DOUG SCHUMACHER

experience designer + writer

strategy

Creativing :: Holiday shopping madness video, social media gains advocates, and iPhone news

By

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

Chaos inside Walmart during Black Friday 2009 [VIDEO]

Absurd chaos going on here. You’d think a gun was fired. People in some parts of the world must see this and think this entire country is insane.

Frosty the Inappropriate Snowman Mashup Creates Controversey

The video this references to has been pulled. What I like here is that the mashup was done by CBS. That means that CBS was mashing up artwork they didn’t have the rights to? And the networks are trying to put a stop to YouTube? At least for a brief moment it seems they stopped acting like legal bots and started acting like real human beings.

AT&T CEO Wants iPhone Users to Limit Usage

This is little short of mind-boggling. Just as the mobile industry a really taking off, AT&T’s De la Vega steps in and tries to threaten everyone with tiered pricing. He should read his history. The Web tried this very unsuccessfully in it’s early days. Consumers heavily restricted their use out of concern for unexpected high monthly charges. More than anything, I’m surprised that he can’t see how anyone in the mobile space should benefit from increased usage. That data they point to is interesting though: Their 3% smart phone users consume 40% of the data. I just don’t like their solution of punishing their best customers. What other industry does that (besides the music industry)?

Chrome Extensions for Mac Coming Soon

I just installed Chrome on my MacBook Pro, and am very impressed with the speed over Firefox. Extremely noticeable. But I do miss the ability to have plugins — something I used a lot on Firefrox. So this is good news to me. If you haven’t tried Chrome for Mac, though, i’d definitely give it a spin

Twitter Bombs and the Real Time Tweets on Google Results Page

I, like many others, have noticed a lot more Google Alerts search traffic. And much of it is from Twitter activity. This report could certainly explain why that’s happening. It could also be pushing up posters who happen to use a common Google search term. I can’t imagine this will last long. Way to easy for brands to drop the Twitter bomb. And you know they will. In fact, I’m sure the marketer behind the shaking belly ads is at work on that right now.

It’s Official: Auto Ads are Shifting Online

Some pretty convincing data on the increasing use of social media by the auto industry. What I find most interesting is that it’s the dealers, at the local level, that are really taking advantage of this. Here’s a great stat from a Nielsen report: “Auto dealerships dropped their overall ad budgets 27%, but increased internet ad spends 45% in the first three quarters of 2009, compared to the same time period in 2008.”

Social Media Influencing 28% of Shoppers

An early indicator of the influence of social media on consumer shopping behavior. And while I agree this is real, I’m surprised that the gap between those who say they check product reviews and those who say they are affected by social media activity is as narrow as it is. Really, I thought the majority of people would be regularly checking product reviews on sites like Amazon. Interesting that only 13% of people claim to make use of that information to inform their purchasing decision. Maybe it’s the lower price point merchandise they’re not so concerned with.

Seth’s Blog: The reason social media is so difficult for most organizations

Social media is a process, not an event. This is a big distinction, and actually something I addressed earlier this week at the iMedia Summit. So I couldn’t agree more. And company’s that want to treat social media and branding like an event, or a product, are in for an unpleasant surprise.

Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies of 2009

What I like in this article is how they emphasize the mediums that establish credibility. This is a principle concept that’s coming up a lot in branding. And whether they refer to it as credibility, authenticity, or being genuine, it’s the same principle. You can’t just shout messages at people the way you once could. They mention these trends were big in 2009, and should be for 2010 as well. I’d say they can extend it out a lot longer than that for many of these mediums.

iPhone App Lets You IMDb on the Go

A good review of the iPhone app on Mashable. This is probably one of the most logical apps you could want, as especially among young people, a lot of movie-going decisions are out-of-home.

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

By

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 :: Futbal Hero video, Facebook’s latest marketing strategy, and Sony goes hunting for game spammers

By

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

YouTube – Kasabian Football Hero

It’s always great when a cool video is accompanied by a good song. While more documentary than music video, this is a fun riff on the Guitar Hero user interface, despite actually using open source version Frets on Fire.

Map View from AirSage

Mobile-based location and motion data. They use mobile phone data from individual handsets to predict things like traffic and general movement patters of people throughout the US. They have agreements with both carriers and manufacturers, and are a sort of white label for traffic information. They claim to be able to provide this coverage for 127 markets that cover 85% of the population. There are a lot of campaign applications for this data.

Beastman

Fun, simple street art style from an Australian artist.

Kill Your Idols

Skate culture art style with a rock and roll theme. Can’t go wrong with that.

5 Must Read Social Media Marketing Studies

Some good research and projections on social media. Highlights include a report that American’s spend 17% of their online time on social media sites, and businesses reporting that blogs have the highest social media ROI.

Tobold’s MMORPG Blog: Facebook games: Scam or useful tool?

Good assessment of the four critical components for how Facebook games hook people and pull them in to a deeper experience. Definitely reinforces why so many Facebook games feel so formulaic.

The Myth of Usability Testing

Usability testing isn’t the most exciting subject I’ve ever written on, but I’ll certainly concede it’s value, when used correctly. And that’s what this article delves into. Pitfalls and solutions for good testing methods. One interesting note is how many usability tests are given to existing users of a bad interface, and they compare those results to the same group using a new interface. Of course, given their familiarity with the bad interface, they find that one easier to use. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

Facebook’s ‘Reconnect’ Strategy is Brilliant

You’ve probably seen random people popping up on the right column on Facebook, under the title ‘Suggestions’. These are friends of yours Facebook has identified as relatively inactive on Facebook. And they’re encouraging you to reach out and get them participating. Facebook’s explosive growth is starting to flatten out. And now they need to figure out other ways to grow their business. Typically, companies tackle this by increasing usage among current users. Facebook’s approach to that — getting users to connect amongst themselves — is both genuine and cost effective. And while the term CRM isn’t mentioned anywhere in this article, it’s a blend of that, permission marketing, and user generated marketing. Pretty savvy.

Sony creates online detectives targeting ingame spammers

According to this article, Sony’s 9-member detective team has already shut down 295,000 spammer subscription accounts. And I thought my inbox got a lot of spam.

5 Fresh & Innovative Collaboration Platforms For The Creative Community

Looking to reach out and connect with other creatives? Here are some good places to do so.

Creativing :: Another reason not to count clicks, video monitor in a print mag, and Jack Daniel’s raises a glass

By

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

Study: Half Of Ad Impressions, 95 Percent Of Clicks Fraudulent

This sounds pretty alarming at first, but for those using legitimate campaign evaluation methods, they’ll be able to identify the fraudsters quickly and cost effectively. It’s all about using the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). If you haven’t heard by now, forget clicks. Click’s aren’t even last week. They’re last century. Focus on metrics that can’t be gamed near as easily by a bot. The major KPIs include: Visit rates – how has the campaign effected your overall site traffic? Engagement rates – are people actually finding your site relevant to your marketing messages? Conversion rates – are visitors actually doing something to impact your bottom line? The deeper you look, the harder it is for scammers to skew your results.

Timing Is Crucial To Maximize Exposure With Social Media

Timing in social media is key from a cultural point of view, but also tactically in terms of what time of the day or day of the week you launch the campaign. And while much of this focuses on what I consider digital PR rather than social media, the principles apply on a broad scale.

Google’s Ad Exchange Honcho Joins “Real-Time Advertising” Startup

When I saw this headline, I immediately thought of what Doug Weaver from Upstream has been writing about for the past several years. That the process of buying and selling media is due for a major streamlining. The Cliff Notes version of this is to think of Google Adwords for display advertising, industry-wide. And potentially video units, as well. As a creative, I generally favor anything that streamlines the non-creative department part of the business, because it tends to shift emphasis to the process of creating the ads. Of course, the challenge for creatives will be the overall commodotization of the advertising business. To date, when one part of the business reduces friction, it affects the whole industry. As an example, when media buying became detached from creative and handled by separate agencies, there were cost savings for clients. But there was also a struggle to get the two groups working together conceptually. And the creative process became more akin to filling out a job order.

Evolving Beyond The Banner Ad – Digg’s new ad unit

Speaking of ad units, this is interesting, if not clearly overdue. In social media, why not let the community evaluate the advertising the same way they evaluate the content? That’s what Digg is doing. And this could be great for your Nike’s, beers, and on Digg, Ron Paul. The big question is, What about the brands that don’t have lifestyle cache or emotional relevance to the audience evaluating them? And if that can’t be created in all brands, which I think is a challenge, then how will Digg be able to sell ads to those companies?

Really great Demo of new experiment from Mozilla

A good, early stage peak into the future of the semantic web. And, unlike so many concepts in beta, this one’s ready to go.

Technology to run video ads in print magazines

This is certainly attention-getting, and at this point anything that gives that advantage to magazine advertising will probably help them sell ads. But print publications are going to need to become a lot more than low-grade video display units. Instead of feeling like a print breakthrough, this feels more like an obvious indicator that all content will soon be digital. What this misses is the idea that the online video content experience is so much richer than just a page with video. There’s sharing, favoriting, commenting, etc. If anything, viewing these small screens only makes me realize how much better the experience would be online. So hopefully they can use this to sell some ads, but I don’t think it’s even close to a long term solution for print publishing.

Twelp Is On The Way!

A good breakout of Best Buy’s Twelpforce, and how the real power of this is not just being on the latest new media bandwagon, but about taking thousands of employees and making them feel like a bigger part of the brand story.

Jack Daniel’s ‘Toast’ Application Going Strong

This is a great campaign idea – send a toast to your friends. And it’s pulling strong results early on. But having tried it, I’m surprised that it isn’t easier to select a single friend to toast, versus the system’s recommendation engine. Secondly, I can’t figure out why they wouldn’t prominently promote this on either the default page of their Facebook Fan page, or their website.

Ford’s Fiesta to Party on — Without the Fiesta

I really liked this campaign when it came out. Take 100 top YouTube video stars, and give them the new Fiesta and a gas card, with an agreed number of blog posts they’ll write about their experience with the car. And some of the bloggers actually exceeded the minimum posting requirements, partly because they found their posts about the vehicle were getting more views than their regularly-scheduled content. That speaks volumes about the effectiveness of social media and sponsored blogging. But they ran the campaign a full year prior to the vehicle’s availability in the US. And now there’s a time gap in which they have to maintain momentum. My only guess to this is that they were afraid the social media campaign might not work, or even have a backlash, and by running it so far in advance, everyone would forget about it by the time the car launched. Any better theories?

Burglar leaves his Facebook page on victims computer – gets busted

One of those stories almost too good to be true. I’ve read of burglars doing all sorts of things during their robberies. Napping. Fixing themselves a snack. Watching TV. But this trumps them all.

The next five years

By

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.

How social media can resurrect your brand’s reputation

By

My latest article just came out on iMedia Connection.

Recently on NPR’s Morning Edition, host Renee Montagne interviewed 20-plus year auto-exec-turned-industry-analyst Jim Harbour (to Jim’s credit, “industry analysis” must be the only growth sector in the U.S. auto industry for the past couple years). Montagne was quizzing Harbour on the problems the auto industry is facing.

Here’s an excerpt from their exchange:

NPR: What about the perception that U.S. automakers aren’t making cars as well built as foreign cars? How can U.S. automakers change the perception?

Jim Harbour: I am not a marketing expert at all. I don’t know how you change the perception of the American people who think we’re still building junk. And I know, I’m from the time that I was doing that. I was building the junk. We used to build cars with eight defects, and we’d ship them out and ship them to the dealer.

THE REST OF THE STORY …