Chip Griffin: Pardon the Disruption

Shel Israel and Josh Bernoff are Both Right -- And Wrong

Purist versus corporatist. That's what Shel Israel and Josh Bernoff are arguing about right now. Josh says that neither side will prevail, but rather some hybrid of the two will result.

So it is no sin to conceive, create, and deploy a corporate social application. If you have a clear objective and can measure it, you are even likely to succeed. Just recognize that you must start from authenticity, it's a dialogue, and that the social world cannot be controlled. The companies I work with are starting to do this. It's not impossible -- in fact, it's the beginning of an incredible transformation. And their participation won't kill the groundswell, it will make it richer.

Likely so, though I think he overlooks the most compelling reason which I will discuss below. But my friend Shel disagrees:

If his implication is that corporations can treat social media as another traditional brand extender, as another place to push messages into the foreheads of people who do not want them, I agree that companies are free to try.

But I think it's bad advice. It just will not work. It's not about purism. It's about pragmatism. 

And he's right, too ... except only as it applies to people like us. What all of us who effectively act as social media evangelists must understand is we are not normal. An absurdly small minority of the American public has any desire to join in the "naked conversations" popularized by Shel and Robert Scoble.

That doesn't mean that authenticity and listening aren't important. Clearly they are. But a significant portion of consumers are just fine with marketing. They may say they dislike it, just as they say they hate "negative" political advertising, but the bottom line is that both work. And that isn't going to change anytime soon.

Look beyond your immediate circle and find out how many people you know regularly participate in the "conversation" by posting reviews, commenting on blogs, or creating social media themselves. It just isn't that large a number. What we all create will certainly be read by a number of people, but it is likely that corporate marketing messages will continue to be seen by more people for the foreseeable future.

Think about your own activities. Do you turn to social media before buying cereal or shampoo or clothing? Or are you more likely to respond to advertising and other corporate messaging? Chances are, you respond to marketing yourself on a daily basis, perhaps without even knowing it.

And despite the distaste so many proclaim for TV advertising and the proclamations that the medium is dead thanks to Tivo and other DVR's, the fact is that we all still hear and often discuss advertising marketing messages. They still seep through.

Companies should continue to take social media seriously, however, because those who have chosen to join the conversation are likely to be more vocal and cultivate an important audience for or against a product. But the significance of these conversations are still at their very earliest stages. Despite widespread dissatisfaction with Wal-Mart and its policies online, millions of people still shop there and the company remains successful. Strong disapproval of Target's approach to bloggers brought some calls to boycott the company, but I don't see the lines getting any shorter there. When I used to frequent woodworking message boards, there was great disdain for Home Depot (referred to frequently as the BORG -- big organge retail giant) yet it, too, keeps on selling to the vast majority of consumers.

For smaller brands, the impact can be more immediate. Certainly in my own companies I have seen the value of participating in the social media conversation. And the significance will likely grow over time, even for the larger brands. But ultimately there will still remain a place for more controlled marketing.

The RSS Kool Aid is Great, but Don't Forget Email

Those of us who consume the social media Kool Aid think that RSS is where it's all at.  According to Google: "From your 267 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 11,381 items, starred 60 items, and shared 167 items."  And all of this is possible because of the wonders of RSS.  I am effortlessly able to receive and organize all of this information and digest it in a reasonable time.  It would be much harder to do this by email and impossible to do it by surfing to web sites.

But many of us must remember that we live inside a bubble.  Not one that's going to burst like that Internet economic one did in 2000, but one that sometimes prevents us from understanding the rest of the world.  This is a point I harp on -- partially to keep myself grounded but also because I see far too many people in the Web 2.0 space overlooking the fact that not everyone is like us.

This point was driven home solidly this week when I read the results of Rafat Ali's PaidContent survey of readers.  Below is the breakdown for how people consume the site's information, according to the survey:

E-mail newsletter: 42%
Paidcontent.org website: 34%
RSS Reader: 19%
Mobile Device: 4%

Three-quarters of those who read PaidContent's excellent news and information do so by very traditional means -- email and web site.  Less than 25 percent use more cutting edge tools like RSS or mobile devices.  And this isn't the New York Times we're talking about, but rather one of the leading blogs in the technology and media industry. 

So don't turn a blind eye toward email.  RSS is great, but email remains vital.

Technorati tags: RSS, feeds, email, marketing, subscriptions, blogging, Rafat Ali, PaidContent, survey, research, Google Reader

Drobo Takes Off - Yet Another Example of Buzz at Work

I had never heard any talk of a hard drive storage solution called Drobo until today.  And suddenly it seems to be everywhere.  Sal Cangeloso offers a good rundown of the story. 

I'm in the market for something like this right now since I can't help myself as far as doing podcasts goes.  Plus I'm experimenting with some video and still photography stuff at the moment, mostly to learn, but who knows where it may lead?  All of this takes a ton of disk space.  So the story appealed to me.

But it also shows yet again how quickly stories can take off in the blogosphere and how much we all can act as an echo chamber for each other from time to time.

Technorati tags: Drobo, Sal Cangeloso, buzz marketing

Doing Second Life Right

Mitch Joel offers up a post today on examples of some marketers he thinks are doing Second Life right.  He sees a shift from the "build it and they will come" philosophy to one in which companies seek to engage consumers in the Second Life experience through contests and other activities.

In the past couple of weeks it would seem like Marketers are starting to understand the power of marketing in Second Life and other virtual worlds. My main contention with previous Second Life marketing initiatives was that brands were entering the Metaverse, buying islands and were then “open for business.” It became apparent – quickly – that the Field Of Dreams model of, “build it and they will come” was not the ideal execution. We’ve seen countless islands that are now abandoned and seem more appropriate for a Discovery Channel documentary on lost civilizations then in the still-buzzing hype of Second Life.

Singled out for credit are Coke's Virtual Thirst campaign being run by crayon and an avatar creation contest by fashion company Lacoste.

Mitch concludes:

Both examples seem simple enough… and that’s the point. Second Life is complicated enough, so the big Marketing lesson is to leverage the Second Life community, make it easy to enter and fun to win. It also helps that both of these examples enable non-Second Life residents to take part and get interested. This has remarkable strategic by-products: it may well be that what Lacoste and Coke are doing in Second Life will stimulate people who never would have entered the Metaverse to take a look, and – hopefully – try out virtual worlds.

Second Life marketing is coming of age… and this is just the beginning.

I'm still not convinced about Second Life as a marketing vehicle.  I do participate in the weekly Coffee with Crayon event where about 30 online marketers get together inside Second Life to chat about issues of the day.  And I do feel like I get value out of it.  But it also feels a bit clunky to me and I can already sense the novelty of commenting on the style and appearance of others' avatars is wearing thin.  In many respects, I feel like I've turned the clock back 10 years to when I used to organize online chats. 

Perhaps what concerns me most is that there seems to be relatively little discussion of outcomes.  I believe that Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson did touch briefly on the ROI potential of Virtual Thirst on a recent episode of For Immediate Release, but in general I think companies need to do a better job of thinking through what they want to accomplish by participating in Second Life and then subsequently monitoring and measuring to see if those goals -- whatever they may be -- are being achieved.

Technorati tags: Mitch Joel, Second Life, ROI, crayon, Virtual Thirst, Lacoste, Shel Holtz, Nevill Hobson, For Immediate Release, virtual worlds

You Can't Really Know It If You Don't Do It

Some great advice from Charlie O'Donnell:

I think marketing & PR firms, VC firms, anyone who has any kind of business interest whatsover in social media needs to mandate that the decision makers on your staff, right on up to the top, all "walk the floor".   Maybe Fridays should be "social media days" where the whole office plays in MySpace, Second Life, blogs, plays World of Warcraft, Twitters, etc...   Like Google's 20% time.  Take some Flickr photos, poke some people in Facebook...   

I'm not sure an entire day every week is required -- I think that depends on precisely how social media fits into your company and job.  But I do believe it needs to be a significant investment by everyone involved.  More important, it shouldn't be mandatory.  If employees aren't interested in social media and inclined to use it of their own volition, they may not be the best fit for a social media-focused company or job position.

This is the same reason why most managers and coaches are ex-baseball players.  It's hard to coach a team if you haven't been there yourself.

(via Brian Oberkirch)

Technorati tags: socia media, employees, employee training, Charlie O'Donnell, Brian Oberkirch

A New Kind of Book Promotion

At the behest of Bryan Person, I attended a social media meetup last night in Boston in promotion of the book "The Strategy Paradox" by Michael Raynor of Deloitte Consulting.  Organized by Eli Singer out of Toronto, it offered a whole new way to promote a book.  It wasn't a typical book event where the author stands up and spouts on about (or worse, reads from) the book.  Rather the focus was on social interaction among the attendees and with the author.

Everyone in attendance got a book and was encouraged to talk with each other.  The interaction was partly about the book and partly about meeting new people or reconnecting with old friends.  But for the 30 or so people who came, there's little doubt that everyone had a thought or two about the book itself.

The author, Michael Raynor, did get up to speak about an hour into the event, but it was for only about 5 minutes.  And rather than having everyone subjected to the Q&A (which at most such events often ends up being more about the questions than the answers -- for some reason far too many attendees like to hear themselves talk), the focus was on having people approach the author for more discussion afterward.

Hopefully others will try similar events to promote their books to bloggers and podcasters.  It was a very pleasant environment to learn more about this book. 

My primary suggestion for improvement would be that organizers should do a better job of educating attendees about the book in advance.  I didn't feel I was prepared enough to do an intelligent podcast interview, so I will wait until I have read the book and am able to do a meaningful Q&A by phone instead.

I suggested to the organizers at the end of the event that in the future they consider distributing a short book summary -- something like a Cliff's notes or a Executive Book Summary style report that would help prepare the bloggers and podcasters in attendance.

Overall, though, a very successful event and certainly one that opened my eyes to this book.  I might have read it and reviewed it even without this event, but now I am much more likely to do so.

And as a bonus, I got to meet a lot of interesting people and learned a good deal.

UPDATE: Paul Gillin and Bryan Person have both posted their own views of the event.  Paul says he's going to keep it in mind when he starts promoting his own book shortly.  He also made the interesting point that a significant number of attendees were self-employed.  Bryan will also be covering this in an upcoming episode of his NewCommRoad podcast.

Technorati tags: Strategy Paradox, Michael Raynor, Eli Singer, Bryan Person, BryPer, books, Deloitte, social media, marketing, book promotion

Build It And They Will Come vs. Sell, Sell, Sell

OK, that's not really a fair way to characterize it.  But Ian Muir, one of the developers at CustomScoop, poses an interesting question and starts a thoughtful dialogue:

What’s more important; making money or making good software?

In the comments, I argue that it isn't really an either/or question:

Sales and product are very much interdependent. You simply cannot have one without the other. Even the best salesperson can’t acquire — and as important, keep — clients if a product stinks. And no matter how good a product you create, there are precious few examples where companies have successfully followed the Field of Dreams style “build it and they will come” philosophy.

But there's a lot more to the discussion, so I encourage you to check it out and leave your thoughts over on Ian's blog.  Since I blog about the interesection of marketing/PR and technology/innovation, I find it to be an especially intersting topic, and I think you will too.

Technorati tags: Ian Muir, CustomScoop, sales, product development, marketing, management

Rackspace Goes the Extra Mile -- Actually 2,086 of Them -- For Customer Service

I started using Rackspace back in 2000.  At the time, they were basically a startup managed hosting company.  Today, they are an industry leader.  Over the years, virtually every company I have been involved with as a founder, investor or consultant has used them.

Throughout that time, they have always gone the extra mile for customer service.  But they impressed me -- and I know the tech team at CustomScoop -- when they came for an on-site visit.  That's 2,086 miles from San Antonio, TX to Concord, NH. 

Now, I know that they were in the area for other meetings.  And I realize we're a decent-sized customer, though I doubt anywhere near their largest.  The fact that they sent two people for several hours was a great gesture that I know was appreciated.

One of the members of the CustomScoop tech team, Ian Muir, blogged about the experience and the importance of connecting with customers generally:

Most companies may send an occasional e-mail or make a monthly phone call, but there are a few that really go the extra mile. This meeting is just one example of how Rackspace has exemplified good customer service. We’re always working with the same team and their support is always prompt and helpful. They also take measures like these meetings to stay connected and make sure that our needs are met proactively.

I don't mean for this post to sound like an ad for Rackspace, but if it does, so be it.  They've been great to us over the years, and I wanted to take this opportunity to offer them a tip of my cowboy hat to them.  (The hat, after all, was a gift during a Rackspace customer appreciation event I attended in San Antonio years ago.)

I can only hope that our customers feel as strongly about us as I do about Rackspace.

NON-DISCLOSURE: I don't get compensated by Rackspace in any way.  In fact, my companies pay them a tidy sum of money each month. 

Technorati tags: Rackspace, customer service, Ian Muir, CustomScoop

A $30 Million Problem

I promise to leave the JetBlue thing alone after this.  Probably.  I've already whacked them and praised them.  And now I'm simply sharing what Bulldog Reporter says:

The chief executive of JetBlue Airways said this week that reimbursing passengers stuck on about 1,000 delayed flights and updating its operations to prevent further problems could cost the airline $30 million or more, MSNBC reports.

"It's going to be very expensive," CEO David Neeleman said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show. "I don't have the final number, but it's going to be maybe $20 million or $30 million and maybe a little bit higher."

This clearly demonstrates the importance of solid and timely crisis communications.

Technorati tags: JetBlue, crisis, crisis communications, Bulldog Reporter

JetBlue Turning It Around

What a difference a day makes.  Yesterday, I had JetBlue up against the ropes.  Like a prize fighter, under the leadership of David Neeleman, they are fighting their way back to the center of the ring.

Brad Feld point early in the day to a New York Times article:

In this article, Neeleman shows he is very aware how badly JetBlue has screwed up dealing with this situation.  The article states “Mr. Neeleman said he would enact what he called a customer bill of rights that would financially penalize JetBlue — and reward passengers — for any repeat of the current upheaval. He said he would propose a plan to pay customers, after some amount of time, by the hour for being stranded on a plane.”

In addition to finally speaking up, Neeleman is quoted as saying “I can flap my lips all I want. Talk is cheap. Watch us.”

Shel Holz praises the company for effectively saying "I'm sorry" and notes it is one of the hardest things for companies to say (for legal and other reasons).  More Shel:

A typical corporate response would have said, “JetBlue regretss any inconvenience the storm in New York may have caused passengers.”

What the spokesperson said was that JetBlue apologizes, adding, “What happened last Wednesday was totally unacceptable.”

Totally. How human.

The other Shel, Shel Israel, also weighed in generally favorably.  He says, "JetBlue may not blog, but it is transparent."  He also lauds Neeleman for overcoming likely pressure from the lawyers and speaking clearly.  Note also what he says about blogs:

This is transparency and it is a case study for how a CEO can use it. Using a blog would have been a better communications tool, but I think it's important to remember that like a hammer, a blog is just a tool.

JetBlue has sinned, it has suffered and it has repented.  The guy at the top probably ignored a whole bevy of lawyers telling him not to admit any kind of culpability. He says they'll do better and next time the suffering passengers will be compensated.

The point about a blog being a tool and not an end in itself is one that I like seeing made in the blogosphere.  I sometimes think we bloggers take our medium a little too seriously sometimes and are too quick to dismiss those who don't blog.

In any event, kudos to David Neeleman for providing the necessary leadership to again put JetBlue in a favorable light.  Though I have never been able to fly the airline (my routes tend to take me on USAir most often and Manchester, NH is not served by JetBlue), I am hopeful that their promised passenger bill of rights will eventually spill over to competitors.  As someone who takes nearly 100 flights a year, anything that can improve service and reliability would be welcome.

Technorati tags: Brad Feld, Shel Holz, Shel Israel, JetBlue, David Neeleman

JetBlue Hurting Badly

A snowstorm in the Northeast last week could prove extraordinarily costly for JetBlue.  Accustomed to positive press coverage, the company has been besieged by a multimedia attack from customers and reporters alike. 

First there was the plane stuck on the tarmac for 10 hours while passengers suffered.  Now, the airline has been forced to cancel about a quarter of its weekend flights to try to get back on schedule.

All Saturday and Sunday flights on JetBlue were canceled in and out of 11 airports: Richmond, Va.; Pittsburgh; Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham, N.C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Austin and Houston, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Nashville; Portland, Me.; and Bermuda.

As of 6 p.m., about 170 flights had been called off, out of about 600 scheduled for the weekend.

Paul Kedrosky has it right when he says this could have a long-term business and stock impact:

The inmates are running the asylum at JetBlue, with passengers now flipping out pre-boarding at the least sign of a possible delay. As an investment aside, this story has now crossed over from human interest to investment, with there being a large and growing number of people who will not fly JetBlue, and a long list of others who'll try to avoid it.

Once again we are reminded that how companies handle a crisis can make a big difference with customer perception of the brand.  People expect snowstorms to cause problems for airlines; they don't expect to be trapped on planes, receive conflicting information, and see effects for days after the weather has cleared.

Technorati tags: JetBlue, snowstorm, Paul Kedrosky

 

The Difference Between Sales and Marketing

I was talking with Steve Bracy at CustomScoop today who -- among many other things -- oversees our sales and marketing efforts.  We were talking about that very subject when he said to me, "What do you think the difference between sales and marketing is?"  As is frequently the case, my mental ramblings had made me seem very confused and contradicting myself.  So I like to think of this as Steve throwing me a lifeline to rescue myself and see the error of my ways.

Here's what I settled on: both are designed to increase sales, but marketing is lead generation done through mass communication while sales is typically one-on-one communication with the same goal. 

I honestly don't know what the "experts" would say about that definition.  I know that as a founder and CEO, my main interest is in growing revenue through our sales and marketing programs.  In my more excitable moments, I will boil marketing down to "Names! Names! Names!" (as in get us more names to sell to) and sales becomes, appropriately enough "Sales! Sales! Sales!"

The one area of marketing that I have generally been skeptical of throughout my business life is branding.  Until recently, I would visibly cringe and recoil at the word.  Steve and our marketing manager, Sara Adams, learned to omit the word from documents and presentations. 

To me "branding" was just a codeword for "marketing that can't be measured."  I've softened a bit in recent months and now I am willing to hear -- and even use -- the word.  But I still have a bias for direct marketing activities that are designed to lead to sales.

Technorati tags: sales, marketing, branding

Domain Name Warfare

As presidential campaigns heat up in this age of the Internet, one expects to see the candidates get knocked for failing to buy up enough domain names to guard against the opportunists and creeps who use misspellings or derogatory combinations of the candidate's name to create spoof or attack sites.  BL Ochman slams the Giuliani campaign for failing to register RudyGuiliani.com, which apparently instead was registered a year ago by a teenager.

In her typical style, she concludes:

The Giuliani campaign bozos are not alone. Plenty of corporations still don't buy misspellings of their own names, their exec's names, their company names. Do you own your name?

The question for me is, to what extent should candidates, companies, and brands go to buy up domain names that could be used against them? 

I have long argued to clients and others who have sought my advice that trying to buy up a laundry list of domain names is a waste of time and money.  Those who will attack or spoof you will find a way to do it.  People can mistype names in so many different ways that trying to anticipate every combination makes no sense. 

Frankly, you also have to give web visitors more credit.  If you are typing in a domain name directly, you know what you want.  If you have a typo and end up somewhere else, you'll chuckle and then move on.

As BL notes, it isn't limited merely to campaigns. Companies must make the same decisions.  And my advice to them would be the same.  Don't get yourself wrapped in knots trying to capture every possible combination.  Certainly if you are aware of especially common typos and the domain is available, it wouldn't hurt to buy it.  But I would wager that relatively few people type in domain names by hand to find a web site for the first time. With my own companies and clients I have seen that a stunning number of people will actually type the domain name itself into a search engine rather than the address bar.  (For the record, if you do that in Google with RudyGuiliani.com it comes up not with the site itself but blog posts about the spoof.)

I wonder if BL will register WhatNextBlog.com since she doesn't own that misspelling of her blog's name despite a number of citations on the web that reference that incorrectly instead of WhatsNextBlog.com.  I wouldn't advise it, but would she?

Technorati tags: domain name warfare, bl ochman

Cell Phone Advertising About to Take Off?

New York Times reports today on the future of cell phone advertising.  It notes that a number of companies and carriers are exploring how best to do advertising in this medium where the providers already know a fair bit about their customers.  The article is generally thin on details, but it certainly provokes my thinking.

Of course, advertising on the cell phone has already begun.  I know that I have received SMS ads from my carrier about their own products and services, but apparently Yahoo is in the game too and plans to make it a bigger, more coordinated market.

Yahoo, for instance, began displaying ads Sunday on sites accessible to subscribers with advanced cellphones in 19 countries. Mobile phone users with data as well as voice subscriptions would see the ads when going to Yahoo’s home Web page on their phones. They could then click on an ad to dial a company directly or to get more information and special offers.

Of course, this sort of advertising isn't without serious challenges.  The industry typically fails to play nice with each other with carriers doing their best to erect closed systems with proprietary hardware and serious software and third party service restrictions.  And then there is the third rail of innovation these days: privacy.

People in the industry say they know that the personalized nature of cellphones is a double-edged sword: it is what makes the medium appealing to advertisers, but many people consider the medium too personal to be invaded by outside interests.

Overcoming these concerns will be important, but I believe attainable.  People will resist initially, but eventually cell phone advertising will become an accepted fact.  When advertising first started showing up in move theaters, people complained about being subjected to ads after paying for their seat.  But now we accept it.  Sports teams and leagues were criticized for naming stadiums or bowl games for advertisers, but eventually that too became second nature.

Tamar Weinberg thinks these developments are good for Yahoo and provides an opportunity for that company in its ongoing competition with Google.  Although I don't know a lot of the details on Yahoo's initial foray here, I would agree it seems promising. 

Expect to hear a lot more about cell phone advertising over the course of this year.

Technorati tags: cell phone advertising, cell phone, advertising, yahoo, tamar weinberg, privacy

Podcasting Ad Revenue to Grow, Still be Small Piece of Pie

MediaWeek reports on an eMarketer study that predicts that

... podcasting advertising will quintuple over the next five years, from a paltry $80 million base in 2006 to a $400 million market in 2011. (Granted, this is still on the small side, considering the $20 billion interactive ad market expected this year.)

Muhammed Saleem over at 901am seems pleased.  He writes

Every once in a while someone accidentally runs into a magic lamp and a guru pops up telling us that Podcasting has already had its 15 minutes and is a fad that is ready to pass.

In spite of that, Podcasting has managed to stay relatively hot ...

Still I don't believe $400 million in total market is likely to lure too many big players to the table.  Of course, if they came they might help juice that number substantially through providing more mainstream content to lure in average iPod users who probably don't even know what a podcast is.

And I guess while I'm at it, I should note my general skepticism toward these types of market predictions, especially in extremely young markets like podcasting.  I realize analysts do it in all sorts of sectors, but it is still more art than science.  In larger, established industries, at least one can make educated guesses by assessing past performance and looking at key economic indicators and forecasts.  But in podcasting, I have believe it is much more of a crapshoot.

Mark Evans makes a similar point when he blogs:

Riddle me this: in a new report, eMarketer expects podcast advertising (aka pod-vertising) to grow to $400-million by 2011 from $80-million in 2006. Sure, it’s a drop in the overall bucket but $400-million will still be more a bigger market than blog-vertising, which is expected to be about $300-million in 2010, according to PQ Media.

Todd Cochcrane is also skeptical and writes over at Geek News Central that "While I would love to see 400 Million dropped annually into the space, the podcasting listening and producing community is going to have to get a lot bigger."

Finally, Frederic over at The Last Podcast says that podcasting is harder than blogging and the barriers to entry are higher because of all the production effort.  In addition:

Advertisers would need to be able to produce good, radio-style ads to make a mark on a podcast and podcasters will want those ads to at least match their own production values so that there is no cringeworthy ad that will turn listeners off. Besides, when hiring a production company for the spot, the costs suddenly rise exponentially when compared to just writing five lines for an AdWords campaign.

I disagree with this assessment.  I think the obstacle to podcasting revenue growth is not the production effort of creating podcasts (it's actually pretty simple to get something of AM radio quality).  And it isn't the challenge for advertisers to create ads (listen to the local radio, there are all sorts of low-cost ads being produced, for better or for worse). 

To me, the challenge is audience.  There isn't a large enough one right now.  Podcasting needs to become more mainstream, as does blogging, in order to realize truly significant advertising revenues.  Niche advertising is great, but the value of blogs and podcasts -- for the most part, there are certainly exceptions -- lies in the indirect revenue they can generate by improving the reputation of the content producers, rather than as a lucrative direct revenue generator.

Technorati tags: podcast, blog, emarketer, mediaweek, the last podcast, todd cochrane, 901am, muhammed saleem, advertising, mark evans

Responsibility for Unintended Consequences

"What is the responsibility of a marketer to understand the potential effects of the campaign?"  That's the question Susan Getgood poses.  She, of course, is referring to the now infamous Boston Bomb Scare last week. 

Susan raises an interesting point:

if the goal was to reach out to the natural audience for the show, those that already recognized the character, then the logical place to put the devices would have been colleges, universities and so forth.

Not I-93. Yet, the agency specified just those sort of places -- overpasses, bridges and the like. Why? Was it simply because those were visible spots, or did they perhaps have a clue of what MIGHT happen if a device was placed on a key and highly visible piece of transportation infrastructure? Or were they just stupid? We will never know for certain.

Katie Paine also has concerns about the guerilla marketing firm involved, but believes that Interference could still profit from the mess:

PR classes around the world have a great new case study to debate.  In my mind, the only figure in this saga that may still have egg on its face is Interference, the marketing firm that cooked up the lame brained scheme in the first place. On the other hand if the Aqua Teen movie breaks box office records, their phones will probably be ringing off the hook.

For John Cass, the answer may lie in tougher and better enforced ethics codes:

I think that any marketer should work within an ethical framework, their own conscience, the laws of the state they live within, and if you are a member of various marketing related associations, the ethics code of the association ... perhaps there should be consequences for companies that overstep legal bounds within the marketing community; we’d do that by suspending the companies involved in any national marketing associations they are involved with.

CustomScoop's Sarah Wurrey asks on our company blog whether this might not lead to copycats following the adage "there's no such thing as bad publicity."

One must wonder then whether there is a marketing exec somewhere turning secret cartwheels over this gaffe, even as they issue public apologies—and if other companies will make bungled attempts to imitate this sort of accidental publicity with stunts of their own.

Ultimately, every marketing firm and the companies that employ them must make their own determinations as to the level of risk they are willing to undertake, especially when it comes to guerrilla marketing campaigns.  By its very nature, this type of marketing will carry some risk.  And companies can't always foresee every possible unintended consequence.

Personally, I'm skeptical of ethics codes for professional associations and how much good they really do.  John Cass cited the Edelman 90 day suspension from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association last year as an example of the kind of thing that may curb questionable behavior.  But I wonder how much that would really factor in to any account exec's thinking at Edelman.  My guess is they fear their bosses more than WOMMA.  And Edelman isn't going to lose any business if it were out of WOMMA altogether.  That's not to say we shouldn't have ethics codes and firms shouldn't be urged to adhere to them, with consequences when they don't, but at they generally end up being fairly ineffective at behavior modification.

As usually happens, market forces will likely decide whether Interference went far or Boston overreacted.  Clients will vote with their marketing budgets by deciding whether to use that firm in the future.

Technorati tags: Boston bomb scare, Interference, guerilla marketing, John Cass, Katie Paine, Susan Getgood, Sarah Wurrey, WOMMA, ethics, marketing

Reading from a Marketing Fire Hose

A few weeks ago Todd And released the "Power 150" -- 150 top marketing blogs, as determined by a formula that combined several measures, including Google PageRank, Technorati Links, Bloglines subscribers, and Todd And's own subjective rating.  I didn't quite make the 150 list -- just eked out position number 173 to make the "near miss" list (that goes all the way to ... 175).

Alas, it's still a great list.  But what makes it even better is that there is now a "river of news" feed available for the list that enables you to subscribe to all the posts from all 175 blogs.  That's a great resource for discovering content you might otherwise overlook.

I've added it to my feed reader and have already found a number of interesting posts.

Technorati tags: ToddAnd, Todd And, Power150, Power 150, marketing blogs, marketing

How PayPerPost Did It

Duncan Riley offers a great look at how PayPerPost has marketed itself and become a name brand among bloggers in a very short period of time.  It's a great read and definitely food for thought.  I suspect that others may adopt a similar marketing strategy based on the clear success it has had for PayPerPost.  Perhaps the cornerstone of it all?  "Remember that there is NO such thing as bad publicity."

Technorati tags: PayPerPost, Duncan Riley, marketing