positive disruption by: Tom Martin | New Orleans based Social Media Consultant

Can the iPad Save Television Advertising?

  Do you remember the old days? Back when you used to run home, not answer the phone or get the kids off to bed early so that you could tune in and watch Must See TV? Yes, for those readers under the age of 30, we used to actually watch TV shows when they ran versus when we wanted to watch our Tivo'd version. We even had a name for it -- appointment television.

In fact, Tivo and the whole DVR revolution has been a thorn in broadcast television's side since it's invention and broad-based adoption. Not only do consumers not watch the commercials (for the most part) but advertisers fret that they don't even know when those that do watch the commercials actually get around to it. Think retailers, QSR, and events -- all of whom rely on timely offer oriented ads.

Enter the iPad.

From Ad Age this week:

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Magazines and newspapers aren't the only media eying big benefits upon the iPad's arrival: TV is poised to use the device in new ways, including creating interactive, social apps designed to be used while watching live programming.

MTV Networks, for example, is developing a "co-browsing app meant to be used while watching live TV," said one executive familiar with MTV's iPad plans. "This means the iPad could be the appendage that makes interactive TV a reality."

The co-browser idea is pretty interesting. It changes the viewing experience. I've done it myself via Twitter during college bowl games and via CBS with its Facebook integration during this years March Madness tourney.

 

Having the ability to trash talk or cheer with fellow Longhorns around the country was a unique, interesting viewing experience -- especially as I was watching it alone in a hotel in Lafayette.

So now, wrap it all together. You have a show like 24 (drama) or American Idol (reality TV) and the show creates this special content or opportunities for viewers that participate in this co-browsing experience. Maybe it's the ability to chat with the characters or contestants during the show. Maybe it is just about wanting to be in the know in real-time versus seeing all the action on your Facebook wall the day after. It's like when your friends tell you the score of the football game you've not watched yet. All of a sudden, broadcast TV gives you a reason to watch in real time and with all those commercial interruptions.

Far fetched? Unlikely? I don't know...what do you think?

The only one stuck with You is You

A lot of companies feel like they have a lock on their customers. Maybe they're the only ones that offer a certain benefit, or technology or cater to a certain demographic. So for that reason, customer retention and service aren't on the top of their list of things to do today.

But then something interesting happens. A competitor or upstart figures out the opportunity. They realize that Company A is the only real option Customer B has for purchasing Product D and that Company A is neglecting it's customers. So Upstart C gets into the Product D business and starts marketing to Company A's customer base.

And then it happens. Company A starts losing customers to Upstart C. The executive suite is stymied. The CEO offers lames excuses to the board. And all the while, market share is slipping away at an ever increasing rate.

Across town a similar occurrence is playing out. Only this time it is a company losing employees not market share. You see in this company, we'll call it Company B, the ownership mistakenly thought a down economy meant their employees had few chances to jump ship. The senior management team was drinking the "best of..." press the company regularly receives. But all the while, employees were growing weary. They were no longer happy all the time. They were frustrated at a recent reorganization that forced a number of process and personnel changes on them. (note: this is a totally made up example and no one should think I'm writing about a real company here --- just making a point folks)

And then it happened. Slowly at first but then like a snowball rolling down a hill, the tidal wave of departures grew bigger and came faster until one day, all the good employees had left and the company was left with only those employees who weren't as talented but none the less were still looking.

I could go on...we could talk about loss of clients, friends, and more.

The point of this post is that everything in life is tenuous. Your friends can unfriend you. Your clients can fire you. Your employees can quit if they're not happy. You customers certainly can leave you. Even your spouse has an out if she gets a better offer. Success today requires more talents and brainpower than anyone person could ever hope to offer. So success today requires teams -- both formal and informal. So if you're not making sure that each and every day you let that team, your team, know that you value them, care about them and maybe even go so far as to directly ask them, "how can I be of service to you today?" then you're likely missing an opportunity or maybe creating one for your competitors.

If you don't have a customer and/or employee feedback loop (research or some kind of social media loop) maybe you should consider getting one - if for no other reason than to establish an early warning system. Chances are that someone else, a competitor or upstart has built one -- or at least a listening post.

Because the only one stuck with you is truly you... and if you act like you're the one with the power, if you think you hold all the cards, or that your customers/clients/employees don't have any real options.... well you may just wake up one day alone and wondering, WTF just happened? 

But then, I could be wrong... what do you think folks? 

photo: Lonely Boots by Andrew Mason

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Three For Thursday - March 25

Today's Three For Thursday comes to you from beautiful San Antonio where I'm jetting in for a quick overnight and a chance to talk social media with cable executives at the 2010 TxTAM Conference.

Once again, we find companies making it easier for companies to self manage their marketing programs. I've signed up for this one but as of yet, don't think I've been accepted into the BETA... but hoping they will as it looks really, really interesting. Basically, Closely lets you create really great looking, time sensitive offer programs. Bonus plan: you get stats on the back end of your offer too and they've built in social platform sharing tools like Facebook, Twitter, etc. All in all, this one looks like something every small business and maybe a few large businesses should investigate.

My wife is a realtor so this next find is just too cool. The program is called Zosh and again, I haven't used it yet on my iPhone, but damn -- this looks to be the ultimate tool for anyone who is mobile and wants/needs the ability the sign and return contracts, forms or pretty much anything from the comfort of your iPhone. Fax machine? Hmmmm seems there's an app for that. Check it out folks. Way cool.

And lastly, but not leastly, the ability to give or receive money via your iPhone and PayPal. Once again, technology is moving towards making your mobile phone the only device or really the only physical item you'll ever need to carry. With this new PayPal app, if you and a friend both have PayPal (I think) you can just "bump" your phones to transfer money, split a dinner tab and more. The reviews on the site suggest the app isn't yet quite ready for prime time, but that's beside the point. The point is that app developers are screaming toward a new mobile future. But are you?

Well that's it for this week peeps. Have you seen anything cross your in box that is especially interesting? Care to share?

Three For Thursday - March 18

Ok, today I've got a couple of really cool things that folks have sent me or that I've discovered via advertising (imagine that) and my recent visit to SXSW in Austin. We'll cover mobile, search and live video streaming in Facebook -- all way cool things to know more about.

Customer/Prospect Profiling

This might just be the coolest iPhone app I have on my phone. It comes to us from Jason over at SocialStyles.com. I had the pleasure of sitting next to him at a lunch at SXSW and then chatting more over beers. His background is in management consulting and his app is very cool. Once you load it on your phone, you select a contact from your address book and the app takes you through 10-15 questions about that contact. For each question you rate the person using a slider scale. At the end of the survey you submit and the app tells you what type of person you're dealing with. Best of all, you can let the app know the person you're profiling is your colleague, significant other or even child and the suggestions for how to better interact change accordingly.

The app is $4.99 in the iTunes store, but after profiling a few clients/prospects, I can tell you it is worth every penny. Now when I'm dealing with clients/prospects I can be reminded of how I should interact (for maximum effectiveness) based on how I'm communicating with them (face to face, email or phone). Totally cool. 

Live Video Stream Tab for Facebook

Man I love when my readers take me up on my offer to send cool ideas for Three4Thursday. Thanks to Mari Smith for turning me on to Vpype an application that lets you live stream within your Facebook page by creating a Shows tab on your Fan page. I could tell you more but Mari has an awesome write up on her blog so why don't you just pop over there and check it out. Thanks again to Mari for the tip.

Search Trends over Time

Ok, so this one isn't so new but a lot of folks I've been talking to lately don't seem to know about it, so I thought I'd include it here. Google has a great Insights search product (they've been advertising it a lot lately) that let's you compare search volume of various words/phrases. Better yet, it lets you dial down your search to the local level -- yes, LOCAL. For instance, here is the search history for the last 12 months of Louisiana residents searching Ford, Chevy, and Toyota. So if you're trying to see how your brand is doing, looking for what keywords historically do better in a category, etc., be sure to pop over to http://google.com/insights/search and check it out.

That's it for this week's Three For Thursday. Be sure to stop back next week for a few more cool things and as always, if you see anything cool -- please send it along and let me know what you think about these three tools.

 

Surviving the raging currents of life

 
Are you feeling like you're one step from drowning in a river of deadlines, information and obligations? Like every day you're cranking as fast as you can but instead of getting ahead of the game, you feel like you're falling farther behind? Do you start every day asking yourself, "What ball is going to hit the ground today?"

Yea, I know the feeling too. So I thought I'd share something I found really interesting. It's a simple information management method developed by Danny Meyer who runs Union Hospitality Group. Danny is a busy guy that runs a group of restaurants. As we've discussed before, in the restaurant business, the little things mean a lot. So how does Danny stay on top of it all? Well that was the focus of the article in Inc.

His time management trick: a simple memo of the day prepared by his assistant, which he reads after he goes home each night. The memo is in four parts.

• Tomorrow's schedule
• Questions that came up that day and require some kind of input/answer from him
• FYI information that doesn't require his attention but that he might like to know
• Long-term reminders of important projects he needs to take at least some kind of next step on in the very near future

Simple. But think about it. If you had that memo each night, how much better would you sleep? How much more effective would you be the next morning?

If you've got an assistant, this seems like a pretty good idea or at least worthy of trying. If you're like me and you don't have one... well then it gets a bit more difficult doesn't it. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to apply this discipline to create my own non-assistant version.

Maybe you have a thought or two you'd like to toss out along those lines? We can always aggregate them and together, who knows, maybe we'll create something really useful for the rest of us?

photo by kevindooley

The Answer to all of your Marketing Questions - The Movie

Last week I suggested my answer to all of your marketing questions. But some of us are more visual, and let's face it, my decks leave a lot to the imagination (by design). So seeing my deck and hearing me deliver it are two very different experiences. So today, I'm sharing the video from the session. 

For some reason, the Flip cut off after just over an hour -- that's happened twice now so guess I'll need to get that looked at -- but I was making my final point of the day. What I was saying is that companies should not get caught up in the media commissions game when hiring an agency or media buying firm. Lots of firms will say they will buy the media for cut rates like 7.5% or 5% vs the standard 15%. This is a red herring that most companies (big and small) fall for. Here is why.

Because media is negotiated, the rate you pay the agency is somewhat irrelevant. The only thing that counts is what is the final cost of a TV spot. You may pay an agency 5% but if they end up negotiating poorly you might end up actually paying more for that spot than had you hired an agency that wanted 15% commission but negotiated 11% better. This doesn't even take into account "added value" which is extra space, getting premium positioning waived, etc. which can make a huge difference. We once had a national print client with a $900K budget. Our media folks negotiated another $1MM in added value. Why? Because the client was paying full rate for our services so we had the income to justify the extraordinary work required to do all that negotiating.

So the point I was making with these folks was, don't fall for it. Try and find out what you're really going to get not just what you're going to pay for it. In advertising and all marketing services really, it makes a real difference. This is not a low price winner kind of game.

Hope you enjoy the talk... let me know what you think or if you agree/disagree with any of the points. As always, I'm all ears.

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Why Not Surprise and Delight Your Customer?

If you're working in a service industry -- banking, hospitality, restaurant, etc., take 3 minutes and watch this video. It isn't much but it makes a big point (IMHO) of the ability of small gestures to make big impacts on customers. Apologies for the lighting... still learning how to shoot better video ;-)

Three For Thursday - March 11

So this Three for Thursday comes to you from flight 1681 (American Airlines) as I head on over to SXSW.

Making Mobile Apps Useful

 
I've always contended that mobile apps should be tools not games. So I was really psyched when I found this Benjamin Moore color matching app. Basically you can take a picture of anything (plant, room, flower) that has a color you like and then the app let's you figure out which of the more than 3,300 Benjamin Moore colors is the closest match. Now that is a tool worthy of real estate on my iPhone.

Guerrilla Marketing Idea

  

I LOVE this product from MakeDo and can't wait to get one for my 7 year old who is Mr. Project. Give the kid some tape, staples, boxes, etc. and he'll create something out of nothing. He's not alone, lots of kids do this... I mean who among us hasn't turned an old product container box into a fort or a space ship? The cool thing here is MadeDo gives you a safe tool kit to make it more fun and more creative. But that isn't the idea that gets me most excited as a marketer -- no, the idea I like is what could you do with this if you were a brand that sells a product which comes housed in multiple boxes. Think desktop computer. What if you could insert a Makedo kit or something akin to inspire kids to play with your boxes? Maybe they'd take a picture of their creation or better yet, their blogger dad or mom would. Think what that might do for your viral/Social efforts? You might even have a contest or include instructions for turning that packaging into various "things" that kids might like to build.

There's a Review Site For That

Is there anything product/service that isn't being reviewed online right now? If there is, I'm guessing it won't be long before someone figures it out and creates one. I recently was working with a hospital client and we were talking about the effects of Medical Tourism on the US health care industry over the next decade. And then I find RevaHealth - a site that lets you search for reviews on medical practitioners in 99 countries world-wide. A simple search is all it takes to give you a chance to crowd source real opinions from real people when making a decision about where to have a medical issue solved. 

This has got me thinking about what other industries have or will have this type of review site. Do you know of any? If so, can you share in the comments section. I'm thinking I may create a list and share it here.

Well that's it for this week's edition. If you're going to be at SXSW in Austin this week -- be sure to find me - just @TomMartin on Twitter to track me down. Would love to meet.

The answer to all of your marketing questions is...

Later today I get the pleasure of speaking at The Idea Village. The Idea Village was formed in 2002 here in New Orleans with the mission to identify, support and retain entrepreneurial talent in New Orleans by providing business resources to high-impact ventures. My job today is to answer questions that were posed by their current class of entrepreneurs.

To prep me for today the Idea Village folks sent me a list of questions these entrepreneurs had for a marketing/advertising agency. As I looked over the list, I saw a number of questions that you hear a lot in our business.

•    Where would the best places for us to advertise be?
•    What mediums are best in driving sales?  Print, electronic, etc.
•    Do catalogs work?  When is it worth the expense to create and mail a catalog?
•    Do I need to advertise or is word-of-mouth direct calling right?
•    What are the most effective/economical forms of advertising?
•    What strategy should we be taking for advertising with little or no money?
•    Which marketing outlet works best for a beverage brand other than sampling?
•    What is the most effective way to generate online sales?

Take a second and read that list again. But this time ask yourself, "what is the common theme?"

So what was your theme? Mine was "silver bullet" as in each of these questions wants a simple answer that is the same for everyone. Problem is, that just doesn't exist in our business does it?

So my answer to all of these questions is the same.

My answer is...Depends. Yes, that is the answer I'd give to each of these questions...depends. Depends on your product/service, category, brand, lifecycle of your brand, etc., etc. Everything in marketing depends because this is part science and part art that plays out in a dynamic environment (life).

So instead of giving them answers, my plan is to teach them how to think about each of these questions. Arm them with knowledge and context.

Here is the deck I'll be presenting in case you're curious. In the meantime (like between now and 3pm today), if you have any thoughts you think would be beneficial to these brave souls... share them with me? I'd love to fold them in and make this an even more valuable preso for the companies. I'll post a video of the presentation on Friday.

The Answer to All of Your Marketing Questions

View more presentations from Tom Martin.

photo by: Jacob Bøtter

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Can You Have Sale Before Scale in Social Media?

 

Yesterday I was having a really interesting conversation with a company that is new to social media. Like most smart companies, they are struggling to understand this new space and determine the ROI of their investment. And like most companies that are new here, they keep trying to move directly to sale even though they haven't invested in scale. Why? Because they are used to launching campaigns that take off and show results immediately versus launching today only to see any real results months from now at best.

I don't blame them, it's a common carry over from an advertising driven marketing mindset. The problem with the approach though is that advertising has inherent scale built into the channel. You buy the scale (lots of eyeballs) when you purchase an ad, spot or maybe a direct mail list. So because you know a lot of folks will likely see your message, you can move directly to sale -- and most do.

But social media is different. It does not come with scale. You launch a Fan Page or create a Twitter handle or maybe even create a blog, and you have no scale. You have no fans, followers or readers. You have to build it. You have to invest in relationships and provide real value to build your scale. Now I guess you could go directly to sale -- and many companies do -- by promoting your offer of the day or a new product or service you are launching. But honestly, who is going to know? If you have only 1,000 fans and a couple of hundred followers on Twitter, how many of them will be online when you post and actually see that great offer you just put up? And if all you do is post offers, how many will continue to bother to listen to you anyhow?

No in social media, unlike advertising, you have to give to get. You have to invest in relationships whether it is building a fan base, followers on twitter or readership of a corporate blog. You have to provide real value in the form of helpful advice and tips, humorous posts that brighten the day, or just really good conversation. Once you do that, folks will value you, follow you, pay attention and likely... tell a few of their friends. And that is when you start to get scale.

And this was the heart of my comments yesterday and pretty much every time I have this conversation with a company entering or thinking about entering social media. You can get great ROI from this space but you won't see it right away. No, the first indicator of success in social media is gaining scale. But not just any scale mind you -- engaged scale. Sure you can buy followers but the ones I'm talking about actually @you on Twitter and drop comments on the Fan Page on Facebook and read your blog. That's what I mean when I say scale.

And lastly, folks always want to know when they can move from just focusing on scale and start focusing on sale. To which I'm afraid I must say, depends.

But what about you? What do you think? Can you go directly to sale and bypass investing in building scale? And is there a magic number at which point you can add sale into your scale efforts?

photo credit: jurvetson