that they detail not

their use on a one to one basis is as old

what we have been looking at but rather

as the human race, their widespread

what messages we are likely to respond to.

adoption and automated inclusion in

behaviour on site, in that they are based on

40

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

CORE PRINCIPLES OF PERSUASION RECIPROCITY People feel obligated to return a favour, thus when a persuasive request is made by a person the receiver is in debt to, the receiver is more inclined to adhere to the request.

SCARCITY When something is scarce, people will value it more. Announcing that a product or service is scarce will favor the evaluation and increase the chance of purchase.

AUTHORITY When a request or statement is made by a legitimate authority, people are more inclined to comply or find the information credible.

COMMITMENT AND CONSISTENCY People do as they said they would.

People try to be consistent with previous or reported behaviour, resolving cognitive dissonance by changing their attitudes or behaviours to achieve consistency. If a persuasive request aligns with previous behaviour people are more inclined to comply.

CONSENSUS People do as other people do. When a persuasive request is made people are more inclined to comply when they are aware that others have complied as well.

LIKING We say â&#x20AC;&#x153;yesâ&#x20AC;? to people we like. When a request is made by someone we like, we are more inclined to act accordingly.

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

41

CONTENT DIGITAL PERSUASION

In fact, each of these six influence

persuasion profiles with Dean Eckles at

The homepage of the online store presents

strategies can be seen in an e-commerce

Stanford University, I wanted to see how

a random collection of 40 products

domain, so reciprocity can be delivered

they might be applied in a real world

together with pictures and a single

when online stores offer a small gift to

context. In partnership with a new Dutch

sentence description. Once a visitor clicks

consumers; scarcity includes limited time

children’s clothing store, kinder-kleetjes.

on one of the products (or enters the site

offers; authority is recommendations;

com, I tested two of these influence strat-

using a search term directly pointing at

commitment strategies could include

egies while monitoring store performance

a product page) a product is displayed

a wish list; consensus would include

before and during our experiment.

which shows a large image and a textual

showing how many other people had also

description of the product.

bought these products in question; while

THE EXPERIMENT

liking could be the use of social media to

Kinder-kleertjes.com offers a selection of

We decided to offer a three-strategy

promote what your friends had bought.

more than 1.200 products, via two affili-

choice – no influence strategy, scarcity

While such techniques are a common part

ate programmes and the website aims to

(“special offer”) and consensus (“best

WHAT “PERSUASION PROFILES” POTENTIALLY TELL BRANDS AND GOVERNMENTS IS WHETHER YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO RESPOND TO A MESSAGE THAN ANOTHER of the e-commerce palette, what’s new

attract traffic via search. Running since

seller”). Every other factor including price

is the application of them to you as an

July 2010, it is a small site with an average

remained consistent.

individual. So that the sales tactic used

of nearly 400 visitors each month during

to make you buy is intentionally different

the six-month experiment. I monitored

Consumers who clicked through would

from the pitch I get and based on your

click-throughs and average purchase

either see no text or a message that

(and my) previous behaviour.

per visitor from July until October 21

read “This clothing item is available

to provide a baseline for our month-

today at a special discount rate” for the

long experiment.

scarcity strategy and “This is one of our

Having developed the concept of

42

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

best-selling clothing items” to appeal to

using our adaptive persuasion algorithm.

consensus seekers.

As with other consumer data, it’s possible to envisage a market for these profiles

VALUING THESE PROFILES

developing subject to existing constraints

Consumers would get a particular message,

Because such profiles and strategies can

on data usage. Such potential transfers

initially most often based on what was

deliver improvements in performance,

create ethical issues because, once

proving most successful, but as users

they clearly have a value for anyone who

constructed, the profiles can be used for

looked at multiple items we were able to

seeks to change consumer behaviour.

ends not anticipated by its designers.

apply learnings about them as individuals to

Companies or organisations that we visit

see if we could convert them.

infrequently might rely on probability

Then there’s the issue of ownership. Do

tools such as algorithms to decide which

individuals have access to their complete

We attracted 831 unique visitors during our

strategy to apply, but for a retailer such

persuasion profiles or other indicators of

trial and, while our adaptive persuasion took

as Amazon that we might visit frequently,

the contents of the profiles? Are individuals

time to learn what might work best, both

it could be worth building up a complex

compensated for this valuable information?

the scarcity and consensus strategies sig-

individual profile.

nificantly outperformed the “No Strategy” implementation within two weeks.

What if an individual wants to use the And, unlike recommendations for books

hypothetical persuasion profile created

and music, persuasion profiles could

by Amazon to jump-start and improve the

During our baseline period, 14,4% of the

be applied across product sectors. For

effectiveness of a mobile exercise coach,

users of the site eventually clicked on one of

example, the profile constructed from

would they be able to obtain and transfer

the products and were taken to the vendor’s

observing a user’s online shopping

this profile?

home page. With our adaptive persuasion

behaviour could be of use in increasing

techniques in use this increased to 18,3%.

compliance in saving energy.

We’ve since repeated the experiment using

Not only could persuasion profiles be

only half the customer base as our test and

used across different contexts within a

Maurits Kaptein is a Ph.D. candidate at

the other half as our base level. The aim

single organisation but there is the option

the Technical University of Eindhoven in

was to remove any element of seasonality

of exchanging the persuasion profiles

The Netherlands

from our results. Once again click-through

between corporations, governments, other

rates increased, up from 9,4% to 13,5%

institutions, and individuals.

It’s early days and the answers haven’t been resolved.

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

43

CONTENT NEW PATH TO PURCHASE

ONE OF THE LASTING EFFECTS OF THE RECESSION IS THAT CONSUMERS REMAIN PRICE SENSITIVE AND VALUE CONSCIOUS

44

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4 #3

DIGITAL RETAILERS’ NEW PATH TO PURCHASE

THE UNSTOPPABLE MARCH OF DIGITAL MARKETING IS FORCING RETAIL BRANDS TO FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM THEIR RELATIONSHIPS WITH SHOPPERS.

BY TRICIA NICHOLS, MANAGING PARTNER, MEDIACOM US Retailers, reliant on a traditional bricks-and-

What retailers have learnt is that innovation and

mortar heritage, face a complex task of maintaining

creativity are no longer aspirational luxuries for

relevance to an increasingly elusive consumer base.

retail marketers: they are business essentials.

The question we are increasingly asked is: how do

CIRCULAR PATH TO PURCHASE

brands take advantage of all the shiny new toys

Recently I was discussing these challenges with

in the digital playpen to both drive traffic to their

Gwen Morrison, CEO of The Store, The Americas and

physical shopping environments and maximise

Australasia, the retail hub of the WPP Group. Her view

e-commerce potential?

was that technology has changed the path to purchase.

Our answer is always that the solution must be a

“It used to be that the path to purchase was linear,” she

seamless integration of the virtual environment with

said. “A retailer would build brand affinity, followed

the physical one in a way that’s fresh, dynamic,

by a call-to-action, which would trigger the consumer

and interactive.

to put the product into the shopping cart and go. Now, with all of the digital tools at the consumer’s disposal,

Many retailers have been tentative about pursuing

the path to purchase is more of a circular one.”

such a strategy in the past. However, with no slowdown in the mass proliferation of technology and

What this means is that thanks to social media

the fragmentation of media platforms, what we find

and geo-social applications, the consumer has now

is that the sector is facing up to the sobering reality

circumvented – or even “toppled”– the traditional

of increasing consumer control and a purchase path

purchase path. Consumers now have the ability to

that‘s ever harder to manage.

research product information via Google, Facebook

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

45

CONTENT NEW PATH TO PURCHASE

and other social media, as well as from

digital is generally cheaper than spending

shoppers who are yearning for richer

manufacturer websites. Increasingly, it

in traditional media, the pendulum could

retail experiences.

is only after extensive due diligence that

swing in its favour if or when margins and

consumers actually pull the trigger on

budgets are tightened.

brand purchases.

For instance, Bloomingdale’s recently created a very slick, high-tech fashion counter

Already brands are pushing us and we

at its flagship midtown Manhattan store.

The problem has been that while most

are constantly pushing the media owners

This beautiful environment is bursting with

retailers might rate a 10 for the emphasis

we work with to be cleverer in leveraging

digital video touting high-end cosmetics.

they put on digital in their marketing

digital opportunities in a more cost-

To promote it, the retailer surprised

plans, both MediaCom’s experience and The

effective manner. Until the economy turns

shoppers with a flash mob. Actors, posing

THE TRICK IS TO INTEGRATE RICH EXPERIENCES ONLINE WITH BRICKS-AND-MORTAR Store’s is that they often fall short when

we expect that many retailers won’t be

as shoppers, were recruited to drop their

it comes to actually committing the

able to invest in bricks-and-mortar capital

bags at an appointed hour and start dancing

required resources.

improvements, so the focus will be on the

at the cosmetics counter to loud music

digital arena as the place where they can

blaring from the store’s speakers. This

afford to make a difference.

impromptu dance party was videotaped by

“Allocating incremental resources is difficult when you aren’t making your numbers

Bloomingdale’s and then posted on YouTube

because of the most severe global economic

One of the lasting effects of the recession

downturn since the Great Depression,” is

is that consumers remain price sensitive

how Gwen expresses this conundrum.

and value conscious. Because times have

TAKING RETAIL FURTHER

been tough and could get tough again, they

It’s an approach that harks back to

DIGITAL OPPORTUNITIES

are demanding greater transparency and

the 1980s in some ways. “In the ‘80s,

Ironically, the increasingly precarious state

engaging experiences from retailers.

brands were striving to become a part

of the global economy could encourage

46

to great viral effect.

of the popular culture,” recalls Gwen.

marketers willingness to experiment with

Some smart bricks-and-mortar operations

“Nowadays, it is about going viral. The

digital. That sounds counterintuitive but

have been able to evolve through high-tech

trick is to integrate rich experiences

because investing and experimenting in

acting as a momentary escape for jaded

online with bricks-and-mortar.”

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

This is not to suggest that every retailer

also as a means of facilitating the shop-

RETURN-ON-INVOLVEMENT

should start contemplating their own

ping experience. Walgreens’ shoppers now

With all of these exciting new case studies

Bollywood bricks-and-mortar production;

have the ability to use smartphones to fill

involving online video, mobile and social

in fact, more subtle but progressive ideas

prescriptions and order photo prints in

media, have other retailers been inspired

that focus on practicality and service

advance, saving them time waiting in line

to follow suit? As often happens with new

to the consumer can be as effective

and placing orders. This also helps stores

technology, some retailers are remaining

as entertainment.

operate at peak efficiency.

tentative for longer than they need to.

For example, Topshop, the proprietor of

Finally, some daring marketers are

One thing that is holding many back is

stylish and trendy apparel, has installed

extending their brands out of the stores

the inability to track these new initiatives

virtual display technology near dressing

and into the streets. Gap launched its

to sales results. However, a new spin

rooms to allow shoppers to immediately

very own gourmet taco truck, dubbed Pico

on ROI is emerging in the retail sector,

see how they look in a particular outfit.

de Gap. The mobile unit promoted the

and ROI is being re-defined as Return-

Diesel in Spain has taken it a step further

brand’s newest 1969 denim offerings for

On-Involvement in many quarters. This

with the introduction of Diesel Cam,

the Fall season, while offering fun faire by

is based on the notion that if you create

THE CONSUMERS ARE DEMANDING GREATER TRANSPARENCY AND ENGAGING EXPERIENCES FROM RETAILERS which allows shoppers to photograph

TV chef Ryan Scott. To further the brand

more relevant, highly targeted offers with

themselves in Diesel clothing at the

message, two tacos and a drink were

sustained interaction (for which digital

physical store and post it on Facebook.

cleverly priced at $1,69 and, with a proof

media is the perfect platform), retailers

of a same-day Gap denim purchase; the

will develop more “high-value” shoppers.

American pharmacy chain Walgreens has

tacos were on the house. Visitors received

been successful in using mobile not only

a $20 coupon on the 1969 collection.

To me that would seem to be as close to

as a marketing medium—through which it

Truck destinations were unveiled on

the Holy Grail as you could find in retail.

offers coupons and other incentives—but

Twitter and Facebook

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

47

INTERVIEW Q&A TIME -TOTIME Q&A GETTOACTIVE GET ACTIVE

48

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

TIME TO GET ACTIVE NU METRO FILMS IN SOUTH AFRICA RECENTLY PROMOTED THE HANGOVER PART II VIA A DIGITAL ACTIVATION THAT INVOLVED LOCAL ENTERTAINMENT BLOGGERS TAKING THEIR OWN HANGOVER-STYLE PARTY MARATHON AND BROADCASTING THE EXPERIENCE ON BLOGS, FACEBOOK AND TWITTER. Charlotte Archer, marketing manager at dis-

something different alongside our classic

experience of blogging, shooting and

tributor Nu Metro Films, talks to MediaCom

media to stand out from the crowd.

seeding videos online.

CS: What did you do?

We arranged for them to attend the

South Africa’s Cherylann Smith about why they did it, how they created engagement with young, male film-goers and what has been learnt from the experience.

premiere (accompanied by a stuffed tiger) CA: Our aim was to create something

and then enabled them to spend the rest

really different that said this film is

of the night engaging in activities that cre-

CHERYLANN SMITH: Why did you decide

coming. We knew traditional media would

ated a South African experience drawing

to run this type of activity for this film?

create awareness but we wanted to appeal

inspiration from the film’s major themes.

to the core 18-24-year-old male who might CHARLOTTE ARCHER: South Africa is

go with his mates or his girlfriend.

All the while they were creating content for our consumers with posts streamed

an incredibly diverse market – we have many different cultures here – and a lot of

We needed to speak to them in a way

onto their blogs, Facebook pages and

the times the promotions that are done in

that would titivate and excite, creating

Twitter feeds. In total we reached 36.000

other markets don’t work here.

an illusion of chaos while also ensuring

social media fans who then spread the

our content was in line with the spirit of

word via their own feeds.

At the same time the first Hangover film

the film.

had been incredibly successful. Audiences

Working alongside the traditional media,

attendances stayed high for weeks rather

We identified key voices in the digital

our digital activation helped Hangover

than dropping after the first weekend,

realm that had a following. Since people

Part II perform 20% better than the first

indicating the power of word of mouth for

follow people not brands we recruited

film at the box office, an impressive result!

this franchise. We wanted Hangover Part

entertainment bloggers Dan Nash and

II to enjoy the same success.

Mike Sharman.

The competition for audiences has become

Dan is owner of new media specialists

fiercer, even since the first Hangover film

Rubiks Room and owner of South Africa’s

CA: Digital PR and social content is

was released. There is a lot more content

number two entertainment blog

most likely always right for a campaign

fighting for the same cinema going

www.bangersandnash.com while Mike

or product if seeded and targeted to

audience – especially the core 16-24s that

is the owner of digital communications

an influential few who have a targeted

might watch Hangover. We needed to do

agency Retroviral with extensive

audience, especially if it has a general

CS: What did the activation deliver for your brand?

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

49

INTERVIEW Q&A - TIME TO GET ACTIVE

positive sentiment. When social bloggers

at the end of the day a young person is a

so that there is an over-riding strategy and

talk positively about a product, they

young person whether they are white, Zulu

a stronger link between what we are doing

build a natural positive brand positioning

or Xhosa but at the same time there are

virally and what we are doing traditionally.

within the market. Influencers can evolve

little idiosyncrasies that we are learning to

This results in a more impactful message

a brand’s perception and create a sense of

integrate into our campaigns.

being communicated to the consumer.

So our cinema materials need to have a

aspiration within this space.

Obviously some films lend themselves far

Facebook link or a QR code. The message

more to this type of content or activation.

must be on every piece of material in a way

When the content doesn’t lend itself to a

that shows the consumer that we’re trying

CA: The main learning for me as a

consumer-driven campaign, however, that’s

to create a conversation with them. We’re

marketer is just how much the marketing

when we need to be more creative. We

not just trying to get to them by bombard-

landscape has changed from monologue

need to challenge ourselves more and ask

ing them with our messages.

CS: What did you learn from the experience?

THIS RESULTS IN A MORE IMPACTFUL MESSAGE BEING COMMUNICATED TO THE CONSUMER to dialogue. It’s also reinforced my

how can we target 50-year-old females, for

In the South African market, integration

perception of the power of endorsement:

example, in a way that doesn’t feel flat or

with mobile is also very important. This

If someone takes time out of their day to

doesn’t engage. In the case of the Hangover

can be as simple as SMS short codes, or

engage with you, not just like your brand,

II the content did lend itself to a consumer-

as advanced as Augmented Reality. The

that’s incredibly powerful.

driven campaign – but the point was to get

key is to get the basics right and build

the target audience talking about the film

from there.

For us as movie marketers, there is a con-

and endorsing it through word of mouth

sumer expectation that we will be ahead

– more effective with the target audience

Ultimately, social PR and digital is not

of the game, so it’s vital that we embrace

than conventional media.

about a platform, but more about the

these techniques and environments.

CS: Can you apply these techniques to all

conversation and a culmination of all CS: How do you envisage activation working

channels driving a strong unified message

alongside your traditional media activity?

bringing all the pieces together seamlessly.

CA: Our strategy going forward is to inte-

CS: How do you see activation being used

grate the various elements of our campaign

in the future?

the films that you promote?

CA: Although South Africa is very diverse,

50

MEDIACOM | BLINK #4

CA: I think that when we see more budget

CA: There’s a saying that you remember

shifting from buying banners and buttons

10% of what you read, 20% of what you

to creating amazing content that people

hear and 80% of what you experience.

naturally want to share, we’ll be heading

Getting consumers to experience your

in the right direction.

brand or content or product is incredibly effective. It makes your brand part of their

It is imperative that integration not be

social space.

perceived as repetition across platforms, but rather as each channel working together

Brands have to remember that it’s no longer

closely toward the campaign objective.

enough to just talk to consumers we need to get them to experience our brands.

The future of activation is in reaching people by targeting by interest and

The right approach will vary from category

behaviour, with a relevant message in

to category. In our case it’s our content

order to get them to talk about a film or in

that enables consumers to contribute to

order to do something and then selecting

the campaign and makes them feel they

the right channels according to the role

are participating in the message not just

they perform.

being talked to or at.

Alongside our activation we need to

Experience is the key to marketing in the

leverage banners and creative with

future. A social campaign is not about

segmented messaging to drive people to

having a Facebook page. It’s about having

those conversations and activation.

meaningful conversations over a period

CHERYLANN SMITH Cherylann Smith is Senior Digital Strategist at MediaCom South Africa.

with the right people, giving them remarkLongevity is key to success – recruiting

able content so that they will share it. It’s a

consumers campaign by campaign is a

shift from advertising to social influence.

dead community. Retention and building strong long-term relationships with

But most of all, start small, get the basics

consumer communities will move custom-

right. You don’t have to be everywhere at

ers towards becoming brand fans.

once, but wherever you are, be present, consistent and ‘wow’ your audience

CS: What advice would you give to someone

continuously so that our community will

who hasn’t gone down this route?

participate and grow.

CHARLOTTE ARCHER Charlotte Archer is Marketing Manager for Warner Bros. at South African film distributor Nu Metro Films.

BLINK #4 | MEDIACOM

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BLINK #4

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