This beats clunk click

Sometimes you see an advert and you think wow. This is one of those. An advert that communicates its message 100% at an emotional level. It just connects.

Any one for a Swedish TV license? No, well watch this instead.

When someone sent me this video it made be "jump" when it got to the reveal.  Yep, it is designed to pay your TV license in Sweden.  And yes, it is definitely viral. 

Here's my version.....
http://en.tackfilm.se/?id=1272225365762RA11

Green Graffiti

Here's an idea that looks like it has got some potential and all it needs is a template and a high pressure jet washer. The rest is down to you! You can find out more here: www.greengraffiti.nl.

Olympus Advert

How could I resist this? Courtesy of the Fire Wire.

Monetizing Social Networking

Monetizing social networking sites is still proving problematic. This article in The New York Times summarises some of the issues that Procter & Gamble have been encountering using Facebook.

It is interesting that just 3 percent of Internet users in the United States would willingly let publishers use their friends for advertising. Yet there is research that users are KEEN to publicise their views and experiences with products. According to research from DEI Worldwide 63 percent of consumers would like to share their opinions about a brand or product with a representative, and 67 percent are likely to pass along information from a brand representative to other people. Bit of a difference between 3% and 63%!

Personally, I suspect the major problem for advertisers is that social networking sites are about social interaction and not product placement - when conversing with friends and family, banner ads just seem a little inappropriate. If we aren't careful, banner ads are just going to make users feel like shills.

Interestingly, many organisations seem committed to monetizing social networking sites (asides from the social networking sites themselves that is), but only time will tell if this will work. Either way, I suspect that it is going to take longer that anyone thinks. In the meantime, users will continue to wield new found consumer powers.

Social networking and advertising (again)

I have commented before that advertising revenues on social networking sites seems to be challenging. I came across a couple of new articles that reinforce the same message. This is starting to sound like old news!

Here's an article covering some research from ExactTarget and Ball State University's Center for Media Design. If you follow the links at the bottom of the article, you can download the complete research report. The bottom line is that email marketing seems to be more effective than placing advertisements on social networking sites.

While there has been a rise in the number of people using review websites before major purchases, the value in these reviews is that they are independent - most of the time, from complete strangers. This doesn't seem to be the place for advertisements - it is more about personal communication. If this carries on, it is going to be difficult to provide ROI for Social Networking sites. In the current trading conditions, this could cause some difficulty for site owners, advertisers and their investors.

The second article provides some interesting insights into the usage of Internet TV sites, particularly by men. I love statistics and this article provides some interesting insights.

And while we are on the subject of interesting articles, this article provides some thought provoking material on where folks have gone "slightly less than optimally" with social networking deployments.

The Holiday Inn rapper

Trends in online retailing

So here's some recent articles that I came across (in no particular order):

• This one covers the position that TV production companies find themselves in. There is increasing interest in online video from consumers. There have been some successes with user generated content, but there are a bit hit and miss. While consumers are interested in original material, there simply isn't enough advertising revenue to pay TV production companies to produce the content. This interesting given my previous blog about advertising revenues. http://www.netimperative.com/news/2008/september/01/guest-comment-does-commercial-programming-have-a-1
• Some interesting data here on the trends in online shopping. No surprise that customer's expectations are increasing when it comes to Internet retailing. One of the major expectation is around the provision of easy to access product information. http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006568
• Continuing the riff around the power of consumer recommendations, this article contains some interesting data on the trend. When surveyed, 80% of consumers stated that reviews/recommendations played a significant part in their buying decisions. Plus sites with recommendations report 45% more traffic than those that don't. http://www.turnerinvestments.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/commentary.latest/commentary_section/Sector+Focus/CSID/387

Online advertising to outstrip TV advertising

Here's an article from today's Guardian predicting that Internet advertising will outpace TV advertising by 2010 - in the UK, this may even happen by next year.

The article goes on to discuss behavioural targeting. The issue being how it will be received by the public. Behavioural targeting is already here - the Tesco clubcard is a great example - and is happily accepted by the public. But online, it is easier to push the limits.

When did we start trusting strangers?

Came across this research report recently from Universal McCann, a communications agency. It provides some interesting data on something that I have seen repeatedly over the last 12-18 months. It is great to see this being reflected in empirical research.

Make your own adverts! The Chevy way!

Recently came across this which, although now rather dated, still made me smile. http://digital-lifestyles.info/2006/04/07/when-corporate-mashups-go-wrong-chevy-tahoe/

It just goes to show what happens when the admen put the general public in charge of producing their own adverts. In short, it wasn't quite what they intended and although the pages have been removed from the Chevy site, there are many examples to be found on YouTube. You will find an example here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SiE4FXO8nDs, but a quick search on YouTube will reveal many more.

For me, this links to a previous post on the perils of advertising on Social Networking sites. You will find the post here.

Small is the new big

I have just finished reading Seth Godin's Small is the new big and can't recommend this book enough. It is a thought provoking collection of nearly 200 short pieces originally published on his blog, but they also work exceptionally well as a book. Very easy to dip in and out of, but a great read nonetheless.

I always find it funny that some people say that digital media will kill off the paperback book. Yet I find that the more blogs I read, the more books I buy. There is about as much chance of digital media completely replacing books as the radio did for completely replacing the television.

And the fact that this book is a collection of blog entries is even more amusing!

Guerilla Gardening

This is an ad campaign run by Addidas and on the front cover of this month's Dazed. Essentially, it is instructions on how to mix a wild flower seeds with some compost and make a "seed bomb". They even attach a packet of seeds to the front cover to help you on your way.

And for the really keen among you, there is even a competition for the best judged creations. You can find more information here: http://www.dazeddigital.com/projects/grun/

Viral Marketing Videos: What makes them work?

Came across this fascinating blog entry today from Mike Laurie. It is the first time that I have seen someone try and make some of why viral videos work and why they don't. It is a great read with some thought provoking analysis.

Advertising on Social Networking Sites

I blogged on this previously. Purely because I was intrigued.

Today, I came across this quote from Martin Sorrell that goes part way to explaining what is going on here:

“Social networking is really recommendation between people about the things that they are interested in and they like… this has stimulated people’s attention in terms of the importance of PR. The people who are going on these sites didn’t want to be monetised, they didn’t want to be advertised to, so again editorial communication is so powerful, they would rather be communities that can exchange views that are untarnished.”

So what is being said here is that Social Networking sites are a mechanism for end users to provide each other with recommendations. We shouldn't underestimate this. There was a presentation at NRF (National Retail Federation) that reinforced this point. According to WSL Strategic Research, 74% of shoppers trusted the recommendations of friends or relatives. Furthermore, 40% of shoppers trusted reviews written by people who had used the product. This compares to 22% of shoppers who trusted the sales person in the store. But thank your lucky stars you are not a celebrity, only 10% of shoppers trusted their recommendations!

In similar research, Immediate Future found that 62% of shoppers trusted and used online reviews from fellow shoppers.

So, why does all this matter? Well, as social networking sites are increasing dramatically, it would appear that traditional online advertising does NOT work. If you don't believe me, take a look at these estimates from Technology Review.

Yet, ironically, 34% of bloggers admit to writing about products and brands in their blogs (according to the same report). And we know that shoppers behaviour is influenced by these views. Interesting.

The Immediate Future report on top brands in social media makes interesting reading.

Advertising on social networks

Here's an interesting article that I came across today that has some important implications for advertising on social networking sites. The article reports on a conference for the Direct Marketing Association in the US this week.

Although there is a lot of interest in online advertising and social networking sites, in particular, it states that advertisers are still struggling to impact the bottom line. This was captured well earlier this year, when Google reported disappointing earnings and Chief Financial Officer, George Reyes, said "Social networking inventory is not monetizing as well as we had expected". Interestingly, in the same announcement, Google expressed excitement about the potential of advertising on the new generation of mobile devices.

It seems that people are more interested in interacting with each than they are in reading adverts. But the article goes onto provide more of a clue to the way forward - applications. I mean software that allows people ot interact in new ways - there are a number of examples around (anyone remember "fish slapping" on Instant Messenger).

Furthermore, FedEX's "Launch a Package" application became the number 1 visited page on Facebook last month - the first time this has ever happened for an application. The advertising agency commented that this was much more successful as a Facebook app than it ever would have been as a standalone application.

This reinforces something that I have believed for a long time - the enduring value in much of this new technology is in the interaction with other users. Anyone remember playing multi-user Duke Nukem in the 90's. The value in the games wasn't the fancy graphics or gameplay, but was the social interaction between the players as they worked together to capture the other team's flag.

Trivial, childish non-sense? Maybe, but in here somewhere is a clue to the future.