Monthly Archives: February 2011
If you had to sell 100 million people a product in less than a minute, what would you say? Saying too little is what makes Super Bowl ads more obsolete every year. It isn’t that the commercials were better back then, and increased viewership has nothing to do with it. There are just too many better ways for advertisers to spend $3 million now.
They’re advertising ads now?
A clear sign that advertisers are losing faith in the Super Bowl is the pre-released ad. To generate buzz this year, Volkswagen, Careerbuilder, GM and others released their commercials weeks before the game. Then they tried to drum up further interest with ‘making of’ videos and other media appearances. When advertisers are trying this hard to sell you on their commercial, you wonder why they don’t just sell you their product, story or brand another time.
It’s a tough crowd.
Despite murmurings that social media would radically alter this year’s Super Bowl commercials, very little changed. Most ads tried to get a laugh from the lowest common denominator, employing animals or children or plenty of CGI work. It’s understandable, because it’s hard to get a big crowd to listen but it’s easy to accidentally turn one against you. So the best hope with so large an audience is to entertain without offending. As a result most ads aren’t memorable to anyone.
Super Bowl viewers don’t want to interact.
Although brands did try to get users involved, it was little use. Many tried to get viewers to find them on facebook, watch alternate endings or tweet about them, yet most refused. And those brands were the lucky ones.
Continuing our monthly tech trends feature, here are a few of the stories on my mind this February.
HTML is the new HTML5
We’re all aware of the buzz around HTML5 and its offerings on the modern web. However, that buzz is getting a new name: HTML. That’s right, it’s just called HTML according to Ian Hickson (editor of the spec formerly known as HTML5). What does this mean? The HTML specification will become a “living document” — that is, constantly evolving, just like browsers do. It makes sense.
IP Addresses Are A Changin’
IP addresses are the Internet’s phone numbers — and these numbers are running out. In fact, researchers believe that by the end of 2011 we will run out of IPv4 addresses. But there’s a solution: IPv6. Imagine adding an area code to your IP addresses, except that area code is 96 characters long and not just numbers — that’s IPv6. However, hardware and software updates need to be made by both servers and clients to support this new and necessary standard. A number of big shots have pledged to participate in “World IPv6 Day”.
Ad Tracking Opt-out
Browser manufacturers are beginning to implement their own solutions for allowing users to disallow Internet advertising companies from tracking users. Even Google! Other proposed solutions involve a “Do Not Track” header sent from the browser, telling the website’s server to respect the user’s privacy by not tracking them. No legislation is currently enforcing this privacy, nor has any of these solutions been standardized — but experimentation is beginning and it will be interesting to see what shakes out.
COMMUNITIES
Super Bowl TV ads to unleash social media campaigns
I don’t know about any of you, but I personally only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. But this year, many of the campaigns will take their commercials to a whole new level by adding in a social media component. By taking these campaigns off of the television and engaging with consumers on their turf, experts are predicting that these ads will be far more successful. Research has shown that about one-third of Super Bowl watchers with smart phones will be using their phones to connect with social media sites. One of the strongest examples of campaigns including social media will be from Budweiser. They have aired spots leading up to the game that challenge viewers to guess the plots of 3 of its Super Bowl commercials.
Publicity Fail: Kenneth Cole Tweets About Cairo to Sell Shoes
Whoops! This week, Kenneth Cole made one of the biggest Twitter mistakes possible. In order to promote their new spring collection, the tweet at left was sent out. After thousands of Twitter users spoke out against this insensitive post, Kenneth Cole realized that maybe it is too early to be joking about the Egypt situation. In fact, an apology tweet was posted about two hours after this one. Many people however, believe that this was not enough and are still upset about the tweet. An @KennethColePR handle has already been created and is pushing out other inappropriate tweets, mocking the situation.
TOOLS & TECHNOLOGIES
Google Goes High Brow – Unveils Museum Art Project Powered By Street View ‘Indoor’ Tech
Google is launching an awesome new feature called “Art Project” that will bring the beauty and excitement of a museum right to your home. The new feature will allow users to browse through art from some of the finest museums in the world (MoMA, Museo Reina Sofia, National Gallery, Tate, Uffizi and plenty of others) right from their computers. Using the same technology that is used for Google’s “Street Views”, they will take the same concept indoors to where the art is displayed. Then users will be able to login and check out their favorite pieces. This sounds like an outstanding feature that users will have access to in the near future.
What was once an experience extraordinarily distinctive, recommendation engines have fluidly become commonplace. Ironically, voices suggestively murmuring in your ear, “if you like that, you’re gonna love this!” seem far less perverse coming from a robot than a car salesman. In fact, that gentle nudge we once felt at the check-out counter can now be found on the sidelines of social networks like Facebook, whispering sweet “Likes” in your ear; putting the stumble in StumblUpon with links you’ll undoubtedly fall for- it’s turned browsing music into discovering new artists and compiling new playlists; it single-handedly puts the “con” in “conversion” and is questionably the most trusted “con” on the internet today.
While now a ubiquitous staple in our online experience, what time we once allotted to searching, we’ve re-appropriated to weighing options. What was once a matter of finding an answer is now a matter of finding the best answer for us; and what once felt like a process of executing functions is now a process of functional execution. Recommendation engines have quietly woven their way into every facet of the computing experience, as we know it.
I just finished reading the results of this year’s Customer Experience Index (log in required for full access) published by Forrester Research. Each year, Forrester asks a few thousand U.S. consumers to rate the experiences they have with companies when buying everyday things like clothing, cars, cell phone service and health insurance. Forrester tallies the scores, ranking 154 brands and 13 industries on a scale from “excellent” to “very poor” based on the customer experiences they deliver. The results are eye opening. Just one-third of companies scored high enough to be considered “good” or better. The rest earned scores of “okay,” “poor,” and “very poor.” According to the report, consumers are generally not satisfied with the experiences they have with companies they patronize.
Looking over the list, the question “why” kept coming to mind. Why, with all the focus on the value of customer experience, with all the attention the business press heaps on this experience-based economy, do two-thirds of companies persist in turning in such poor performances? Forrester’s own research “shows that improving customer experience can have an enormous positive impact on a firm’s bottom line.” Didn’t these folks get the memo?
