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    Scott Monty, keep running those fingers.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I dig Scott Monty, yet I don’t really know him. Well I know him in a half-duplex sort of way.  I’ve seen him on YouTube.  He came out of the ad business, he’d contributed to Ford’s turnaround – a brand I’ve railed about and at different points lauded, and he has really done stuff — not just talked about stuff.  He got Ford CEO Alan Mulally not only to recognize the power of social, but to fund and personally participate in it.  

    Mr. Monty’s first blog post, near as I can tell, was in Sept of 2006. He’s very prolific – running his fingers, if you will.  Mr. Monty posts a lot and shares a lot. His blog also contains what might be a new feature — I’m not sure – called “This Week in Social Media,” which is something a number of media socialist do.  Readers of WhatsTheIdea? know I refer to this as “Pasting.” Pasting other peoples’ links.  Pasters who do so while providing analysis are moving the ball ahead. Much love. Pasters who simply aggregate OPC (other peoples’ content) are moving laterally.  Most Pasters enjoy routing topics with numbers in them, e.g., “7 critical rules”, or “5 habits of…”

    Mr. Monty is no Paster, he’s a Poster. He loves original content and has built businesses and his personal brand providing original ideas and content.  We loves us some Posters.  Stay original Mr. Monty. Peace

     

    Google and Mobile Apps

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Google’s brand strategy used to be “organizing the world’s information” or putting the “world’s information one click away.”  Larry Page, seeing that his market share slipped 1.2% last year has decided to change that. He’s renamed the search division the knowledge division.  This, ironically, is the Microsoft Bing strategy – so eloquently presented in the “information overload” campaign developed by JWT a couple of years ago.  The difference between “information” and “knowledge” being that the latter takes you closer to a decision — closer to a sale.  This is a mistake.  The strategy did not move the market significantly for Bing and won’t for Google.  Google needs to stick to owning search and leave our brains to us.

    cave art

    What has disrupted search on the web is the smart phone. (See cover story in the NYT today for excellent piece on this.) Mobile phones are not built for full screen search, so app developers and VCs have set their sights on specialized, robust search and retrieve mobile experiences that remove the chaff and get us to information right away.  These apps, by specializing and using geo-location, trump Google and search on mobiles. They are hot — but proper monetization still isn’t happening. Ads on mobiles are still cave art.

    Let’s solve the mobile ad thing by 2015.  Any ideas?   Peace.

    Coke Journey and Facebook Envy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    The Coca-Cola Corporation marketing story is simple but has many layers. The latest layer is the Coca-Cola Journey — a website built to engage, entertain and build loyalty among the family of Coca-Cola brand drinkers and enthusiasts. It’s a corporate website so you can find Minute Maid orange juice, Sprite and other family members represented. Coke learned through its Facebook experience that if it could dally with drinkers and they dallied back – the result would be nice lifts in traffic and presumably consumption. So Coke now fancies itself in the content business. Ding dong, Bud TV anyone?  A business goal, one might surmise, would be to draw users back from Facebook to the new Coke Journey site. Normally, I would applaud this activity, but not if it is going to change the business. Not if it promotes non-endemic brand experiences and cross-product ones at that.

    You might say Coke is using only 5 or 6 full-time employees as content creators/curators – so how does that change the business?  I say these 5 or 6 may have large reach. And a few altered cells in the DNA can be a problem.

    Were I running this show, I’d continue to host sites for each unique brand. I’d add the full-time content creators to each site, but make the content specific to each brand promise. Have them support the “motivation” behind each promise. If AOL and Yahoo! can’t get content creation to run on all cylinders, why would Coke be able to? This is another story of Facebook envy. Mr. Tripodi, I think you went a little bit off-piste with this journey. Peace.   

    Hashtags and Deeds.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    It’s easy to make a hashtag. Getting people to follow a hashtag is an art. A hashtag can start a movement…and mobilize a movement.  “Binders full of women” was a meme started on the web as a hashtag. Someone with a good ear hit it and it likely will become a campaign mantra, even an ad.  President Obama’s reference to Lilly Ledbetter, an amazing debate uppercut, should have carried more weight but the hashtag slingers went with binders.  Probably started by a NY-area, skinny jeaned brand planner. And I say that with mad respect.

    The idea of a movement though is pretty critical.  It sets objects in motion. Sitting on one’s coach or favorite chair while on a device is a precursor to movement. Precursor to a deed.  Occupy Wall Street was all about deeds. Getting off the couch and voting, going to the school board meeting to talk about teacher assessment – these are deeds.  Ceasing to buy high fructose corn syrup?  Deed.

    What is so exciting about social media today is that as a precursor to deeds, it is an amazing tool.  Let us not forget however movements without marchers a wan.  What user experience designers on the web need to know and what brand experience planners need to know is that “likes” and tweets and strategy are great, but marketers need us to finish. Marketers need the ball in the hoop. (Lavinwood.) Engagement without sales is not a valid return. Social is too exciting a new tool to overlook and to diss, but it really needs to understand how to finish. Peace.

    SEO. Traffic (n.) vs. Traffic (vb.)

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    SEOMOZ has some nice blogging going on about the state of the art of SEO. The guys and ladies over there are really ankle deep in understanding the algo in all its permutations.  In fact, they brought to my attention that Google Real Time Search has been shut down until it integrates with the new Google+. A little weird.

    I like SEOMOZ people because like scientists they  hypothesize and test. It’s good to know there are some real white hat SEOers out there.  As I was reading a long and over-my-head post, it got to thinking about the different between traffic (n., people lingering) and traffic (vb., as in drug traffic, moving product). The two definitions are linked, no doubt; you can’t move product unless you have people paying attention. But good marketing and good SEO people know that “nothing really happens in marketing until somebody buys something.”

    An SEO practitioner who gets your URL into the top 2 or 3 positions for a targeted search phrase, has done a marvelous day’s work. Building traffic (n.). Many stop there, believing their work to be done. And many dashboard operators feel the same way. But SEO professionals who pass on knowledge and science and a predictive notion of what will transact and maintain business?  Those people are trafficking (vb.)

    If interviewing an SEO company for hire and all they talk about is getting you to the top of the Google search queue, keep on searching. SEOMOZ seems to get it. Peace!

    Social Media Winning: Map and Manipulate.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Do you know what is driving all the “free” on the Web?  Marketing. Not just advertising but marketing.  Why is Facebook so valuable?  Why does Google have more money than Allah? Where’s that money coming from?  Yep, Toyota and P&G and Verizon.

    And as we glance beyond the dashboard at the future and see, as the iPad commercial puts it, newspapers with videos and magazines that sing, we see a world in which the Web and mobile devices are the primary instruments of marketers. The devices know what we like and where we are.  They know when we are sleeping. They know when we’re awake. Dare say, they know when we’ve been bad or good.

    As the social web evolves and the big ad and marketing shops learn how to “map and manipulate”, it will become more apparent that people with influence are the drivers of marketing.  Kim Kardashian, for instance, earns $30,000 for a tweet.  To a tech start-up a Robert Scoble endorsement can mean the difference between being funded and being fun dead. So where am I going with this?  To Klout.

    Klout is the new online oxy. It’s a drug…and more and more Posters will be talking about it. The Klout score will identify those people who advertisers want to target. And revere.  High Klout scores and predictions thereof will be the things around which ad agencies develop departments. Klout is on to something and they know it.  Get it right dudes and dudettes. And get it right soon before a competitors snaps it up. Peace!

    About Soul. About.com

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    About.com ran an ad in The New York Times (its parent company) today in honor of its 15th anniversary.  The ad also celebrates About’s 36 million monthly U.S. visitors.

    Not sure if they are launching a new tagline, but locked up with the logo at the bottom of the ad are the words “Need. Know. Accomplish.” They visited the triumvirate tagline store, apparently.

    Apparently, 15 years – which is nothing to sneeze at – is an About differentiator.  I say that because “need know accomplish” is the Bing strategy. And we know that Google owns the “need know accomplish” space.

    I want About to win because I love The New York Times. About needs some of that NYT sophistication and savvy to rub off on it. It needs to be more human, less algo, more alive. And, frankly, it’s built an okay site reflecting that. The user experience faces the right direction. Problem is, the brand is weak. The promise blah. The there is there, but the message is without ballast. The New York Times has never really had to brand plan for the paper-paper or the digital version. It has just needed to promote and sell, because brand “the package” has always been so strong.  About.com, on the other hand, needs a home in consumers’ minds. Right now it’s a word. A site. It’s has a pumping heart.  Let’s hope in 5 years it has a soul too. I wish it well. Peace.

    Bing’s Decision Engine. Part 2.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Bing may be a better search engine; it may not be.  If you listen to Microsoft insiders it certainly is. If you listen to SEO nerds it’s a toss-up or a no.  If you try Bing, it appears to be a new skin with better pictures on the same algo.

    Bing’s initial advertising straddled the fence on 2 ideas: the decision engine and information overload. The latter was fun and made for great advertising and a great launch. It set the stage for an implicit benefit: make better decisions. The benefit was not explicit, though the tagline was. Microsoft recently moved the Bing business to Crispin Porter Bogusky from JWT and is running a new TV ad talking about Facebook integration. (Integration is a word techies use when at a loss for other words.) The new work is cute and will appeal to fast-twitch media consumers (millennials) but it feels idea-less.  I’m not getting information overload or decision engine.

    Though not everyone who searches is looking to make a decision, decision engine is a good strategy. Tying the wagon (Could I be more of a geezer?) to Facebook or Project Glee is a borrowed interest approach to marketing. It’s a tactic. The nerdiest softies in Redmond know their search algo is better than Google’s. Someone just needs to find out why. And how.  Then take that how and wrap it English — with song, pictures and video and sell some clicks. And the real softy nerds know this. “Why are we singing, when we should be saying?” Decision engine is the idea.  Organize the proof. Peace!

    Virus Marketing

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Everybody in the world of marketing wants to go viral. Ea-sy money.  “More video upload contests.  More Fothcbook  programs. More Twitter followers.”  Well, as web marketing gets more social, people are finding out big hits are not so easy. My first big viral memory was of the guys in white coats putting aspirin into hundreds of Diet Coke bottles and watching them spew in syncopation.  That type of magnetic content, though, is few and far between.  That’s viral marketing. Virus marketing is different and it can be found today in many SEO programs.

    It started with black hat cheating and has migrated to white hat bleating. Either way the SEO practitioners doing the dirty deed promise they can get you in the top 5 search results on Google for as little as $5-10,000 a month.

    And they can do it.

    How?  By ghost writing content and using off site partners to link to that content.  Scores and scores of them. Some call it link baiting.  I call it a virus. Welcome to the machine. It doesn’t sound that onerous to some…everybody’s doing it.  But to a brand nerd, it’s disastrous.  Rampant content writing and serving — on behalf of your brand — handled by onshore, off-shore, unsure? People who don’t know the brand culture, the brand idiom, the brand plan? If this isn’t a brand virus, what is?  It will take years to clean up this mess. Plus, as Google gets wiser to the practice and makes algo changes (as they did recently), baiters will lose key word rankings and ecomm revenue can tank in an instant.  This practice will spawn a new industry of SEO companies called “no hat search.” Peace.

    Journalism anew.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Yesterday at the Long Island 140 Conference I had lunch with Jason Molinet. Those from Long Island know Mr. Molinet from his insightful bylined stories in Newsday over the years. He now works for Patch.

    I like AOL’s content strategy and often urge the company to invest in big name online properties a la Huff Post and TechCrunch. As for Patch, I haven’t been as warmly disposed.  My first impression was that Patch (AOL’s local news play) was going to be a flop. A big time supporter of the need for more localized news and the internet’s ability to deliver it, in my experience so far Patch has been lacking.  Fact checking, reporting ballast, edge still seem lacking. I wonder if Patch reporters are tired and on second careers. Jaded me?

    Well perhaps I’m wrong.  Tim Armstrong (AOL CEO) is heavily invested in Patch and he wants it to work, so maybe Mr. Molinet is a step in the right direction.

    Earlier in the week I sat in on a talk at the Social Media Club of Long Island with a New York Times stringer reporter who lives locally.  She’s a heavy social media user and when combining her investigative reporting skills with fast twitch social media she has been doing some amazing things. Her sources are a fingertip away. Story backgrounders clicks away. Quotes immediate.  This woman gets the new journalism. And it is very, very exciting.

    Once newspapers break the tether of the paper/paper and traditional reporters will combine their instincts and skills with social and web tools, it will truly reinvent the business. It’s the promise of Patch. Let’s see if they deliver. Peace!

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