Jumping the Shark

From the "hey, let's use the Intertubes" department:

"Dial Complete is launching an effort that centers on an online video contest, via YouTube, where contestants submit their most creative take on hand washing.

"The effort, dubbed 'Campaign for Clean Hands,' includes a contest (for those under 18) and Web site, Campaignforcleanhands.com -- both launching in September. The home page features games, puzzles, a hand washing chart and other interactive features used to promote the brand.

"As 2008 is an election year, Dial chose to incorporate the theme into its contest. The 'Campaign for Clean Hands' asks consumers to create a speech, song, jingle or rap touting the importance of clean hands."

C'mon. Really? A hand-washing rap posted on You Tube? This seems a bit contrived for my taste. Dial is trying too hard to be relevant.

Plus: "Dial is getting the word out through a combination of e-mail blasts, radio media tours, TV placements and merchandising vehicles at retailers. The contest, which coincides with National Clean Hand Week in September, runs for two months."

That seems like a lot of expenditures to promote a contest that centers around a viral video site.

Brand Building via Twitter?

Marketing author Andy Beal believes Twitter offers promise as a brand building tool. His tips:

1. Start conversations with notable peers.
2. Share valuable industry news.
3. Build your blog audience.
4. Stay connected at conferences and trade shows.
5. Monitor your Twitter reputation.

Blogger Dave Rosenberg isn't so sure, wondering whether brand building through Twitter is "cool or creepy." On the positive side, he writes, "There are some great users like the guys from RedMonk, who have gotten so used to Twittering everything that it's like having them in the room. And their content is interesting and funny. It's a great branding tool for them and theoretically should be for others as well." But on the negative side, he wonders if "online stream of consciousness" can really serve as a marketing tool. "Conversation or crap?" he asks.

My answer: probably a little of both. If the analysts from RedMonk can do it, why can't everyone? Well, because not everyone can do it well. There are useless tweets, useless blogs, useless web sites, etc. It's just like every other marketing tool. In the rights hands, it can start conversations. In the wrong hands, it's crap, as Rosenberg would say.

Virtual Real World

I'm not sure if reality television is real, so I'm even less clear on the reality of virtual reality television -- especially when it's not even on television. Confused? Me too.

Enter MTV UK's MTV House, a sort of Second Life Meets MTV's Real World. MTV House will contain a number of rooms where users, through their avatars, can interact with one another and with MTV characters. But unlike, Second Life, MTV House will have a decidedly marketing feel, offering advertisers the chance to reach MTV's audience through generic advertising, branding opportunities, themed 'rooms' and sponsorships.



This move certainly extends MTV's brand beyond TV, offering new opportunities for viewer interactions (and for other promotions, sponsorships, etc.). This model of branded virtual world for kids and young adults, which also includes Disney's ToonTown and Nickelodeon's Nicktropolis, is on the rise.

"The kid's space is exploding," said Sibley Verbeck, CEO of the Electric Sheep Company, a virtual worlds media and technology agency. "The non-kids space, for teens and adults, is growing quite a bit as well, and we're seeing [longer-term] projects and fewer quick hit marketing projects."

This approach is different from that taken in Second Life, for example, which existed as a game/community first, and a marketing opportunity second. While companies moved to establish a virtual presence in Second Life, not all of them lasted.

"People jumped in without a strategy or a plan; there was no quality content to tie to a brand, so user [went] in and moved on," said Christopher Sherman, executive director of Virtual Worlds Management, a media company. "Now you're going to see content tied to the brand, and high quality content coming out of Disney and Warner Bros and the CSI stuff. Just like any advertising medium you have to tie your brand to quality content."

Time will tell, but it seems that those communities with an established following in the real world (MTV, Disney, etc.) may have the best chance for success in the virtual world.

The Role of Social Media in Marketing Communications

Ford recently hired a social media czar and a five-person social media team. This follows on the heels of like efforts by Intel, Dell and Pepsi. They are not alone, according to AdWeek's Brian Morrissey. "Social-media experts are in high demand as companies attempt to figure out how to adapt how they talk to customers and even among themselves," Morrissey writes.

Social media are moving beyond an interesting niche, evolving into a "catalyst for changing how companies operate." "The biggest challenge is moving away from thinking about it as marketing and PR," said Peter Kim, a Forrester Research analyst. "It's about product development, it's about IT. It's got to cut across all functions of the company."

It's also about moving away from the top-down, "Stalin" approach to marketing, as marketer Scott Goodson calls it. Goodson calls authentic dialogues "cultural movements," which are "about curating culture and creating communities and platforms for people to circle their wagons around an idea that is relevant and important to them. A Cultural Movement is about being passionate, militant almost. It's about joining a movement that you care about."

To Goodson brands will suffer if they are not authentic: "Fakes and phonies will be found out. The consumer is now the truth junkie who never forgets, who puts two and two together."

The lesson here, even for those companies that have hired social media czars, is to be authentic and to allow organizations to evolve. Simply shoehorning social media experts into traditional marketing roles is not the answer. An ad is an ad even if it's on MySpace.

Regulating Before Regulation, Ctd.

Maybe the writing is on the wall after all:

A week after Charter Communications backpedaled on plans to implement NebuAds' controversial behavioral tracking and ad serving platform, another of the vendor's ISP partners has put on the brakes.

CenturyTel, which was among the first ISPs to test the NebuAd platform, will no longer put it into action across its whole network, as had been its plan. A spokesperson, Annmarie Sartor, said the company had not determined a definite date to flip the switch, but "we were looking at some time this summer," she said.

Now the deal is off until further notice.

Unlike Charter's statement, which cited subscribers' concerns, CenturyTel said it was motivated by the urgings of Congressmen Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, who said the technology "raises several red flags."

Regulating Before Regulation

The Interactive Advertising Bureau is working to self regulate the online marketing community before federal regulators step in. With increased scrutiny from regulators and proposed state and federal legislation regarding consumer data privacy, spyware, ISP ad targeting and other issues, the IAB is working to simultaneous self regulate and resist government mandates.

"We saw these bills coming down the pike in the states and what the FTC was doing and it just didn't look good," IAB President Randall Rothenberg told ClickZ News.

The stakes are high. Interactive advertising revenues for the first quarter of 2008 were estimated at $5.8 billion, up 18.2 percent from the first quarter of 2007. Revenues from 2007 totaled more than $21 billion.

“Millions of people are making their livings creating and operating Web venues that house well-targeted advertisements, but these entrepreneurs are being threatened by the specter of unnecessary government regulation that would destroy or severely limit their ability to advertise their wares and services online,” Rothenberg dramatically told a Congressional committee recently.

The IAB would be wise to institute strong self regulation or face the consequences. Recently, 15 privacy and consumer organizations called for a congressional investigation into television and Internet provider Charter Communications' proposed "major threat to privacy" through ISP ad targeting. (Charter has since cooled to its plan.) More such calls are sure to follow as other companies implement ISP targeting.

I wonder, though, if any self regulation would be strong enough to lessen criticism from privacy advocates in and out of Congress and the state capitols. I doubt it. Therefore, I think the IAB should pick and choose its battles. Some practices, like handling of freely given consumer data, may require a code of conduct, while others, like ISP targeting, should just go away.

South Asian Canadians

Blogger Fazal Siddiqi posted interesting findings on his blog that relate to cultural marketing and new media. Siddiqi used email, Facebook, LinkedIn and his blog to pose questions regarding the habits and preferences of South Asians. He received about 100 responses from "Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis living in Canada, the USA, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the UAE and Saudi Arabia" as well as non-Asians.

Siddiqi cites two main findings:

1. Family is a major consideration for those of South Asian origin
2. Non-Asians don't understand South Asian culture

Based upon his findings he surmises that marketing communications directed toward South Asians should utilize themes of family and family relationships and that, consequently, word-of-mouth marketing efforts should be utilized among this community. He also notes that "(p)ersonal development, professional growth, hard work, movies, cricket and spicy food were other common interests revealed by the respondents," leading him to suggest that (m)ovie theatres, cricket matches and restaurants serving spicy foods could be good touch-points with South Asians" and that "organizations offering professional and personal development services could target South Asians market segments as well to grow their sales."

He also notes that while non-Asians mentioned "rice, spices and Bollywood movies" among South Asian likes, this group did not mention the significance of family or personal relationships to South Asians. Therefore, he suggests that non-Asian marketer should utilize South Asian marketing specialists.

I find this posting interesting for a number of reasons. First, Siddiqi's use of new media tools (email, social networking sites and a blog) to gather market data is relevant. This effort strikes at the heart of the utility of digital tools to marketing: they create easy and effective methods for learning about customers. Second is the information. While more qualitative (or even anecdotal) than quantitative, it does providing an interesting snapshot into the South Asian community. In a follow-on post, Siddiqi offers hard data relating to South Asians in Canada (e.g., "South Asian Canadians spend 23% more on groceries than other households in Canada."). The combination of the hard data and the survey information could provide important insights for marketers targeting the South Asian community in Canada.

Small Business Blogging?

Ben McConnell from the well-read Church of the Customer marketing blog lists seven reasons a small business should blog. To summarize McConnell, blogs are beneficial because they:

1. Allow bloggers to "humanize" an organization
2. Function as an instant-feedback mechanism
3. Enable information sharing
4. Facilitate the spread of buzz
5. Enable simultaneous conversations
6. Offer any attractive online presence if existing web sites are lacking
7. Position the blogger/company as industry experts

These points all seem true, in general, but businesses must deal in specifics, and not all small businesses (and their markets) are built the same. First, because blogging requires time and writing skills, not all small businesses are well suited to the task. Plus, bloggers need a reason to blog. According to author Aliza Sherman Risdahl, "it can be challenging to find a legitimate reason for blogging unless the sector served has a steep learning curve (like wine), a lifestyle associated with certain products or service (like camping gear or pet products) or a social mission (like improving the environment or donating a portion of revenues to charity)."

Because of that, entrepreneur and blogger Guy Kawasaki says that not all small businesses need blogs: "If you’re a clothing manufacturer or a restaurant, blogging is probably not as high on your list as making good food or good clothes."

According to Risdahl, consultants are good candidates for blogs: “They are experts in their fields and are in the business of telling people what to do...As a consultant, blogging clearly helps you get hired. If you are selling a product, you have to be much more creative because people don’t want to read a commercial."

Blogs: "Unimaginative Failures"

Wall Street Journal blogger Ben Worthen calls most corporate blogs "unimaginative failures," noting, "Not only are these corporate blogs boring as paint, but the businesses behind admit they don’t have much value." Ouch.

The catalyst for Worthen's comments is a new study from Forrester Research. Forrester reviewed 90 blogs from Fortune 500 business-to-business companies and surveyed B2B marketers. As Worthen notes:

Forrester found that most B2B blogs are “dull, drab, and don’t stimulate discussion.” Seventy percent stuck to business or technical topics, 74% rarely get comments, and 56% simply regurgitated press releases or other already-public news. Not surprisingly, 53% of B2B marketers say that blogging has marginal significance or is irrelevant to their strategies—the rest call it somewhat or highly significant–and the number of new corporate blogs among the companies Forrester tracks has dropped from 36 in 2006 to just three in 2008.

Ouch again. The report notes that one challenge B2B companies face is selling to customers who follow their products professionally, not personally, like in consumer markets.

Forrester suggests that corporate bloggers spruce up their blogs by publishing more often, publishing regularly and injecting "personality" into posts, such as "musings from an executive, insight into how a product decision was made, something funny."

It seems like the real issue is the motivation behind blogging. If a corporate blogger is blogging simply to follow the pack, as opposed to blogging to offer something of value to an audience, then the blog is pointless. Disinterested blogging would certainly lead to flat blogs and no readers. If that's the outcome, why bother?

Localizing Online Video

While YouTube and other online video platforms allow users to upload, view and search for whatever content they wish, one company is offering a localized twist -- a video platform specific to one market, South Africa.

Brands such as FHM, Sports Illustrated, Cosmopolitan, Die Burger and Kick Off have dedicated brand channels on MyVideo.co.za, South Africa's first online video platform. The site was launched in January 2007 and targeted at South African Internet users.

"Where videos posted on YouTube are likely to get lost in a sea of clutter, MyVideo ensures that South African content is aired as the sole focus, ensuring that companies who use it are connecting with targeted internet traffic," says MyVideo marketing officer Tristan Owen.

This is an interesting development that mirrors so many other like minded communities of interest (think blogs) that have developed because of digital technologies, and which provide new opportunities for marketers. By understanding the localized needs and desires of South Africans, marketers like Sports Illustrated can push localized content on MyVideo. This even creates new opportunities for low-budget, local businesses, whose messagse may be lost in the vastness of YouTube.

As Owen notes"By developing content that is both relevant to your brand as well as topical to users, you are creating an empire of possibilities."

Medium as Message Revisited

“The most creative mobile executions these days aggressively explore the wireless device itself – what the technology does, where it does it, and how marketing messages can be integrated into our most intimate communications habits,” wrote consultant and analyst Steve Smith.

Enter the iPhone. Tom Burgess, chief executive officer of Third Screen Media, a mobile marketing technology company, called the iPhone a “beachhead for converging mobile devices. It's a music player, video player and a phone all together. There's no doubt that it is a step in the right direction for a more robust marketing medium."

Cyriac Roeding, vice president of wireless at CBS Interactive, said the iPhone could “spark a surge in mobile marketing – provided that users embrace it the same way they turned to the iPod a few years ago.”

Those are the obvious advantages from a marketer’s perspective. It’s hard not to assume the iPhone could take mobile marketing opportunities to a new level through the integration of cellular, wireless, mobile web, video, audio and storage technologies.

That said, there are also challenges for both Apple and AT&T Wireless, upon whose cellular networks iPhones operate. As consultant Alan Chapell writes, “No discussion of mobile data would be complete without a word about the mobile carriers, such as T-mobile, Verizon, and Cingular…(T)he carriers currently have enough influence over the mobile space that pretty much any new mobile marketing technique or technology will have to meet with their approval in order to succeed…The carriers know all too well that customers tend to blame them for – well – just about anything that negatively impacts their mobile experience.”

Case in point, according to an Associated Press article regarding product registration delays during the iPhone’s initial roll out, iPhone customer Timothy Johnson, “said he was happy with the iPhone and credited Apple for acknowledging the problem. But he expressed concerned about the type of service he would get from AT&T in the future.”

The iPhone case exemplifies both the opportunities, as well as the challenges, inherent in technology-driven and technology-dependent mobile marketing. Mobile marketers must be aware of how their technologies and strategies will impact, or be impacted by, device developers and mobile carriers. Importantly, they must take note of how the developers and carriers react to the praise or criticism.

Connected Customer

Around a million new mobile subscribers are brought online in India alone every month. With those new subscribers comes a similar explosion in mobile bandwidth. “Mobile and wireless services are rapidly transforming from ‘poor man’s connectivity’ with data rates well below those for fixed services to comparable in speed and quality to their fixed-line counterparts. By some projections, mobile broadband services will overtake fixed broadband services as early as 2010,” writes Johna Till Johnson.

The revolution is not limited to mobile broadband, however. Take WiMax for example. WiMax enables a wireless signal to broadcast over a 10-mile radius. These new networks, and their corresponding devices and applications, are vastly increasing the reach of mobile connectivity.

Addressing Network World magazine’s IT audience, Johnson writes that these changes mean, “executives need to stop thinking of wireless and mobile technologies as a niche — relevant for a subset of users, but a footnote in the organization’s overall strategy. Instead, they should assume that mobile connectivity will become an increasingly important piece of the technology roadmap, and plan and budget for it accordingly.”

The same could be said for mobile marketers. Better bandwidth and a larger audience open the door to new, more innovative and increasingly interactive strategies and tactics. Ultimately, any effort to leverage technology upgrades to benefit mobile marketing strategies and tactics is predicated upon an understanding of the consumer’s product desires and mobile device expectations.

Michael Becker and Michael Hanley call this consumer, the “Connected Customer.” They write that “Marketers need to better understand the Connected Customer and what Connected Customers find relevant, informative and entertaining, and how the mobile channel and the practice of mobile marketing can help them accomplish their goals.”

Research surely will be important. The challenge will be to both determine those strategies and tactics which can be transferred from the web to the higher-bandwidth mobile marketing efforts, and to invent those strategies and tactics which will emerge from the new wireless and mobile capabilities.

Marketing to Kids

Marketing to children is a contentious practice. Food marketing, in particular, has caught the eye of federal agencies, due to the rising rates of childhood obesity. Food marketers reach children through a variety of means: packaging, product placement, advergaming, licensing of children's television characters and others.

According to a joint Federal Trade Commission / Department of Health and Human Services workshop report, the food industry spent $10 billion to $12 billion in 2002 on marketing to children. Examples include:

• Paying retailers to place products at locations accessible to children.
• Including toys with food, such the toys included in McDonald’s Happy Meals.
• Linking food with popular children's characters, books, toys and clothing, such as selling a Barbie doll that wears a Jell-O t-shirt or marketing SpongeBob SquarePants-shaped Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.

A growing area, as noted in the report, is digital media, including web sites and branded video games (often integrated). These sites feature interactive games that promote food products (advergames), as well as contest, music, videos, downloadable items and more.

The report recommends a number of steps that food marketers should take to reign in marketing to children. However, since the focus is obesity prevention, the recommendations call for, for example, more nutritious food choices or creating smaller portion-sized packaging.

While these steps can help to lessen some of the impacts of marketing to children (by at least marketing better food options to children), they don't address the real underlying problem: that marketing to children is unethical. As the Center for a New American Dream notes, "New research suggests that aggressive marketing to kids contributes not only to excessive materialism, but also to a host of psychological and behavioral problems, including depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, childhood obesity, eating disorders, increased violence, and family stress."

So, while the federal efforts are a step in the right direction in pushing industry to market better products to kids, they are off track in that they still enable marketing to the wrong audience. Leave the kids alone. Let their parents deal with the pros and cons of consumerism.

Piling on Pop-Ups

Everyone hates pop-ups. Yahoo and eBay found that 95 percent of Internet users viewed pop-ups “negatively” or “very negatively.” According to the same research, 69 percent of users report using pop-up or ad-blocking software. There’s even an “official hatelisting” website called “Pop-Ups Suck!”

All well and good, but does this matter, as long as pop-ups are effective? For example, pop-ups are 13 times more effective than banner ads, according to Advertising.com. As Jim Nail of Forrester Research notes, “Everyone hates advertising, but it works.”

In my opinion, it does matter. In fact, it’s possible that the short-term gains from pop-ups may have long-term consequences that ultimately could cause their demise. The first negative consequence may be brand damage. According to Jakob Nielsen, “In a survey of 18,808 users, more than 50% reported that a pop-up ad affected their opinion of the advertiser very negatively and nearly 40% reported that it affected their opinion of the website very negatively.”

Further, writes eWeek's Kevin Zaney, “Pop-up ads hurt company brands. The Federal Trade Commission found that more than 40 percent of consumers who experienced pop-up ads believe the Web site they were on – not the pop-up advertiser – had permitted the ad to appear. Approximately one-third of consumers surveyed by the FTC said the pop-up ad would cause them to have a less favorable opinion of the Web site.”

Beyond brand damage, consumer dislike of pop-ups could lead to legal and regulatory considerations. There are already laws that prevent advertisers from engaging in deceptive practices to harvest email addresses through pop-ups. Laws also prevent advertisers from deceptively using pop-ups in an attempt to persuade consumers to purchase products that stop those same pop-ups from appearing. The federal CAN-SPAM Act, for example, regulates pop-ups that collect information.

If the consumer dislike rises to a level that spurs congressional activity, and if brands that have been burned by pop-ups fail to come to their rescue, from a lobbying perspective, it is possible that new and expanded federal legislation could impact pop-ups in the same way that do-not-call legislation has impacted telemarketing.

New Media as New Media

Last year, YouTube announced a plan to "introduce a new type of ad module, where commercial messages are introduced as an overlay on the bottom 1/5th of the screen after 15 seconds of the clip. The overlay lasts for 10 seconds, and the user can either close or just choose to ignore it.”

The ads, running at $20 per 1,000 views, will only appear on videos from the company's content partners, that is, the approximately 1,000 companies and groups that have partnered with YouTube to show copyrighted content on the site.

A smaller video sharing company called VideoEgg has enabled the use of these ads for some time. "Troy Young, VideoEgg’s chief marketing officer, said the goal was to get away from forcing users to watch an ad before showing the clip they wanted to see. Those ads are known as 'preroll' and are the most common form of online video advertising so far." VideoEgg notes that 74.3 percent of U.S. Internet users stream video online and that in-stream ads “enhance rather than disrupt the user experience.”

In-stream ads seem like a positive step, considering that preroll ads smack of the television ads that are under assault from digital video recorders (DVRs). If digital technology is helping consumers to overcome old media, as expressed by DVRs and television ads, then why would consumers suffer an old media style approach (preroll) to another digital technology (online video)?

As Catharine Taylor relates in a BrandWeek article entitled, “New Media as Old Media”: “No one in the industry wants to return to the hype of bubbles gone by, but there is an undercurrent of concern that online is trying to be more like offline (read: traditional media) just at the point when digital TV technologies are changing traditional media.”

“By the time we finish repositioning new media to be 'apples to apples' like old media, old media will have evolved to be very much like new media," said Joseph Jaffe, a marketing consultant.

The More Things Change...

Marketing websites tend to serve as gateways for other new media tools, including blogs, banner ads, pop-ups, videos, etc. While websites may serve as a gateway and coexist with other new media tools (and vice versa), are these various tools integrated effectively, so as to enable unified marketing strategies/tactics?

Focusing on the relationships between websites and blogs, as an example, JupiterResearch found that 35 percent of large companies planned to implement corporate blogs. Prior research found that 34 percent of companies already utilize blogs. The new research, therefore, found that nearly 70 percent of large corporations would utilize blogs. Other research found that 76 percent of corporations that utilize blogs reported increases in website traffic and media attention as result of their blogs. These numbers would suggest that blogs are a growing component of corporate marketing efforts and are integrated well with corporate web sites in the sense that the blogs drive traffic to the sites, which are presumably the repositories of corporate and product information.

However, JupiterResearch also found that corporate blogs are under utilized for generating word-of-mouth marketing opportunities. Only 32 percent of surveyed marketing executives said they use corporate blogs to generate word of mouth around their company's products or services. Also, Porter Novelli found that 63 percent of respondents started their blogs in order to participate in the new medium rather than to satisfy a specific need.

This would suggest a dissonance in the corporate world of blogging. On one hand, the use of blogs is growing and the blogs seem to direct traffic to corporate sites. On the other hand, many corporations fail to utilize their blogs to supplement other specific marketing activities, or fail to understand the potential of their blogs in general.

As Frederick E. Webster Jr. commented in 1996: “Simply put, there is a real and persistent danger that, caught up in the excitement and hype of a new technology, marketers will once again let attention to the short-term and tactical overwhelm consideration of the long-term and strategic. In the new world of interactive marketing, tactics often precede strategy.” It seems, more than ten years later, that there are lessons yet to be learned in the world of new media.

Two minutes?

Another interesting point regarding the emergence of online video: the videos are tailored to viewers with short attention spans. The previously mentioned USA Today article lists a few current and upcoming web-only serials (beyond the aforementioned lonelygirl15) that churn out a high number of episodes, but limit the duration of each episode.

These include Prom Queen, a horror series geared toward young adults featuring two minute videos, and Foreign Body, a series based on a forthcoming book by Robin Cook (and an example of new media marketing in its own right) featuring about 50 two- to three-minute videos, leading up to the book's Aug. 5 release.

As Brent Weinstein, founder of online film production company 60Frames.com notes,

"Online entertainment is as different from TV as TV is from film," says Weinstein, whose company aims to have 50 Web series in production by the end of the year. "When you're telling stories in two-minute bursts, it's much more like a comic strip that you come back to day after day to see what happens. Not everyone can do it, but slowly we'll figure out who the Aaron Sorkins of the Web storytelling world are."

The two-minute drill that these videos embrace is consistent with the general impression of web surfers: short attention span, limited engagement, the pursuit of instant gratification, etc. And yet, a 2007 eye tracking study from Poynter found that online news readers spend longer amounts of time consuming content than print readers.

One can only assume the difference is intent. The short video serials are geared toward a younger audience who, likely, stumble upon entertainment content or are directed to said content by peers, and who quickly move on to something else, in either case. Whereas news readers expect to spend time delving into articles (and have a great deal more options to select than print readers), since they often actively seek out news material.

It will be interesting to see if two minutes becomes the online standard in the way that television shows are divided in 30 and 60 minutes chunks (counting ads time) -- or if Hollywood-backed content providers will remain flexible in light of the medium's flexibility. Time will tell if the comic strip method prevails.

New Media for Self Promotion

Digital media have opened new doors to amateur entertainers in search of stardom. Specifically, they've enabled low-cost production and marketing of videos and short films. By leveraging video sharing sites, like You Tube, along with blogs, wikis, social sites, chat rooms and other viral-friendly media, budding directors, writers, comedians and actors have generated buzz, built a global fan base, and forced the hand of Hollywood players in search of the next big thing.

USA Today reports that, as online content becomes the calling card for talent, Hollywood agencies are trawling the web for talent and network executives are making deals with online auteurs.

Says Larry Gerbrandt, an entertainment industry media consultant: "The media companies know they will ignore this trend at their peril. The Internet is what cable TV was two decades ago. At first, the big guys balked at it. Now, they own it."

Consider the lonelygirl15 phenomenon. You Tube-posted videos of a high school girl's web confessionals (under the name "lonelygirl15") became a hit and a viral sensation as viewers and bloggers debated their authenticity. Even after the videos were unmasked as fiction, they continued as a sort of online soap opera (in brief segments). (As an interesting side note: lonelygirl15 has embarked on product placement and sponsorship deals with companies looking toward online advertising, including a deal with skin care company Neutrogena. The Neutrogena deal involves a step beyond product placement in the form of a "branded" character on the show, a "scientist" that happens to work at Neutrogena.)

As more lonelygirls turn to You Tube and blogs to hawk their wares (and there seem to be any number of one-hit wonders out there at the moment), the competition will stiffen. But for now, opportunities still remain:

An example: David Young, 25, and Joey Manderino, 23...After developing a following on websites such as CollegeHumor.com and YouTube, the duo was signed by (entertainment agency) CAA. The result: Besides a deal with Warner Bros, the two are writing a comedy pilot for TBS with the support of fellow CAA clients Mitch Hurwitz (Arrested Development) and Eric and Kim Tannenbaum (Two and a Half Men).

Behavioral targeting in the spotlight

The Federal Trade Commission is reviewing behavioral targeting, the practice of sending ads to Internet users based upon their online habits. While proponents claim that such anonymous targeting protects free web content (and drives ad revenue, since advertisers pay more for personalized audiences), opponents believe that tracking online reading habits, search engine queries and shopping patterns opens the door for unscrupulous marketers to track individuals.

"It is not anonymous if the companies are tracking the same user over time," said Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology. Of particular concern are the cumulative effects of tracking across multiple sites over prolonged periods of time -- activities that decrease anonymity, according to opponents.

While ethical considerations are the first and most prominent criticism of behavioral targeting, they are not the only considerations. The Newspaper Association of America has expressed concern that the FTC's proposed voluntary rules allowing users to opt out of tracking may violate the First Amendment. The association claims that if users don't want to be tracked, they can avoid certain sites.

An interesting critique of behavioral targeting is raised by Jack Jia. Ethics aside, Jia questions whether the practice is effective:

"Beyond privacy concerns, there are accuracy and quality issues with BT that all marketers may not be aware of. Traditional BT struggles precisely because it tries to discern what I want now based on my past behaviors...This is the pitfall of profiles. In a given month, an individual will have thousands of roles. Knowing my past is not necessarily a better way to predict my future. In fact, this phenomenon has been known by psychologists and other scientists for years - humans are animals of context and situations, much less so of our historical profiles or roles."

Jia suggests that the user's intent, such as ads posted on current Google searches, is more relevant than a past profile.

With government regulation hanging over the heads of marketers, it may be time to reevaluate behavioral targeting. Can marketers reap the benefits from a neutered targeted, where opt out mandates are strengthened? Could intent-based advertising, as Jia proposes, fill the void?
Whatever the outcome of the FTC rules, or the implications of Jia's critique, the onus is on marketers to use data more wisely to avoid the pitfalls of overreach and wrong assumptions, respectively.

New Media are the Message

“Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time.” -- Bill Gates, Founder, Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft is as good a starting point as any in our study of new media as marketing communications tools, considering the company's symbolic and ubiquitous role in the consumer and business technology landscapes. In January 1975, the Altair 8800 microcomputer, a computer kit geared for electronics hobbyists, appeared on the cover of Popular Electronics.



In response, soon-to-be Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates developed and licensed an interpreter for the BASIC programming language that could be run on the Altair. The interpreter was stored on a tape that the Altair could read.



Flash forward to May 2008. Microsoft unveils Touchwall, a large touch screen display panel that includes the use of laser and infrared technology.



"We think it's time to amend our slogan of 'A computer on every desk,' because with this, we want a computer in every desk,"Gates said recently. In 30 years, Microsoft's technologies evolved from algorithms punched into paper rolls to virtual touch screens and embedded digital technologies.

How does this relate to new media? New media are not only byproducts of this technology revolution, but components of it. New media are innovations in their own right.

Consider, for instance, newspaper ads and blogs. Ads exist, and have always existed, as marketing and promotional tools, while blogs are intent and content driven -- and may have nothing to do with persuasion. And yet, digital media like blogs are rewriting the rules of marketing communications.

As society becomes increasingly segmented and distributed (in large part thanks to digital technologies), media become increasingly segmented and distributed as well. The most effective message is ultimately the most personalized, and digital technologies enable this personalization as never before. Forty years later, Marshall McLuhan is still right: the medium is the message.