Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Striking and Searching

Today's column was originally published in MediaPost and continues in the extended entry.

THE WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA launched its long-awaited strike. How will this event affect marketers, search engines, and consumers' online media behavior? SEMCO, the union for search engine marketing columnists, hasn't quite caught on, so I'm remaining on the job to answer these questions and more.

Most consumers aren't going to care about the WGA strike, and they're not going to notice it anytime soon. Google's Hot Trends showed no mention of the strike or the WGA Friday, Saturday (when the strike was announced), or Sunday. On Monday November 5, the term "writers strike" finally made an appearance at number 52 at "medium hotness," or a mere two bars out of five, well behind other entries that day including references to Food Network star Giada de Laurentiis expecting a baby girl, Google's Android mobile platform announcement, and the shooting of a rare albino deer in Minnesota. As much as Americans love TV, our patience quickly tires of labor disputes unless they're mediated by Oprah, Dr. Phil, or Kim Kardashian (an aside: a colleague came in here while I was Googling Kardashian's name to check the spelling, leading me to wonder whether my colleague or Google is my greater privacy concern).

Here are some predictions of what should happen with search and online media if this strike lasts a few months:

Firebrand Preview Launches during Advertising Week - Love Coverage

Blogging from the launch of Firebrand, a new media company focused on entertaining ads in multiplatform environment - Web, TV (on Ion), and mobile. Official launch: October 22

Targets Millennials, 30% of US population.

Firebrand: QVC for the MySpace generation, or doing for ads what MTV did for music/music videos.

Bottom line: advertising supported by ads, especially for ecommerce so you can buy right from the ad.

NIce perk for me: Bloggers got new iPod Nanos. I thought they were reaching to give me a press kit. This is much better. Two people next to me were debating whether they'd have media kits on the iPods, and we were skeptical. Sure enough, a couple videos were loaded on, and there's some digital messaging in the menus that say it's from Firebrand. Really well done there from a marketing perspective, which I'm writing as objectively as possible now that you know about the schwag.

Goal for Firebrand: 1 million unique visitors by year's end. Aim to get 4-5 clicks per user per month to monetize site (rough estimate, they need to confirm).

 

Not said at this event:
Very competitive marketplace - notably TBS's VeryFunnyAds, NBC's didja. Advantage for competition: major media companies backing them. Advantage for Firebrand: dedicated focus on making this work in new way cross-platform, heavy integration.

Search Gold in Dem Dar iHollywood Hills

Today's column will give you a sense of deja vu if you read through the notes I took while at iHollywood July 19-20, but I did a lot of organizing, editing, and analysis to provide context for all these points, so it still may be worth skimming the list. And if it's new to you, be happy you didn't read it in its raw form before (if you do want the originals, check this search via the Rollyo custom search box).

As per the usual notice, it continues in the extended entry, and it was originally published in MediaPost. As per an unusual notice, this is appearing on the blog the same day it came out in MediaPost, so I'm on time for once.

Search Gold in Dem Dar iHollywood Hills

WHEN AN IHOLLYWOOD FORUM EVENT can spend a day and a half covering search engine marketing, a single column can't cover all the highlights. Last week, I discussed how important it is for consumers to discover video rather than just search for it. This week, I'll go much broader, offering fourteen search-themed insights from a number of speakers and panels.

To make the attributions easier, company names are listed with each takeaway, and the speakers are credited by name at the end.

1) Search planning is starting earlier. Google is talking to movie studios now about marketing films coming out next May.

2) Branding lives. Showtime said branding, awareness, and driving tune-in are critical for them. They need to rank high in natural results, and high rankings in paid results offer other positive effects for the brand.

3) Paid search builds brands before SEO kicks in. Showtime said that many of its shows are generic terms ("Weeds," "Meadowlands," "Dexter"), so as it works on optimization, it buys search ads when news of the show breaks.

NBCU, Blinkx, Yahoo at iHollywood

This was a great session at iHollywood with three really different, really bright folks (full disclosure: I work with one of the panelists and kind of have to say that about him, but I don't need to say that about the other two, and even objectively they were all great). This is all in their words. I'll try to massage some analysis into the next column, since I'll undoubtedly write the next Search Insider on all of this.

In Search of Media
* Marc Esper, VP Search, NBC Universal
* Jyri Kidwell, Entertainment Category Director - Search Marketing, Yahoo
* Federico Grosso, SVP Business Development, Blinkx
Moderator: Michael Stroud, Co-founder & CEO, iHollywood Forum

Q: If you don't focus on search, are you dead in the water?
NBC: Search is more of a browser. Huge traffic driver. Ingrained behavior. Big for offline marketing campaigns. If they're going to a search engine and they get 10 different options, they need to present themselves as the best option. 1/3 of traffic comes from search, on average. Some time ago (before focusing on search), did a search on Yahoo for Olympics - came up #17. "That's unacceptable."

Paid search is a great way to jumpstart it. Also accelerates SEO with blog outreach. 40% of SEO is on-site, 60% off-site (a la linking). Shows tend to rank really well - "Office" ranks better than Microsoft, others

Yahoo: Search is a great tool for after you become aware to find what you're looking for. Awareness process will happen offline though. Search is the next step. Yahoo also plays role in awareness - they drive from awareness, then search, then go online, then they watch the show. They're looking to be a platform to drive awareness.

Q: Role of Search & Discovery
Blinkx: Working with publishers and broadcasters to make sure that whether or not you're searching for something you can still find relevant content. Technology comparable to reading a title of a book vs. the whole book, comparing meta data to the video itself. Now can identify what is written within an image - eg, a street sign.

Q: Can you tell the difference between George Bush and Osama Bin Laden?
Blinkx: Facial recognition is the next step. We're not quite there yet. Speech to text is still relied on heavily.

Yahoo: Difference in types of content. Two groups of searchers after a show - 1) Catch-up searcher missed the episode. Get back to the water cooler. 2) I want to go deeper, engage, talk about passion. Getting into message boards, talking to friends, doing mashups - anything. Not all searches are the same.

Yahoo Has Lyrics, If You Can Find Them

Hooray, Yahoo Music has partnered with Gracenote to offer a searchable music lyrics library, the first time this has ever been legal online, as reported by TechCrunch. Took long enough.

Searching for old favorites like "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding" by Elvis Costello and "Only the Good Die Young" by Billy Joel didn't bring up anything, and I couldn't easily modify my search.

Maybe I'm missing something and am not searching correctly, but I'd be at least a little insulted if the consumer's to blame here.

Playing Matchmaker For A Stingray

This week's column is a thought experiment around a Google acquisition of Gemstar-TV Guide. There are some reasons why it wouldn't work. Then again, Aaron Goldman coincidentally came to the same conclusion in his column a day later. The column continues in the extended entry.

Playing Matchmaker For A Stingray
by David Berkowitz

GOOGLE, I know you’re so busy with everyone offering you a nice Googlish girl to bring home to Mountain View. Rumors have swirled about matches with DoubleClick, Omniture, and even little Riya. But Google, have I got a match for you! She’s a little old for your tastes, but she loves watching television. I hear you’ve been watching a lot of TV too lately, haven’t you?

Real Estate Confidential on Fine Living

Here's a new real estate show to check out on Fine Living, Real Estate Confidential.

Cassie Sutton's Holiday Wishes

Cara received a strange holiday card this week from the Sutton family, who we didn't know. They sent regards from Lincoln Heights and described what's going on with the family.

Something was fishy as nothing was handwritten on the card or envelope, and there was no return address. There was one link though, a MySpace page for daughter Cassie Sutton, which includes a video for an ABC Family series, "Lincoln Heights."

Perhaps Cara's the first to receive it, as Cassie only has a few friends (there are 14 so far; I'm not accepted yet). That's not likely though, especially since the card was originally sent to Cara's old address. More likely is that either ABC's agency is falling asleep at the wheel in adding friends, or people just don't care to find out more about a holiday card that seems to be sent to the wrong person.

It's certainly clever and stands out from the clutter, if it doesn't get lost in the holiday mail blitz. We'll have to check back with Cassie's popularity when the show premieres so we can see how she did.

Living with Ed on HGTV (Advertorial)

Full disclosure: I'm engaging in blogger relations for HGTV, so I have a vested interest in this post.

Additional full disclosure: I'm not the target audience for HGTV. But the show I'm marketing right now is also one I'm really curious to watch.

It's called "Living with Ed," and it's a reality show that's essentially two storylines. Starring Ed Begley Jr., best known from "St. Elsewhere" but and also part of the troupe in the Christopher Guest movies (e.g., Best in Show, A Mighty Wind), the show  explores Ed's off-beat environmentalism (he uses a bike to power his toaster) and also his relationship with his wife, who's an aspiring actress and wouldn't mind living more of the Hollywood lifestyle.

It airs Jan 1 at 1pm (EST, PST) and then Sunday nights at 10 through early February. Again, this is an advertorial, but it is also a show I'll be watching, and I also welcome any viewers' feedback on what they think of the show or even the clips on the site.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled blog programming.

Quick Reflexes for a Manatee

I love this story via the NY Times:

• In a throwaway line in a sketch about college mascots on Conan O'Brien, someone references HornyManatee.com.
• NBC registers the domain right after the taping but before it airs. Brilliant. Apparently the move was also to prevent issues from the FCC, in case someone else registered the domain and put up something unkosher.
• Conan's staff puts up some pictures of costumed manatees doing salacious acts, and welcomes people to enter their own submissions. That's right, NBC's getting this whole social media thing.
• NBC racks up 3 million hits in a month.

See the full story at NYTimes.com.

Aside: I love that NBC snagged the domain to prevent FCC fines, only to fill it with costumed manatee porn.

Aside #2: When I visited the site (click the thumbnail for a full image), Jell-o's sponsoring. I've also seen ads for Delta and Toyota. Still, Jell-o strikes me as especially wholesome. Do they know their brand is being associated with sea creature puppets in heat?