Insights into web media, marketing & promotion
As we limp into 2009, I thought this video would provide some much-needed inspiration. It’s not long, and as far as I can tell from my limited research, it’s very real. In fact, it might be worth sharing this with your family.
Enjoy, and have a great New Year!
26thDecember
According to a new survey from Mediamark Research & Intelligence published by “The Center For Media Research” today, 11.5% of the U.S. adult population are the key influencers of other people when it comes to word-of-mouth communications regarding personal finance.
This segment of approximately 25.4 million adults, dubbed “Big Circle Influentials,” are at par with the national average age for adults, and have only 4% higher household income than the national average of $65,500, but they score well above the national average for key financial and wealth indicators.
According to the MRI study, Big Circle Influentials are:
33% more likely to own a home valued at $500,000 or more
157% more likely to have made 10 or more investment transactions in the last 12 months
109% more likely to own securities with a value of $150,000 or more
44% more likely to have sought financial planning and/or money management advice
Anne Marie Kelly, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Strategic Planning at MRI, says “It’s vital for financial advertisers to be able to identify Big Circle Influentials because these thought leaders advise family, friends, neighbors and colleagues, as well as people they don’t necessarily know, through viral and social networks… targeting on demographics alone would not allow marketers to reach this key segment.”
So how do you reach these influencers? Blogs.
Influencers understand that they’re known and respected for their knowledge — so they are always looking for new and unique information that will buttress their standing. While they use the internet for research, they do not consider a company’s website to be the most accurate source of information on the products or services that company provides. Instead, they seek the opinion of others who have used the product or service. That, they know, is the “real” information.
So your blog should be a dialog between you and your customers. It should be accurate, and although some comments might not please you, your response to those negative comments is what’s critical.
You see, Influencers know that some people are impossible to please, and they expect a certain amount of negative press about a product in which they have interest. But along with a negative comment or two, they expect to see good comments. And that’s where the dialog comes in.
Encourage happy customers to post their experience to your blog — even reward them if necessary (don’t go overboard! It shouldn’t look like your buying their endorsement). And answer all negative comments in a way that will please somebody who is researching your company.
In the end, these Influencers will tell more than two people — they’ll tell dozens. And then those people will spread that information since it comes from their “reliable” source.
26thDecember
Deloitte has just completed a very large study of consumers between 13 and 75 years of age and have found out some fairly surprising statistics. They will officially release the results of their third annual “State of the Media Democracy” report the first week of January at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
The majority of the study’s impact revolves around how Millenials (14-25 year olds) are consuming media and responding to advertising. Most surprisingly, they’re not watching as much TV as older generations. In truth, they’re watching a lot of TV, just not on their TVs.
But why? Of course there are the obvious reasons, online viewing is more convenient for busier lives, DVRs, DVDs, TiVO, etc. are able to allow content to be viewed on demand. But I think there are better reasons this marketing shift is occurring. With the economy tightening budgets, perhaps younger people are not as inclined to pay $50+ per month for TV. I think one of the main reasons is TV programming itself. The best and most popular programming on TV today like Lost and 30 Rock are better when you watch episodes by Netflixing them in sequence on DVD or watching them online on Hulu.
Today’s youth are spending less time watching TV but way more time with media overall if you factor-in video games, music and the Internet. Let’s break down this information a little:
So what exactly are Millennials watching online? TV programming. YouTube counts for a lot of searches and demand but that doesn’t convert directly into influencing purchase patterns. ScreenDigest, the pre-eminent firm of industry analysts that has been covering global media markets for over 30 years has put together some projections on the future of advertising and television and put them together in a webinar titled “The Economics of Free.”
High Demand for User-Generated Content
Long Live Traditional Media!
Advertising Insights
Future Products
Millennials are leading the way as far as embracing new technologies, games, entertainment platforms, user-generated content and communication tools:
Deloitte’s study finds that TV remains, by far, the most influential advertising medium, followed by magazines, the Internet, newspapers, radio and billboards. 64 percent pay more attention to printed advertising than online. Social networking sites are considered separate, and they are the seventh-most influential place to advertise, followed by in-theater ads, DVDs, blogs (also, distinct from the Internet), video games, mobile phones and virtual worlds. For the complete details, we’ll have to wait for January 6, 2009 when Deloitte releases their final findings in a “Super Session” at CES.
22ndDecember
Everyone knows where babies come from — hospitals. Well, at least those that can wait!
But few hospital websites have fun with what is the most beautiful time in a future parent’s life. So next time your hospital is going to run an ad campaign for expectant mothers, think about sending them to a page in your site that will encourage them to come back often. One way to do that is with “pregnancy tracking” software or widgets. Below is a perfect example. If you embed this into a specific page on your site that encourages the sign up and gives more information about your service, you’ll be building a market base of names with whom you can communicate, plus you’ll likely draw more people back to your site to track a loved one’s pregnancy.
Here’s the widget. It’s embedded here in a blog, which you can also do. Or simply put it in your site:
Here’s a live one for a friend of mine to show you how it works:
More about babies and free baby samples
This is very well done and uses viral marketing techniques to really get this word out. Watch it, then read below.
Meghan Keane writes about J.C. Penney’s now widely watched “doghouse” video in her Wired blog:
If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, J.C. Penney must be pretty glad it picked the right planet to mock for its viral ad campaign this holiday season.
The discount retailer released an ad called The Doghouse three weeks ago that fictionalizes the plight of men who buy the wrong gifts for their significant others. In the ad, a well-intentioned man buys his wife a new dual bag vacuum for Christmas, only to find himself dropped into the doghouse, an underworld prison where men go when they purchase bad presents for the women in their lives.
People love it. The ad has been viewed over 1.7 million times since J.C. Penney uploaded it to BewareOfTheDoghouse.com and YouTube three weeks ago, according to Visible Measures, a video analytics firm. Since then, the 4-1/2 minute video has received 56 placements across 9 different video sites. Over 90 percent of those have been community driven.
“The response has definitely exceeded our expectations,” says Quinton Crenshaw, a spokesperson for J.C. Penney’s. “It’s taken on a life of its own.”
The retailer has focused the majority of this campaign online, with the devoted website, a facebook page and some good old fashioned male mockery. Unlike many traditional ads, the company’s brand does not factor in until the very end of the long video, when it suggests men get out of the doghouse by purchasing diamonds from J.C. Penney.
But with just a slight misjudgment in tone, an online ad can go completely awry.
That’s what happened with a Motrin ad that Johnson and Johnson pulled earlier this month. The drug giant created a short video ad on its website, aimed at mothers who get back pain while carrying their babies. But the ad struck a nerve with a vocal demographic, mommy bloggers, who found the ad condescending and demanded the ad get pulled. They succeeded in short order, with Johnson and Johnson pulling the ad within hours of the criticism.
It’s hard to say why the reactions were different. The Motrin pitch was seen as patronizing, however unwittingly, while the Penney campaign purposelessly tapped into a meme — cluelessness — that many men proudly embrace (or at least acknowledge to the opposite sex), as well as the quick and easy recoveries they make to stay in the game.
“It’s aimed at men looking to purchase jewelry,” says Dave Howlett, senior director of consumer insights for J.D. Power and Associates, “but it actually markets to women, making men the butt of the joke.”
And that strategy appears to have worked.
“I like the J.C. Penney ad because it takes a universal situation — what to get someone you care about — and makes it a joke,” Ochman tells Wired.com. “It could just as easily have been women who bought men ties, or socks for an important occasion instead of a piece of jewelry, which is a gift that signifies a relationship is at a level with a degree of permanence.”
Howlett doesn’t think that it would have worked the same way if it mocked women:
“I come at this from a bit of a sexist approach. I would like to think that men are more self-deprecating than women, but I don’t think it would be as successful if it were making fun of women buying bad gifts.”
The J.C. Penney campaign is not without its detractors. The Doghouse has a smaller, but vocal set of critics. Allison Linn, a blogger for MSNBC, writes:
“We’re not sure who should be more offended by this campaign: Men, who are painted as sexist, clueless dolts, or women, who are shown as mean-spirited and materialistic, willing to mete out menial punishment but swayed by glittery things.”
But as much as some people are complaining about the video’s content, others are forwarding it to their friends. B.L. Ochman wrote in AdAge last week:
The Doghouse came to me from women friends, it came in a direct message on Twitter and more than one male friend sent it with the note, “I know you’ll love this.” And that, in a nutshell, is what makes a viral. One friend saying to another: “I know you’ll get a kick out of this, relate to this, etc.”
“The worst thing that can happen to a viral video is that no one can talk about it,” says Matt Cutler, vice president of marketing and analytics at Visible Measures. “If you look at the history of commercially driven viral videos, there is always some degree of controversy associated with them.”
And, it seems the campaign has officially influenced at least one man for the better. Says Cutler: “For the record, I’m now reconsidering a few of my planned (ahem!) holiday gifts.”