DOUG SCHUMACHER

experience designer + writer

economy

Creativing :: ESPNs anti-social media policy, Facebook’s ad innovations, and change isn’t just for advertising anymore

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

ESPN Responds to Criticism and Publishes Social Media Policy

Previously I posted someone’s prediction that going forward, more and more companies were going to have a social media policy, which I certainly agree with. Perhaps no place will these policies be more interesting than with news organizations, who butter their bread by releasing news, often over social media networks. Here’s ESPNs policy, which basically says you can’t do on your own for free what we’re paying you to do. Sounds logical on first take.

However, this policy attempts to build a wall between professional and personal social media use. It may sound easy to a lawyer, but reality is a different ball game. And wouldn’t you want some of your best writers to promote their work to their personal networks, which can be very large? Lastly, if you’re wanting to hire a top writer who may have a blog following of 100k, which she can monetize, how much more do you have to pay her to drop everything she’s built up in social media for the past 5 years to come and write for you?

Why Digital Agencies Are Indeed Ready to Lead

Probably the longest ongoing industry debate to date. I’m not sure it’s a digital vs. traditional question at all. I think it’s definitely going to be driven by someone with a powerful digital sensibility. But I feel like while agencies are fighting over whether the banner or the TV spot should come first, the bigger question is, Should this all be lead by a product development, creative messaging, or media buying mindset? Following the money across a ten year projection isn’t easy. But then if the answer was easy, there wouldn’t be a debate.

Nikon Kick Starts Campaign via Tweet

Mind you, this wasn’t just any Tweet, but rather an Ashton Kutcher Tweet. With 3.9 million Followers, he’s demonstrating that not only is a large social media following a great weapon for negotiating film contracts, but for endorsement contracts as well.

Posterous Overtakes FriendFeed, Set to Overtake Delicious.

The stat is certainly interesting, although I find this a little apples-to-oranges. At least I consider Posterous to be pretty much a content posting tool, and FriendFeed and Delicious more social media platforms. If Posterous hits that magically nebulous thing called critical mass, though, the game opens up considerably, and they can become more of whatever they want to be.

Facebook Launches Friends Of Connections Targeting For Ads

I’m surprised this isn’t generating more noise. The idea that your network of friends is a remarkably accurate predictor of your own preferences should be a closed case by now. And this is one of the only mass scale ways to target the friends of someone who’s a Fan of anything from a movie to a tennis shoe to a car. Seems like a big leap forward. If you knew someone was a Fan of a movie, wouldn’t you want to talk to their average 120 friends to try and get them all to go see it? At least the one’s in the same city?

Microsoft to Include Video Ads in Loading Screens

I’m not sure I’d recommend to many companies to run ads during games, but the loading screens are another thing. They could even add value (imagine that). Of course, there’s the temptation to make game loading times longer to support longer ads. And I wouldn’t want to tempt anyone in need of more revenues at the moment. But at the core, in-game advertising is as inevitable as ads on cable television, which was once anathema to the concept of cable. At least this approach won’t have me seeing a billboard for a new 5 blade razor while walking through Renaissance Venice playing Assassin’s Creed.

LEAKED: The Facebook Ads API

When the subject of integration comes up, the discussion is always around messaging or media spending. It’s rarely about tracking and data. But there’s enormous power in that information. This news isn’t the onset of a revolution, but certainly a good indicator of where the business of performance tracking is headed.

Mountain Dew Crowdsources Agency Review and Selection

If a small business will crowd source a $50 logo, why not a $100 million campaign? This is about all you need to read to see a major trend in the ad industry unfolding.

What EA Sees in Social Gamer Playfish

Like the ad business, the gaming business is going less big idea, more a lot of little ideas. And of course, those myriad little ideas are ongoing, and take a lot of manhours to execute.

The future of business is in ecosystems

The reality is, business models everywhere are being flipped on their heads. This post from Jeff Jarvis (What Would Google Do?) shows that the clients are facing as much tumult as the agencies they’re working with (or maybe it’s ‘not working with so much’). It’s the same story from yet another industry. Keep it small, stay nimble, and don’t stop running.

Creativing :: The death and rebirth of advertising, how real can reality content get, and the Twitterverse once again attempts a shark jump.

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My weekly update of what’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

TV Ratings: Neda Video Truly Shocking, Unlike Jon & Kate

John Rash has a powerful and poigniant piece on recent events in television and video. There’s a profound difference between Reality and Real content. When Reality first hatched, it seemed very ‘real’. By today’s standards, the format is more often than not highly contrived. Of course, the original appeal was the sense that it was real, and people are still looking for content that has a more real feel. The big question is, Where does that end? Or does it end? When you consider the content danger zones of violence and sex, and think about the trend perpetually arcing towards the most extreme examples you can conjure up in your mind, it’s a pretty chilling media horizon up ahead.

Advertising Industry Prospects: A Tough Year Ahead

From Advertising Age: Brace for the worst year in recorded history. About 65% worst than 1991, the previously worst year. We’re headed for a 5% drop this year, which almost feels like a recovery after a 14% drop in Q1. Increasing the challenge is a projected slow recovery. The cause of this is fundamental change in the media-related world. Newspapers are going out of business, and won’t becoming back. Car advertising is way down, and with vast numbers of dealerships going out of business, those media dollars won’t be coming back either.

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer: Traditional media will not bounce back

Piggybacking on the previous article, Ballmer, speaking at the Cannes Lions Festival, reiterates that media is fundamentally changing, and that to date, only Google has figured out a profitable revenue model around new media formats. He adds that in the near future all content in all media will be digital. It’s only a matter of When.

Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

As if the top-down pressures listed above isn’t depressing enough for the ad industry, there’s also a sword coming in right at the ankles. The user-generated ad phenom is not only sticking around, it’s likely to increase. This year’s Super Bowl was enough of a warning, when the most popular ad (according to USA Today) was done by two brothers in Indiana for practically pocket change. Now here’s another good example of a company crowdsourcing what was once the bread and butter of the industry: 30 second commercials. And getting a nice spot out of it. Contests like this link are proving again that good work can be done for very little money and well outside the traditional agency structure.

John Battelle’s intro to the CM Summit

So with this sense of industry meltdown, what’s an agency to do? John Battelle (author of “Search”), kicked off his CM Summit with his version of the future of the industry and what agencies should be focused on. It’s a video, and you’ll want to skip to the point about 6:00. His prediction? In a nutshell, it’s all about going from ‘creative’, to ‘adding value’, and from ‘buying media’, to ‘creating media’.

Transformers – Revenge of the Fallen :: MMM’s campaign review

When major tent pole films like Transformers start going with minimal production on their websites, you know there’s a sea change going on. What’s most noticeable here is the expansion of brand tie-ins and partnerships. Not necessarily surprising, given the need for both movies and corporations to cut costs while still getting their name out.

Why Facebook Will Fail

I really appreciate a good contrarian viewpoint. I think there’s a lot of validity here, too. The fall in popularity of MySpace should be a warning to everyone. The key distinction to make is the difference between social networking and social networks. The former is here for the long run, I’d say. The latter is perhaps one of the most fickle online businesses yet. It’s not surprising that Facebook is pushing things like Facebook Connect, placing an emphasis on connecting people and having access to their data, versus trying to be the place where everything happens.

June 2009 Trend Briefing covering FOREVERISM

The idea that campaigns in a social media context don’t have an end point the way traditional push advertising does is very real. I’ve seen this  come up in social media campaigns we’ve run, in which a group we’ve engaged actually requests that the relationship continue after the campaign has finished. For an indusry accustomed to viewing media presence as a faucet you can turn on and off, it’s important to remember that the participants in the campaign may not be so ready to turn on a dime.

Furthermore, with any campaigns that take on a utilitarian role, there’s the issue of actually taking something away that you’ve given them and they’re now relying on. Brands are needing to extend their thinking further down the pipeline than ever, and at a time when that future is less and less clear.

Facebook Live Stream Box launched

We saw social viewing play out big with the Obama Innauguration on CNN/Facebook. This will make that type of activity much easier to impliment on a smaller scale. This is great news for brands with something to say and wanting the crowd to help them say it.

LG hosts texting contest, gets 250k entrants, held in Citi Stadium, and videod for a TV show

Fantastic campaign for LG. 250,000 entrants for a speed texting contest? What’s great about this idea is the lowest common denomenator factor (and I mean that in a good way). Texting is universal now. A very high percentage of people do it, so a contest like this is something a lot of people can relate to. The way they played it out live in Citi Stadium and videod it for TV shows good campaign support and viral anticipation/preparation.

Twitterature: 19 Year-Olds Score Twitter Book Deal

Essentially they’re taking a pile of classic books and turning them into the Super Clift Notes. Each boiled down to 20 tweets. That’s what they scored a book deal with. So, this means they’re turning books into tweets, and then back into books. Now on sale. No wonder the media world is screwed up.

The next five years

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There could be a reason that the legendary centers of the markets (Wall St) and marketing (Madison Ave) are, amid this entire planet, located only a few miles apart. And they may be even closer, emotionally.

What I’ve noticed recently is that the various economists, financial writers, and stock analysts I read are all starting to have a similar view of what the next few years are going to be. And it doesn’t look pretty from here to about 2015.

Jim Jubak, of MSN Money, calls it the Great Recession.

Economic conditions, of course, have a profound effect on consumer spending power, the products they purchase, and the reasons they buy them. And what do the experts think consumers will be wanting during this period of economic doldrums?

In Jubak’s latest artile, Five Rules for Post-Recovery Investing, he lays it out with his 5 new rules.

  1. It’s not “business as usual.” Shy away from companies where the business plan going forward is simply a hope that things will go back to “normal” once the economy recovers. At a minimum, the company should recognize the world has changed. It’s a good sign that Starbucks, the classic pre-crisis consumer business, is groping for a new formula.
  2. The new value definition will be easier for some. Recognize that some companies have less distance to travel in meeting a new value proposition. McDonald’s needs to tweak its menus; Starbucks may need a top-to-bottom reinvention. Coach needs to balance its full-price and outlet sales; Tiffany needs to experiment to find its niche in the new economy.
  3. Value doesn’t simply equal low price. I don’t know yet — and neither does the company — whether a new emphasis on organic and healthful food at reasonable prices will succeed in revitalizing sales at Whole Foods Market, but the position makes sense in a post-recovery economy.
  4. Cost-cutting will be essential. A company such as Intel that has built its long-term strategy on constantly cutting costs by constantly improving production technology is well-positioned for the new world. Low-cost producers like Nokia also have an edge in this environment — if they can combine low cost with perceived consumer value.
  5. Look for clear, flexible business strategies. The best bets are companies that have clearly articulated, flexible strategies for coping with this value shift. Procter & Gamble, for example, has directed its advertising in developed economies to trying to convince consumers that its brands deliver more value — they work better, contain less water, etc. — even at higher prices. In developing economies, the company is cutting prices to win market share and to create brand recognition.

To me that all boils down to three words: adaptability, efficiency, and value. Not the most glittering adjectives to find on a creative brief. But then, marketing’s biggest challenge has always been to find the desire among the mundane and indistinguishable. And as attitudes shift, what was once bland or working class can make an about-face. Think Gap T-shirts and Doc Martens in the 80s post-disco era. In these times, value is no longer boring, but rather a search for substance and meaning. Efficiency begins to feel intelligent or cognizant.

Consumer attitudes are even more important as the lines between marketing and product development continue to blur. Because what was once simply a one-way communication message is now a more personal connection, and even a considerable investment of time.

And that places a lot more emphasis on getting the underlying strategy right.