FRANKthoughts

Next week I’ve been invited to run my user centric workshop (2001 views) at the Marketing2.0 and beyond conference in Sydney. It’s the second time I’m running this workshop so I have a few new things to talk about. Should be interesting. If you’re in the area twitt to say hello and maybe we can catch up for a drink. (Thanks to woordenaar for the great photo under creative commons)

Apparently web start ups are sooo hot right now, Hollywood actors are making a career move and taking over (thanks Dave). One of these actors is Ashton Kutcher with his “interactive video site” Blahgirls.com. I couldn’t really see how this site is an “interactive video site” and not a celebrity gossip blog with a social community element for 12 year old girls. Isn’t the entire web “interactive”? and the fact you have 2 videos on a page doesn’t make the entire site a “video site”. Moving on, the content is exactly what every LA girl needs, celebrating shallowness with sex references and pimp language . Learning from Ashton, the coolest thing you can call a tween girl is “whore”. I presume that “slut” and “bitch” will follow soon, maybe with some head job instructions. Ok, I’m trying not to be old and prudish but blahgirls smells like the “Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset” Paris Hilton SouthPark episode. Thanks Kutcher for making this episode a reality.

Gary Vaynerchuk has a long history with webtv. His winelibrary.tv got him into shows like Conan O’brien and Nightline. He was mentioned in USA today but still thinks there is a massive gap between what can be done online and the mainstream take up. Watch his reaction here. If you’re a brand manager please take notice. Brands will have their own channels online. Some will have their own content team.  Some will find other solutions. But every single brand will have to go there sooner or later. Here’s how TubeMogul is thinking about the future linking brands and content creators: TubeMogul marketplace.

On Sunday 31.08.08 myself and a million other runners in 25 countries participated in a 10k run organised by NIKE+. NIKE+ started with a product - A small chip in your shoe that talks to your ipod nano, tracking your distance, time, pace and calories burned. The product led itself to a community of runners with NIKE offers support, tools and coaching.

Nike plus is a business/product/marketing solution that proves you can achieve great results with an holistic cross business approach. NIKE is so good at that, building an experience that extends marketing buzz words, leaving you searching for new ones to describe it. All elements work seamlessly together supporting one strong mantra: help the participants kick ass.

This is how I felt and my feelings, memories and experience were brought to me by NIKE. How strong is this bond? Wondering how this whole thing came to life (going back to some behind the scenes boardroom) I find it hard to believe it started from a strategy line like: “we want to sell more shoes”. I believe the single thought that started this project was more in the line of: “how can we make our users happy?”. Nike proves that putting your users in front of the bottom line will pay dividends.

Being part of the human race made me think again about the power of brands.

This time Nike pulled off the world’s biggest race. What will they just do next? Here is one answer:

Ever wondered where FRANk was located?  Find us here!

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1+grattan+street,+prahran&sll=-37.814531,144.954085&sspn=0.010612,0.021672&layer=c&ie=UTF8&ll=-37.84524,144.991164&spn=0.010607,0.021672&z=16&cbll=-37.848878,144.991133&panoid=kd9lLbYhqgawV-btSRWODg&cbp=1,312.3458099258366,,0,-19.163987138263668

We’re on Level 2 (with the balcony) of the grey building.

Social media is sometime described as the magic solution. Simply get a facebook profile/blog template/twitter account, start talking and voila - your target audience is now talking with you and about you, commenting, sharing and providing you with endless amounts of free word of mouth.

Hmm… it’s actually a bit more complicated then that. “The social media fallacy” is a new video presentation from David Spark (spark media). It shows the right way to approach building your online strategy - from the beginning, with research and planning. Take a look - it’s worth it.

Thanks to Shana Albert from social desire for the cool diagram.

 A thought of the day:

Influencers broadcast and advocate a brand or product to their friends and peers. It happens at home, it happens at work, and it happens online. They have an active role in influencing your customers in purchasing your product.

Influencers are typically hungry for information… more so than your average joe. They seek the latest news, to be first in the know, and consume information continuously. They also enjoy sharing this information… proudly in social gatherings, emails, blogs, among peers…. they are great story tellers of your brand or product.

So, there must be a need to feed the influencer’s hunger. Why not give them a story to tell through content (eg. blog or video) and experiences (eg. online and in-store). Help them share their stories with utilities and tools (eg. social media and mobile).

We had a recent debate internally about the role of Web2.0 (such as communities, social networks, blogs, etc) for clients. Who is doing it? Who is leading clients to do this? The media agency? The creative agency? The PR agency? The comms strategy agency? Each in itself is limited to effectively review, recommend, implement, and most importantly, maintain a Web2.0 strategy. A constant Beta evolving creature, it is often neglected because of it’s complexity. A well implemented Web2.0 strategy does not have an “end campaign life” and sometimes have slow initial build up (communities) which makes it tough to integrate into a standard campaign brief with traditional media.

A quick review of the 2007 Top 50 advertisers in Australia (a very rough snapshot and does not include all advertisers), we can see Interruption vs Web2.0 strategies at work. Adapting S&P’s Brand Presence Matrix, the Vertical is Traditional “Interruption” SOV and the Horizontal is Web2.0 “Conversational”.

About 90% of the Top 50 advertisers in Australia still play in creating large SOV through traditional interruption model. TVs, Radio, Outdoor, Banners, Press, etc. Jostling for the best spot approach. We called the top left quadrant Visible Brands. There also exist Invisible Brands such as Caltex and Toshiba who we are familiar with but are quiet in the advertising space. Perhaps the most desirable place to exist is in the Magnetic Brands space. Where big ad $$ are still being spent but they are also heavily active in the Conversational space. In Australia, we have seen limited use with more “novelty” approach of temporary communities that dissipate at the end of a campaign.

The most intriguing are Remarkable brands who spend little or no ad $$ but are active in communities. They command great brand advocates and hear of positive WOM from their users. Admittedly, I struggled to come up with local brands in Australia that play in this space… which is a pity and also demonstrates the market’s lack of ability to develop Web2.0 strategies. I believe the greatest reason is the lack of an acceptable model by agencies and marketers to adapt into existing ad “interruption” models. The increasing fragmentation, rising cost, and the trend of decreasing returns of traditional media will force a greater reliance on Web2.0 strategies.

I was running this workshop last week at the User Centric web2.0 conference.

It was a great opportunity to check the 2.0 pulse and I’m happy to say we have a live one.

Here’s the workshop (adapted to Slideshare):

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Well, the good news first. Organisations are keen to understand the value of web2.0 applications and methodology - both internally and externally. But the road from learning to doing is long and often covered with land mines. Execution is still the number one problem. Who is the person/people that will take this on board and drive this change? When will they find the time/resources? Some organisations are starting to consider “webilities” (web abilities) of candidates applying for marketing positions.

Bigger organisations might get a special web change agent. These are concerns for big organisations. Conferences like User centric web2.0 are expensive and usually attended by big guys like government, finance and telecommunications. Unfortunately this excludes medium and small size business that can’t afford attending nor afford the time going through the steep learning curve. Does your organisation have someone looking at web2.0 solutions?