Advertising Fuelosophy 101

What's Next in Technology to Change our Lives?

We all know that the internet changed the way we communicate, learn, research, connect and more. And then along comes social media and now there are ways to chat, get on a wall, tweet, befriend and unfriend people from around the world in just a matter of moments. It's like life is in fast forward and the time between stops is shorter and shorter.

As I was contemplating life as I sometimes zone out ... my mind went to what's next, what's going to be cool, what's the next big thing, and how will my life change because of it. Well, I decided to use those new ways of research and just started to "google" (a verb less than 10 years old) different thoughts, sayings, etc. on what's next. And not to be let down, I found an article in PC World written just yesterday with the headline, "Game-Changers: 10 Potentially Huge Technologies." Wow ... what's next is in writing.

Now here's the skinny on this article: it's long, it's technical and it's about potential reality not reality. And here's my opinion, our clothes will talk (think Minority Report), computers will think and type for us (think Terminator), our brains will connect with our pda (think Total Recall), and finally we can let our email do the talking for us (think A.I.) Just maybe this is overstating the case and a little bit of a stretch including the association with futuristic-type movies. However, the article is a little dry, but it does list some of the next wave of technology, with much already in progress. If it all comes true, this life ride just got faster. That's my thought, what's yours?

Summer Forecast: Try A Bottled Ad

Oh, it's sunny and breezy and absolutely beautiful outside! But here I sit at my desk. So I'd just like to make a suggestion before the holiday weekend. Yes there are deadlines to meet and strategies to plan and campaigns to produce, but don't miss Spring altogether. And while you're at it, grab some summertime, too. It's life verses the lifestyle ad! Enjoy!

Mobile Marketing: A Best Practices Guide

I recently ran across an article with the title above and thought it would be good to pass along. It was written by Mike Wehrs, president/CEO of the Mobile Marketing Assocation. The Mobile Marketing Association is a nonprofit trade association dedicated to growing the mobile channel by establishing guidelines and best practices.

Here's a synopsis of the article:

1. Since the consumer is central to the mobile marketing experience the only way to ensure success as marketers is to build faith that this is a positive way to engage with their favorite brands.
2. Because mobile devices are so personal the marketing messages must engender trust. To engender trust, deliver messages that are positive, highly relevant and contain specific value.
3. The marketer needs to know how to develop a true dialogue of interaction with its customers.
4. Marketers must move away from traditional push (interruption-based) advertising and adopt the tenets of positive consumer experience.
5. The tenets of a positive consumer experience are as follows (according to Mobile Marketing Association's global code of conduct):
   1. Choice: consumers must opt in and make it easy to opt out if so desired.
   2. Control: consumers should have control of when and how they receive messages.
   3. Customization: any information provided by consumers is to personalize content.
   4. Consideration: offer value to consumers who allow you to communicate with them.
   5. Constraint: manage and limit communication.
   6. Confidentiality: don't share consumer information with non-affiliated third parties.

Wehr states "the ideal ambassadors for the mobile marketing cause are consumers ... brands should make sure their communications are interesting, relevant, valuable and, above all, requested."

In the end, I guess that is what we all want ... to be wanted! That's my thought, what's yours?

P.S. If you would like to read the article in its entirety, just click here.

Twitter: To Flight or To Flop?

If you've ever done any hint of research in marketing or advertising, odds are you've come across this name: Nielsen. If you've done any recently, you've probably run into this one too: Twitter. Now the media/marketplace research giant is going after the big bird of micro-blogging. 

According to new stats from Nielsen Online, about 60 percent of new Twitter users stop using the service after a month. 

"Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty," said David Martin, Nielsen Online's vice president for primary research.

The 40 percent Twitter retention rate has in fact improved over time (like exponentially), but MySpace and Facebook do a better job at user loyalty, according to Nielsen findings. 

"A retention rate of 40 percent will limit a site's growth to about a 10 percent reach figure," Martin said, adding that when Facebook and MySpace were emerging networks like Twitter their retention rates were twice as high. Both now have retention rates of nearly 70 percent.

Critics say Nielsen Online misses the point: most Twitter activity occurs on cell phones, not Twitter.com.

Twitter has big plans for its future, and its getting serious about real-time search, perhaps Twitter's greatest chance at being worth more than a billion someday. Twitter plans to add two new features to its search tool: 1) It will crawl the links people add in their tweets, not just the tweeted text and 2) It will sort search results by Twitter user's reputation, not just by chronology. 

How will Twitter calculate "reputation"? It's not certain yet, but it should be easy to mimic a Google-like PageRank system using Twitter's key metrics (follower count, longevity, retweets, etc.)

Here's what interests me about all this. Twitter's "flighty" nature (via Internet vs. via phone) potentially challenges the insights/expertise/end-all-be-all marketplace/media research authority of long-standing Nielsen! Does NIELSEN not get it? Are they suddenly irrelevant? Outdated? Hmmmmm....

And then of course, there's some irony in the situation. The "Join Me On Twitter" banner on the Internet News article releasing the Nielsen story. And when you perform a real-time search for "Nielsen" on Twitter (at the moment of this post) this is what comes up: "Nielsen stands by its Twitter assessment." Ha!

Fabulous Factoid!: What Is The World's Largest Human Logo?

The hunt for fabulous factoids is never ending and today my eternal quest led me to this, the world's largest human logo according to Guinness World Records. We're not talking tattoo here. We're talking 34,309 living, breathing humans gathered in one place to create a lovely, living breathing logo.

 This monumental feat of homo-sapienic design took place way back in 1999  and was organized by Realizar Eventos Especias. The 34,309 were gathered at the National Stadium of Jamor, Lisbon, Portugal. Their mission? Recreate the Portugese logo for Euro2004 with ever-loving, living, breathing bodies. Way cool, man. It was all part of promoting the Portugese bid to host the European football (soccer to us yankees) championships in 2004. Aparrently it worked, because they did indeed host the games.

Even cooler though, the logo was "animated." According to the Guinness article on the event, "The kicking leg of the player in the logo was composed of 651 gymnasts wearing black and white capes, which when swapped over, created the illusion of the player kicking the ball. Once the ball was kicked, it released 10,000 red and green helium balloons - the colours of the Portuguese flag." I'm thinking it took some real human brainpower to conceive and execute that little bit of visual trickery. Bravo to the Portugese and to the 34,309. May your record live on for ever. Stay tuned for more fabulous advertising, marketing and design related factoids. I'm on the prowl!

What Would Life Be Like Without Advertising?

Here's an interesting little social experiment I ran across today.

It's a very simple site asking a very simple question most of us, even we in the biz, don't actually think about that much. Sure, we constantly sit around analyzing the effects of an economically induced reduction in advertising and marketing expenditures. Let's face it, that means less money in our pockets and the impending dismay of having to trade single malt scotch for blended, or the Beemer for a Kia. Or, as many poor advertising souls already know, the complete elimination of their jobs. Dismal yes, but then again, without advertising none of us would have jobs at all and Alex Bogusky would probably be homeless.

But yes, it made me think. What would life be like without Burger King Square Butts and Budweiser babes (or god forbid, no Clydesdales)? Never again would we hear gems like, "New and improved... with green crystals." Or compelling tag lines like, "We stand behind our counters."

It would be a world devoid of Popeil Pocket Fisherman and that stupid but big-selling blanket with the arms. And never again would we see, "As seen on TV!" What would we do? Worst of all, the Super Bowl would become completely boring... and think about all the out of work chimpanzees! What in the world are they going to do... and their trainers? The whole trained monkey industry goes down the drain without advertising. Not to mention a slew of other talkin, burping and wind-breaking animals who have been dependent on advertising for decades (I'm pretty sure Mr. Ed had some pretty lucrative ad contracts at the height of his popularity).

So you see, imagining life without advertising is not just about us, it's about animals, and hot babes, and green crystals. Things we've come to know and love and could most definitely not do without!
What's your opinion? Oh, and happy Cinco De Mayo!

By the way, if you're interested, here's a link to an article about the guys behind the site and their reasons for doing it.

Facebook Meets AARP, Your Children Just Say "Oh No."

Ok it's official, I have a Facebook page with no friends and there's nothing on my wall. Instead all you'll find is my picture from last summer. That's it.

You might be thinking (and rightfully so), why haven't I embraced Facebook when social media is a part of our company's strategic direction. Well, I must say, I blame it on my children ... yes my children. And here's why ... each of my children have come to me and said, "Dad one of your friends just invited me to be their friend (keep in mind my children are in college) and its just "creepy." And they said it keeps happening and they don't want to be friends with a bunch of my friends. Then, they made me promise I wouldn't become one of those parents trying to be cool befriending their friends and so on. I'm now paralyzed into inaction.

Now, here's the deal, my children are not alone in their feelings and I recently was introduced to a blog that literally made me belly laugh, it's named "Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook." And here's the introductory greeting, "Congratulations! Your Parents just joined Facebook. Your life is officially over."

Here are a few sample wall posts:

 

According to iStrategylabs, Facebook's 35-54 year old demo is growing fastest, with a 276.4% growth rate between June 2008 and January 2009. The 55+ demo is not far behind with a 194.3% growth rate. And now the total number of users aged 35+ has gone from 8.2% to 18.9% of all Facebook users in just under six months ... that's staggering growth. It sure seems that us parents like connecting too (much to the chagrin of our tech savvy children).

Well, now that Facebook meets AARP, I just wonder what the kids will do ... hmmm ...

Hey AARP, do you think Facebook is available to purchase? That's my thought, what's yours.