Inside the Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

TV Report on the Future of Online Journalism -- from 1981

I don't usually repost stuff from the major blogs -- this one's via TechCrunch -- but this one is too good, and everyone remotely interested in online media needs to watch this. Original source: PopURLs on Twitter.

Complete Coverage of OMMA Social 2009

Here you'll find coverage of MediaPost's OMMA Social 2009 from around the web; post your links in the comments and I'll add them here.

My blog's coverage

• Six Apart breakfast presentation - How to Think Like a Publisher
• MySpace Keynote and sales pitch - SVP Marketing Angela Courtin 
• Denuo case study keynote
• Panel: When should brands just listen?
• Panel: Personal CPM - hype or reality?
• Panel: Social media in times of tight budgets
• Panel: Looking beyond Facebook - where advertisers should unleash apps (okay, it's really all about Facebook)
• Panel: Social media in the pharma industry in the face of heavy regulations

MediaPost

• Official agenda
• MySpace keynote coverage
• HP keynote coverage
• OMMA Social show daily (links to all panel coverage)
• Ad and Social Media Agencies Must Communicate - coverage of my panel
• MediaPost videos (OMMA Social's not up yet as of this post but should be soon)
• Joe Marchese of SocialVibe on How Not to be Creepy - MediaPost's Online Spin

Twitter

• Search on OMMA Social or ommasocial

Around the Blogosphere

• Shiv Singh covers Charlene Li's presentation
• Kelsey Group: talking mobile and local
• Cam Balzer's Web-Cite on the Denuo keynote from Dan Buzcazcer
• Dale Larson on Rich Ullman's personal take from the Ripple6 luncheon

Flickr

• Derek Rey's photostream

SlideShare

• Lunchtime presentation from Ripple6's Rich Ullman

OMMA Social Final 1/26/2009

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: social media)

Cataloging a Search Catastrophe

Today's MediaPost column is a non-dramatized version of a true story that still leaves me scratching my head. On a small scale, it's about one brand losing a potential relationship with one customer. On a macro scale, it's about how marketers can waste billions of dollars and fail at the most basic functions of their job.

Cataloging a Search Catastrophe

Don't let this catastrophe happen to you. This is based on a true story, though certain names have been omitted to protect the guilty brands.

Scene One: My wife, Cara, and I went to see the movie "Milk." Beforehand, we endured the barrage of commercials. Yet something incredible happened -- one of the spots was not only relevant, but memorable.

Scene Two: When we arrived home, Cara had competing priorities: searching for information about Harvey Milk on Wikipedia and visiting the site of the advertiser. The advertiser won. On the advertiser's homepage, there was nothing related to the ad. She tried searching the site for any term she could think of and still couldn't find anything. I tried running some searches too, on the advertiser's site and in search engines, thinking that my qualifications as a Search Insider columnist would give me superhuman searching skills. My powers failed me. Coincidentally, the one related link I found in Google was coverage of the advertiser's campaign in MediaPost.

Scene Three: Saturday at 10:30 p.m., after screening one of the most powerful films we've ever seen, Cara called the advertiser's 800 number and managed to reach a customer support representative. She tried explaining the situation, and he didn't sound familiar with the ad. After describing her difficulties with the Webs site, he had some advice: "You should get our catalog. It's a lot easier to find what you're looking for there." She was stunned. She looked at me as if to make sure her phone hadn't suddenly zapped her back to the 1980s.

Last I checked, catalogs don't have great search functionality. Web sites have also come a long way with on-site search. And I've seen quite a few marketers come around to the idea that offline events trigger online actions. Clearly, some marketers still haven't figured out the basics yet, no matter how many other things they do well. It's even more surprising that the advertiser in this case went to such great lengths to publicize its campaign, but still didn't consider the customer experience.

Scene Four: My wife used the advertiser's Web site's store locator but couldn't find any listing in our area. The next day, she went to a local specialty retailer whose selection was underwhelming. She later wandered into a major retailer that wasn't even a remote competitor, and found exactly what she wanted. Cara told me she paid more than she'd expected to, but it was exactly what she wanted. She'll bring me back to see if there's anything I could use, too.

Epilogue: Cara says that the advertiser had a chance to win over a new customer, and she was so close to totally reshaping her thoughts about that brand -- a rare opportunity for a marketer. Yet thanks to the combination of poor search functionality, merchandising, and customer service, she doubts she'll ever shop with them. Meanwhile, another retailer, one she already frequented, found a way to earn even more of her loyalty -- and her discretionary dollars.

The advertiser's missed opportunity could happen to anyone. Yet this need never occur, especially when the offline events are planned (like a campaign) rather than spontaneous (like Perez Hilton posting photos of Michelle Obama shopping in your store); with the latter, a well-planned paid search campaign can remedy the situation immediately. The advertiser here missed every opportunity, spanning its homepage, its on-site search engine, the major search engines, and its customer service hotline.

Marketing's all about creating demand and capturing it. If you only get the first half right, you get nothing from consumers. And as Cara pointed out, you just might lose a customer for life.

OMMA Social Panel: Socially Awkward: Using Social Media in Difficult Client Categories

Image via Wikipedia

Socially Awkward: Using Social Media in Difficult Client Categories

Dorothy Wetzel, Partner, Chief Marketing Extrovert, Extrovertic
Seth Ginsberg, President, TGI Healthworks
Moderator: Catharine P. Taylor, Columnist, MediaPost

Here's the last panel of the day from the whirlwind of OMMA Social. Amazing to think it's nearly 5pm already - today flew by.

Dorothy:
2 major claims: off-label claims, adverse events. Also lack of FDA guidelines for social media.

Some examples:
- Unbranded 'talk' - GSK restless legs
- 'Chaperoned' talking: J&J Health Channel
- Forming new ventures - Children with Diabetes, Sermo

Seth
- Philanthropy - supporting existing communities:
CreakyJoints.org came up organically based on Seth's personal experience - now membership of 30,000 people. A month later they got a call from a pharma company. The marketer wanted to help people, and the marketer could help more if people knew more, and the marketer didn't have the clout to do it. Saw model could scale, created Global Healthy Living Foundation.

The rest of the session basically involved Seth seeing how many times he could say the word "bowel" at a social media conference, with nuggets like, "You don't really want to wind up with a really angry community of irritable bowel disease sufferers."

Selected tweets during this session:

typennock: @perryhewitt Yes, I've def. heard this from the Pfizer folks - but Pfizer employees can't even access FB. Not very SM friendly #ommasocial

julieannalittle: Marketing rules to live by (for all industries): be transparent, add value and be entertaining. #ommasocial. I'm out!

ysnjen: #OMMASocial: the guy from CreakyJoints.com has a great story! Student who started site for people with arthritis. Very clever.

perryhewitt: @typennock heard ray kerins of pfizer speak 2 weeks ago in NY and felt he was looking to push the regs where he could #ommasocial

OMMA Social Panel: Looking Beyond Facebook: The New Places for Advertisers to Unleash Apps

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Image by sitmonkeysupreme via FlickrModerator: Derek Leedy, VP, Account Director, Mediasmith
David Vanderpoel, Principal, Strategy and Marketing, North Highland
Sebastian Gard, Manager of Ditial Marketing and Social Media, Microsoft
Chris Cunningham, Founder and CEO, AppSavvy
Kevin Barenblat, Co-Founder, Context Optional

Chris: The social media definition has gotten out of hand. It's really simple. It's really about locations where people are engaged around their interests and content with their friends.

David: When we were talking about search engines, we kept looking for the next search engine and the market share settled out to where it is now. That's happening with social networks.

Kevin: With Facebook Connect and other sites, we can bring those experiences throughout the web more generally.

QImage by daveynin via Flickr: Is it all about Facebook?

Sebastian: Facebook is the top priority for us. We put 70% of our effort in getting Facebook right. The Obama campaign attempted to create a social majority within social networks. Conversations take place within social networks and get amplified. 

Chris: Is anyone here not on Facebook? [No one raises his hand.] Facebook is there to communicate. It's more about consolidating habits now. It's less about Fandango now - it's about Flixster. These apps are premised on your interests, not making money.

Kevin: It's about providing value and bringing out the best ways to tie brand messages into that.

Q: We see the top 20 social networks. comScore still has Geocities on there. With unleashing apps, we're saying Facebook is a great place to get it right. Is there a new place to unleash them? Do people leave to try other places?

Sebastian: It's important to think about Facebook Connect. Look at the Doghouse promotion from JC Penney. They got 4 million visitors.

Chris: The iPhone's the one thing that rivals it.

...
Sebastian: Marketers should look at emerging platforms and try to add value there, like TripIt does with LinkedIn, and TripIt is sponsored by Hertz. It's a way to get in on the ground floor. [TripIt is one of my favorite travel tools. You just email your travel confirmations to plans@tripit.com and it creates an intinerary for you. Connect with me there.]

OMMA Social Panel: Navigating the Financial Crisis: How Marketers Should Use Social Media in a Time of Tight Budgets

Image by inspecie.co.uk via Flickr

Navigating the Financial Crisis: How Marketers Should Use Social Media in a Time of Tight Budgets

Moderator: Joan Voight, Contributor, MediaPost
Heidi Skinner, Director of Emerging Media, Critical Mass (yay, another director of emerging media!)
Neal Shenoy, Marketing Partner, [212] Media
Deborah Shultz, social media consultant
Liza Hausman, VP Marketing, Gigya
Rob Crumpler, CEO, BuzzLogic

Q: How will the financial crisis help the social web?

Rob: It will be a time when consumers can come together.

Deborah: Constraint breeds innovation. Agencies have a real opportunity to take on brand education. Those that take charge and are more aggressive can educate brands on what the space is about.

Heidi: This is the time to sink our teeth in the apple.

Q: Take your ideas and offer guidelines. Include the idea of where to cut corners and where you shouldn't.

Liza: Don't throw away your old metrics but use them as an anchor for the social web. I've shown clients using traditional metrics how social media can deliver that and more.

NealPartner, don't create - via Wikipedia: In 2009 focus on cobranding and cooptition versus creation. Tap into audiences, networks, community behaviors and networks that already exist. That will help your production budget. Simultaneously, don't cut activation (promotion dollars) - but put some limits once the community is "activated." Case study: for sports property Recreational Sports, Coke wanted to build a stand-alone microsite with original content. We did build a microsite with user-generated content, on top of existing social networks and college intramural sites. We wanted the community to grow organically. That achieved the same results by being smart about the architecture.

Heidi: Consumers are much smarter. Don't cut back on listening. Find the trees through the forest.

Deborah: I totally agree with partnership, partnership, partnership. Think relationship, not campaign. Work with customer service groups at clients. 

Rob: My guidelines: focus and integration. Find some targeting that can help you assess where to place your media or your message [Me: Ahem, BuzzLogic does both, ahem...] . What not to cut? Listening to your customer.

Selected Twitter highlights during this panel:

BJ: RT @convagency Customer Service is the low-hanging fruit - Deb #ommasocial (Hasn't it been since last year?)

ysnjen: "Don't get cheap on the listening piece" - re: paying attention to what consumers want/need. #OMMASocial

Britopian: overwhelmed by all the social media exerts and social media extroverts business titles here .... #ommasocial

julia_briggs: #heidiskinner #ommasocial 'only 15% of major brands participating in social media'

OMMA Social Panel: The Personal CPM: Quirky Idea or Future Marketing Reality?

Li by Thomas Hawk via Flickr The Personal CPM: Quirky Idea or Future Marketing Reality?

Moderator: Charlene Li, Founder, The Altimeter Group
David Honig, Co-Founder, Media6Degrees
Joe Marchese, President, SocialVibe
Jamie Tedford, Founder/CEO, Brand Networks
Eric Wheeler, CEO, 33Across

Q: Something about the social graph. Charlene's mic isn't working well.

Eric: With media, it's about the connections between people and the strong bonds. You can use social network theory to model your audience.

Joe: The idea of packaging the social graph is simple. You used to advertise to people. Now you're advertising through people. [My take: this creeps me out the way he says it, and I'm good friends with Joe. If I think advertisers are marketing through me, I'm going to start clamping down.]

David: With social graph activities, as long as it's anonymous, you can find the nodes that matter to you.

Jamie: It's interesting if it's not anonymous. Sears did a campaign. They're giving away $10 gift certificates to become a fan of the page. They realize the lifetime value of what they pay for the media plus $10.

David: You're never going to get lifetime value just by that one time action (e.g. becoming a fan).

Joe: There are two ideas. One is the consumer as a source of media. ... People have a personal CPM they have to be compensated for. You want people to spread your brand intentionally, not by accident. That takes planning.

David: Compensating them is another topic. I'll use my Duane Reade card to save a dollar but I won't give them access to my credit card.  ... There have to be rules.

Jamie: We're comfortable with poitns programs. How come we're not comfortable with rewarding true engagement?

Joe: You've got to say these people are publishers of social content and go from there. ... You can reward people for sharing your brand.

Eric: Like microlending, we'll see stuff happening with microblogging. We'll see ways to rank/score people on a consistent basis. [Me: This is also freaking me out a bit if I think everyone's scoring me. As if the pressures to conform weren't bad enough in high school...]

Jamie: I always believed Facebook and MySpace were CRM systems - building fan lists, etc. The goal is to aggregate users and fans. They are hand raisers, and by doing that they're more valuable and more credible.

Joe: There's an idea of user-generated targeting. ... It's a lot harder when you used to buy advertising and now you're trying to get people to share Colgate.

Charlene: Is it all about tapping evangelists? Not necessarily. It's about tapping into people's passions.

My Q'creepy' Image via Wikipedia: How do you avoid creeping people out?

Via Twitter:d_rey: @Jack2point0 RT Awesome quote: "the more you guys talk, the more you creep me out" #ommasocial

Eric: Behavioral targeting was all about the marketer. With social media, 70% of US is involved in social networking. Charlene Li has said social networking will be like air. We'll see more players in this space giving back to people and making it more valuable. People will get back

David: Is it creepy when you walk into the grocery store and they know all this about you. {missed the rest of this]

Joe: Sorry for creepign you out. Any medium can be abused. I see social media getting abused daily online. You avoid a lot of it simply by asking people for permission.

Jamie: To me, it's a kinder, gentler marketing. It's 'marketing with' instead of 'marketing to.'

Charlene: Remember Caller ID when it first came out? That really creeped out people too. [Umm, but that's not marketing.]

[My overall take on this: I still don't think they fully address how creepy it is to market through a person and piggyback on their personal brands. Marketing to someone is far more passive and innocuous.]

OMMA Social Panel: Seen But Not Heard; When Is It Appropriate for Brands to Simply Listen?

Cover of Listen Seen But Not Heard; When Is It Appropriate for Brands to Simply Listen?

Moderator: Cory Treffiletti, President/ Managing Director, Catalyst:SF
Shane Ginsberg, Executive Director, Global Business Development, Organic
Gary Goldhammer, Senior Vice President & Director, Client Services West, Edelman Digital
Martin Green, COO, meebo
Matt Sanchez, CEO, VideoEgg
Rich Ullman, SVP of Marketing, Ripple6

I missed the first bit of this as I got back into blogging mode following some post-panel chatter.

A panelists asked if listening is a must, and everyone generally agreed.

Martin: Brands want to know what specific demos are doing, not just generic.

Matt: There are a lot of ways to listen. With video, I'm looking at the consumption curve of what video looks like. [My take: YouTube Insights has the best platform out there for this that's free for content producers.]

Cory

Cory Treffiletti / Catalyst:SF

via CrunchBase: What do you do with info once you hear people talking about you.

Martin: If I'm on Meebo and IMing my friend I don't want to find out a brand's hovering over my shoulder. But I don't mind if it's aggregated and not an invasion of privacy. In an intimate, semi-open blog, I don't want a brand there. It's contextual.

Rich: If a brand wants to have a conversation with me, it goes from the realm of eavesdropping to people inviting the brand in.

Shane: P&G has a place for people connected with feminine hygeine products to talk. When is it appropriate? [My take: P&G did a good job expanding this to make it more about female-specific issues and concerns rather than the products. But it's still a valid question.]

Martin: One thing we've found is that our users love to answer polls. Brands can take part in these, and then share the answers back with the group while learning the answers.

Gary: With P&G, I hope if I'm a young woman it's someone like me and not some marketing person I'm engaging with.

Cory: It sounds like it's good for brands to participate in social media. What harm can come to brands?

Shane: Dell got in trouble for not listening.

Matt: Brands can create a community and set the wrong expectations for it.

Martin: It's inappropriate if there are privacy issues. There also has to be a distinction between marketing and advertising. 

Rich: The worst thing? You say you're going to participate in the conversation and then all of a sudden you stop. That can be a bad thing because people will say you're not listening anymore. Also... For a community of 13 year old girls, you put in someone who understands 13 year old girls

Gary: For something for an auto show, we had a real auto enthusiast run it. For the next week then, the guy didn't do anything. The comments in the days after - people got pissed off. The reaction was that he was just there to sell cars. Really, he just went on vacation for a week. We didn't set expectations first.

Shane: That's a structural problem with with social media. I call it the social media magpie effect, running from one platform to another.

Cory: A lot of people seem to look at social media as reactive. You're talking about it as being there for the long haul.

Shane: You have to be careful with expectations going into it.

Q from Perry Hewitt @perryhewitt: When should brands listen in certain white-label communities vs. the whole web?

Rich: White-label communities are affinity based created around brands or ideas. The stuff I care about on the internet is a small bit but it's huge to me. The more you narrow it down, the more manageable it's going to be.

Matt: With the white label network, you also factor in the effort to narrow it down and manage that.

Selected tweets from during the session:

pchaney: #ommasocial sessions are consistently good; love hearing industry pundits speak from framework of experience. Else, gr8 job faking it.

perryhewitt: Worst thing a brand can do online is to engage then stop. Didn't @peterkim have a gr8 analogy of 1-night-stands vs relationships?#ommasocial

tylerwillis: @ommasocial "The messenger is just as important as the message in social media -- people relate to similar people."

ysnjen: #OMMAsocial: Cory Treffiletti is a fantastic moderator. Saw him at my first OMMA and this is my 4th or 5th conf now.

dspark: #OMMASocial. @julieannalittle If women discuss their cycle on PG.com, do they all start getting in sync?

convagency: "Do brands really want to hear all the conversations surrounding them? " Goldhammer from Edelman. I would argue they should. #ommasocial

perryhewitt: Brands need to differentiate when listening between the "what" and the "so what". What's baseline, and what's actionable? #ommasocial

OMMA Social Keynote: Dan Buczaczer, Senior VP, Director, Denuo

Dan Buczaczer, Senior VP, Director, Denuo

"The last speaker took you back a little bit in time..." That reference to MySpace's keynote is taken out of context, but she did take me back in time to when keynotes gave sales pitches.

Rules to play by:
1. Facilitate what they already do
2. Be personal but keep your role as a brand
3. No hard selling

Tweets from around the session:

brianpduggan: Audience at #Omma Social just polled. My assessment on the show of hands: 70% agencies, 25%vendors, 5% actual clients. Interesting...

ischafer: @brianpduggan The lack of clients at #ommasocial is disturbing.

Lots of focus of his talk was on curation of social media. Example: Purina Pet Charts - Purina finds the best pet-related content for it. This is a good one. I saw this awhile ago but didn't know it was still going strong. They then let people know they made the Pet Charts, driving more people to create content to rank for it and submit it. It brings people into the community.

Another example: Champion's Homestyle Sports. Check what everyday athletes are doing online. Guys show their quasi-sport stuff on YouTube and share it.

OMMA Social Keynote: Angela Courtin, SVP Marketing, Entertainment & Content, MySpace

Image via CrunchBaseOMMA SOcial Keynote: Angela Courtin, SVP Marketing, Entertainment & Content, MySpace

MySpace is combining social media and portals into a social portal.

Five-year-old company, profitable "since [they] turned the lights on."

40% of all online moms are on MySpace. They're online 11 hours a week.

"As usage shifts to social networking, there is no longer a race to build destinations but constellations."

This has become a sales pitch. I'm not going to blog as much about that. I can only take so much. My tweet on this: "MySpace keynote devolved into tedious sales pitch really quickly. Plus, while she's talking, I'm checking Facebook. #ommasocial"

This got some fun responses on Twitter:

davehonig: @dberkowitz, @joemarchese,@lazerow, i was expecting more of a keynote. some more thought provoking less pitch.

szetela: @dberkowitz is MySpace a sponsor?

markdrosos: Sitting next to @dberkowitz and agree on the sales pitch of myspace. Took about 4min.

ryanswagar: RT: @dberkowitz MySpace keynote devolved into tedious sales pitch really quickly. = of course it did! That's what you do when your Co SUX

And it continues...

Now she's telling the OMMA Social audience how the social graph works. So glad this is groundbreaking.

Got 13 million downloads of a Chevy Tree planting widget where you have to water it every day. Okay, I'll blog that.

Event Photo from Derek Rey - @d_rey on Twitter via Twitpic:

More fun from my Twitter feed:

dberkowitz: oddest audience question so far at omma social: what's the best computer and web browser for viewing myspace?

socialmedium: @dberkowitz that is seriously bizarre. What was the answer?

dberkowitz: @socialmedium she answered, "uhh, i use a mac." and then Q'er asked, "and firefox?" she said, "okay, sure" - don't get it #ommasocial