Monthly Archives: June 2009
As in 2008, this year’s Luxury Interactive Conference was mostly enlightening, often fun, and at times a bit “out-there.” But then, that’s the nature of industry confabs.
Last June I was a speaker here, alongside my then-client in front of a pretty big breakout room filled to capacity with 200+ of the glossily groomed. It was one of two simultaneous presentations, and from all reports the other room was much bigger than ours, but just as full. This time around it was a pretty different story.
We’re all familiar with the economy’s effect on our and every other business on the planet. At the Luxury Interactive Conference, this reality took shape in lower attendance (to be expected), fewer speakers, a smaller venue, and only one main ballroom for all presentations on the docket.
This is not to say, however, that the conference wasn’t a success. How could that be? Well for starters, a completely new ambiance filled the air — everyone, whether on stage or in the audience, genuinely looked to help each other through this trying time. The standard feeling of competition, even among agency personnel looking to fatten up their new-biz pipelines and appointment books, was relatively absent. No thinly veiled corporate espionage could be detected. No goofy adult version of the high school clique; just a bunch of people looking to each other for help on how to get through this.
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
I can’t stand that quotation.
Even today, it is bandied about as though it has any meaning in the current world of (online) marketing. It contained some truth when it was first said, but today it just identifies the lazy marketers in our midst.
Why the vitriol? It’s because almost everything is becoming measurable. Now, there is no reason to claim ignorance to analytics – we are swimming in data.
But that might be the problem. As the recession continue to apply pressure to all industries (and on advertising and marketing more than most I would venture) there is a redoubled focus on return on investment (ROI).
And this is wonderful. The online channel is made to justify advertiser’s investments. But the advent of social media has thrown a monkey wrench of sorts into the works. How do we define ROI in a web 2.0 world? How has the landscape changed and how can we plan for tomorrow?
Fixoutlook.org is an orchestrated effort by the Email Standards Project, Campaign Monitor and Newism to help the user community send a unified message to Microsoft.
The Email Standards Project is about working with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email. The project was formed out of frustration with the inconsistent rendering of HTML emails in major email clients.
Proactive, Focused
ESP works with MSFT and during beta testing of Outlook 2010 they were seeing the same poor standards support as 2007. This was bad -there had been no improvements to the Word rendering engine and MSFT plans on keeping it that way. Faced with a challenging client situation, ESP plead their case but didn’t ask the client to take their words on the matter, they’re leveraging the volume of the user community. ESP is saying to MSFT “we know your users better than you do, just listen.”
Transparent, Live, Uncontrolled
ESP laid out their story and asked users to give their opinion in an open-ended way. They’re not leading with questions, not confining answers to limited options of a poll, they’re asking for any and all thoughts on the matter.
Aggregated, Organized
They’ve chosen twitter as the medium and given directions to include the site name as a tag for categorization. It appears the common use of link shorteners has stunted this effort; nonetheless, “Outlook 2010″ is trending third on twitter behind #iranelection and Transformers2 (as of 11am CST).
The initial response to ESP’s effort is significant, but why didn’t Microsoft engage its community in the first place? I see a lost opportunity for the Evil Empire to narrow the disconnect between its company and user community.
The Google team behind Maps, in an attempt to conjure a similar breath of fresh air in the way we communicate, announced last week its development of Google Wave. With an online communications tool that purports to combine e-mail, blogs, instant messaging, and wikis, they’re well on their way. (Google Wave’s launch date is as yet unannounced.)
In my mind, the most significant innovation of Google Wave is its treatment of a communication thread – instead of being sent around as a permanent entity, a thread (now a “wave”), becomes a living, nearly breathing resource.
Imagine a message you’d written to several coworkers about a project, with details that weren’t altogether fleshed out. With Google Wave, your coworkers would get your wave, add their questions (which you’d then see) and would notice edits you make to include project details as they develop. Everyone sees and refreshes the same hosted document.
Google Wave highlights include:
· Real-time typing option, which makes each wave a potential venue for instant messaging, with – allow me to repeat – real-time typing (Time to polish your keyboard prowess.)
· Private messaging, so that certain parties can only see select parts of your wave
· Live interaction with Wave extensions, like a “Yes/No” RSVP gadget, polls, and, sure – maybe a game or two (Developers, start your engines!)
· “Playback” allows a wave’s newcomers to get up-to-date on the conversation
With the emergence and expansion of social media, consumers can talk to each other and share information on a scale exponentially greater than during any other time in history. Three years ago, The Economist called the new era of participatory media revolutionary and likened the magnitude of impact to that of Gutenberg’s printing press.
The emergence of social media has caused a fundamental shift in the relationship between consumers and corporations. Namely, the brand identity ‘ball’ has bounced into consumers’ court. Where the goal used to be for brands to start the conversation, the new opportunity is to join the conversation.
This changes things for marketers and the way they do research. No longer is there need to gather consumers and ask for a response. Conversation is aplenty; all the brand needs to do to find out what consumers think is to listen.
Shifting lexicon:
| traditional | social |
| target | reach |
| demographic | psychographic |
| exposure, impressions | share of voice, engagement |
| approval rating | sentiment, promoter score |
| focus group | social monitoring |
As our blog name indicates, we at Critical Mass place a premium on experiences—ones that engage, captivate and connect users to brands in meaningful ways. In our quest for extraordinary experiences, we are proud to share a few that have garnered accolades from our industry peers.
- NASA.gov and Mercedes-Benz AMG 360 Honored at Webby Awards
Critical Mass’ NASA.gov site was named the official People’s Voice Winner in the Government category of the 13th Annual Webby Awards. As an official nominee, the NASA site was pitted against other contenders in the category and after the global Web community placed their votes, the NASA site came out on top. Also honored was Critical Mass’ work on the Mercedes-Benz AMG 360 Video Experience, which received an Official Honoree designation in the Automotive category.
- Budweiser American Ale Site Wins Regional ADDY Award
Critical Mass also took home a Silver Regional ADDY Award for its work on the Budweiser American Ale microsite. With this win in the District 6 Competition, the Budweiser American Ale work will go on to compete for national honors, to be presented at the AAF National Conference in Virginia.
