February 2009 Archive

Left Brain is back with its weekly article share. Only problem is, we need a new name for it(didn’t realize our original name was a Kids in the Hall movie). Any suggestions?

And now, articles:

- CNET — ‘Coop’s Corner’: As if Mark Hurd doesn’t have enough on his plate. The CEO is taking a 20% pay cut, 10% cuts for sr. execs, and 5% off for the rest. On top of that:

One increasingly pronounced trend: more IT departments are shifting their computing functions to the cloud. That means money in the bank for the services that can speed the transition.

Good enough. But if HP’s going to weather this "econo-lypse," then services will have to grow even faster–and that’s going to test even Hurd’s formidable managerial talents.

- BusinessWeek: How Amazon’s Bezos Sparked Demand for Kindle 2. Eight techniques:

1. Set the stage.
2. Provide context for numbers.
3. Conduct a demo.
4. Paint a picture for customers.
5. Show customers using or talking about the product.
6. Share the stage.
7. Use analogies.
8. Articulate a powerful vision. (e.g. "every book ever printed in any language in under 60 seconds.")

Washinton Post: A Tale of 140 Characters, Plus the Ones in Congress. Snip:

President Obama spoke of economic calamity and war last night in that solemn rite of democracy, the address to the joint session of Congress. And lawmakers watched him with the dignity Americans have come to expect of their leaders: They whipped out their BlackBerrys and began sending text messages like high school kids bored in math class.

(thanks Kaele!)

RWW: NYT Times Newswire API: All the News That Will Fit, a continuing trend of openness at the New York Times. Should be some cool apps coming out of this in the near future.

PharmExec.com: Social Network Use Spikes Among Docs, 60% use!

TechCrunch: Ginx Helps You Find And Follow The Experts on Twitter, except you need a valid invitation code. Fail, but thanks Rachel!

AllFacebook: Facebook Demographics, This is less an article and more a tool to find out demographics trends on Facebook. Kinda useful. Thanks MB!

And don’t forget to leave your suggestions in the comments for a new feature name!

Following Yan‘s post on monetization, I thought it would be interesting to share the thoughts of a client of mine who recently visited the New York Times to discuss the economy.

The conversation ranged on which industry will tank next, which industries are doing ok, and how we’ll know when the recovery is coming. Not a happy conversation at all, but one highlight was when he told the reporter that he should pick a time in the coming few years and "F [dash dash dash] the paper."

It took some effort not to let my jaw hit the floor, but he had a good point, much like Yan did. Our methods of consuming media are rapidly changing. My boss no longer watches the evening news on her TV, but rather her computer. Several of my Ruder Finn colleagues (who talk to media all day long) can’t remember the last time they picked up a physical newspaper.

My client in particular highlighted Craigslist as being one of the harbingers for paper media that the model will need to change. People stopped buying classified ads in the paper. It’s not that people stopped looking for used cars and SWFs, they just went the way of the web. Newspapers didn’t revamp quickly enough to grab those people back.

The key point is that people will always want news. Whether it’s an op-ed in the FT, high school sports scores in your local paper, or your cubicle mate’s lunch plans on Twitter. People will always look for news, information, and analysis. The question is how it will be delivered.

How do you receive your news?

We have seen many obituaries for various types of media in the last few years. While the following summary statement will be an oversimplification, it can all be condensed into the impending death of newspapers, magazines, TV, traditional websites, and the subsequent rise of mobile and social media. I believe that there needs to be a clarification about these issues.

It really seems that there needs to be a distinction between the two issues at hand: that of media consumption and that of media monetization. Media consumption is far from dead. From various studies (industry and in-house RF Insights research) the media consumption is growing. Even today’s Nielsen’s “3 Screen Report” (click here for pdf) shows that TV viewing is at an all-time high. Social Media, while trendy, still feeds on things that occur outside of social media: hot stories, campaigns, issues, products, etc…

The other issue is monetization. Recent magazine failures are not due to lack of readers but to lack of advertiser commitments. The classified section, the key moneymaker for newspapers, seems to be a lost battle, but newspapers still have the content that is wanted and demanded by users. They just want to consume it in different ways whether it’s through an iPhone app or Twitter feed. They also don’t want to pay for it anymore with subscriptions or perhaps even by viewing ads (hence the short form of the online New York Times or its iPhone app). It is also worthwhile to note that monetization has been an issue for social media darlings as well. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are quite lost in monetizing their highly used platforms. And while TV viewing is at an all-time high, a closer reading of the Nielsen’s report identifies that even the high consumption of TV content may not lead to easy advantages:

1. An astounding 29% of US homes have DVR technology. That can really doom the standard commercial spots
2. 31% of all internet activity occurs while also watching TV meaning that user’s attention may be in multiple places

While these issues are not new, the point is to try to distinguish between consumption and monetization before declaring the death of various media. Is the lack of monetization sustainable? We shall see….

Left Brain introduces Left Brain Candy, a roundup of "what’s read on the left side of the head." We’ll look to periodically share articles having to do with digital business trends, smart Web thinking, and showcasing Ruder Finn’s thought leadership.

With that, here are this week’s links. Bon appetite!

- PR Week: Muted Davos raises questions for PR (op-ed from Ruder Finn co-CEO, Kathy Bloomgarden, subscription required). Here are the 5 tensions she explores:

1. Panic vs. confidence
2. Complexity vs. transparency
3. Regulation vs. free market
4. Business vs. government
5. Global vs. domestic

- BusinessWeek: Debunking Six Social Media Myths (via @beckymcmichael‘s del.icio.us). The 6 myths debunked? Here they are:

1. Social media is cheap, if not free.
2. Anyone can do it.
3. You can make a big splash in a short time.
4. You can do it all in-house.
5. If you do something great, people will find it.
6. You can’t measure social media marketing results.

- New York Times: YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money, this got me to thinking — maybe Left Brain should be on YouTube. A penny (or more) for your thoughts? (via @ericturkington)

- McKinsey Quarterly: Six ways to make Web 2.0 work, Lots of 6-itemed lists lately:

1. The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top.
2. The best uses come from users — but they require help to scale.
3. What’s in the workflow is what gets used.
4. Appeal to the participants’ egos and needs — not just their wallets.
5. The right solution comes from the right participants.
6. Balance the top-down and self-management of risk.

- ZDNET: Research report: Is ‘social PR’ for real? Which agencies get it?, Nice, Ruder Finn does. (via @HowardSol, bio)

- New York Magazine: How Tweet It Is – "Sure, the Twitter guys still have no idea how to make money off their fabulous invention. But for now they are living in a dreamworld of infinite possibilities, maybe the last one on Earth." (via @lcbell)

- Knowledge@Wharton: A World Transformed: What Are the Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years? Preview of the top 5:

1. Internet, broadband, WWW (browser and html)
2. PC/laptop computers
3. Mobile phones
4. E-mail
5. DNA testing and sequencing/Human genome mapping

Bacon Explosion is somewhat of a perfect storm for Left Brain. It’s got PR, it’s got digital, it’s got business, and of course, plenty of bacon.

For those of you not familiar with Bacon Explosion, it’s a recipe developed by BBQAddicts.com in response to a tweet asking the two barbecue afficianados who run the site what they could do with bacon.

A lot, it turns out.

Their recipe features four pounds of bacon and sausage woven and rolled together with barbecue sauce and rub. For a better idea of how this 5000-calorie digital business phenomenon works, Left Brain did some field research on SuperBowl Sunday (below video is NSFV (not safe for vegetarians):

The video is one of about 141 videos of bacon explosion posted on YouTube, and is testament to the popularity of the recipe online. It was originally concocted in an attempt to drive traffic to BBQAddicts.com in order to raise their ad revenue, which supports their expensive BBQ competition hobby.

This strategy seems to have been successful.

The over-the-top recipe posted on the BBQAddicts’ blog was tweeted to 1,200 followers on Twitter, and has since received almost a half million views, 167 trackbacks, coverage on stumbleupon, digg, del.icio.us, Air America, National Review, US News & World Report, CNN, and even the homepage of the New York Times during SuperBowl week (ironically, they placed it directly above a story on America’s battle with sodium).

You might even make the argument that the recipe has sparked a resurgence in bacon’s overall popularity. Facebook has more than 500 bacon fan groups, with one now boasting more than 34,000 members. Of course, it includes several discussions on Bacon Explosion as well.

The digital business trends lesson here is: if you seek Internet fame, you better be willing to partake in something dangerous to your health. And while the adage that "sex sells," remains true, so do danger, extremes, and cholesterol.

((DISCLAIMER: Left Brain does not condone doing anything dangerous to your health.))

A recent episode involving the head of Ford’s social media efforts, the well known Scott Monty of Twitter, highlighted several key issues. To get more information on what actually happened, I would recommend reading the following Jalopnik blog post (part of Gawker Media).

One issue raised by the episode was: who is leading the conversation? Is it the social media persona or the overall corporate brand. It is true that Scott Monty is very well known in the social media circle so his personal brand has very high awareness. On the other hand, it can be argued that such a tactic does work well in social media because other users want to connect to a person (that can personify a brand) and not just a corporate logo. It makes sense for Scott Monty to have dinner with bloggers and post about that but it’s tough to understand how "Ford" can have the same experience.

The other issue is value. While Scott Monty has been praised as a model social media success, the inevitable question that comes up is how has this benefited Ford? The well known tangible benefit is that Scott has a large following on Twitter, approximately 10K followers. Yet, how many of those are current vehicle shoppers or are truly interested in Ford? A good indicator of who is on Twitter is the fact that Mashable, a blog that focuses on social media, has over 100K followers (that is out of 1M to 1.5M estimated total Twitter users). So yes, Twitter is a place for social media evangelists, communications people, and technology early adopters, but probably not people currently interested in purchasing vehicles. I am one of those people btw and currently not in the market (@shikhvarger).

Some of this criticism is a bit harsh. While not directly selling product, Scott did manage to keep informed a certain online segment about all things Ford. This segment is very active and influential online so Ford was likely to benefit by a lot of grassroots publicity from the people following Scott. It would be interesting to track if any of this publicity spilled out of the tech and social media segment and entered communities of vehicle shoppers…

So this episode did start an interesting dialogue, especially with more companies likely to hire their own "director of social media." Few tough issues to work out beforehand:

• Who will lead the conversation? Persona or the brand? Is there a way to integrate?
• Focus on the target audience and not proponents of social media
• What is the primary responsibility: corporate communications or product?
• Which are the right communities to focus on? Where are the right audiences (Is it Twitter, Facebook, niche communities, etc…)?

Yesterday, my colleagues and I met with executives from a global corporation to discuss PR opportunities. The meeting went something like this:

Just kidding. But the meeting did include a senior marketer, who had the following to say on new media:

CMO: "I saw blogs and wikis on one of your slides. I hate blogs and wikis. Those are two things that should never appear in a presentation. Never."

Me: "But what about blogs at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal?"

CMO: "Those aren’t real blogs."

And so it went.

My natural nerdy blog defenses were primed, but I’ve since realized that the concept of a "blog" all depends on your perspective.

At Ruder Finn, we sometimes look at digital communications as existing on a spectrum ranging from "structured" to "unstructured" (to borrow a phrase from HP).

Take the Wall Street Journal blog The Juggle as an example. This would fall more towards the "structured" end of the spectrum. It is owned, edited and written by the Wall Street Journal and its journalists, and the posts are often (if not always) based on stories from the proper paper.

But The Juggle is still a blog. Its tone, content, scope, frequency, depth and length often differ substatially from the paper. Most importantly, its posts often garner hundreds of comments and spark watercooler conversations at Ruder Finn.

Then there are blogs that are slightly less structured. Individual bloggers with track records and credibility, mainstream blogs written by syndicated columnists, book blogs, internal blogs, mom blogs, and corporate blogs (oh my!).

What I think our CMO friend meant by "real" blogs are "pajama blogs." These fall more at the "unstructured" end of the spectrum. They are blogs written as diaries by people who have no training, are uncompensated, and independent. They can be unpredictable, opinionated, and influential. Sometimes they are even more influential than mainstream media when they act as grassroots / word of mouth sources of information.

This is probably the more difficult audience to target with corporate messaging, especially corporate messaging that has been carefully cultivated and protected over many years. However, it’s do-able and quite effective if done right.

So I guess this makes Left Brain semi-real. Which is good because as Groucho Marx once said: "I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal."