Dot Com Advertising Bubble Again?

I was a student when the dot com bubble burst and as such I guess it kind of passed me by, not in the sense that I ignored it, but more in the sense that it wasn’t impacting my life. In hindsight I wish that my professors were a little more on it and shoved it in our faces, but like everyone else who weren’t directly involved its hard to grasp how big the storm is when you sit in the middle. Now I get the impression that people learned from this experience and the Internet along with the economy that surrounds it has become one of adolescence. At this stage of maturity the failures of the dot com bubble have been noted and the realisation that online isn’t the Holy Grail that everyone thought it could be means that everyone is back at putting in the effort needed to keep the business of online alive.

Noticeably now that other advertising genres become cheaper, such as print and radio both of which I suspect have similar production costs the online arena must justify it’s place in the marketer’s mind. Lucky the technology is so persuasive and measurable, although saying that it could be onlines achilles heel, especially when things don’t perform.  I doubt we are in a bubble, at least not like before, but the other side of this recession, will prove to be a different playground than it was before.

Good Morning Mr X, would you like a Starbucks Coffee?

its not often you’ll see WebMarketR go offline and looks at traditional media, but when it is as cool/invasive as this I felt it only right to spread the news. Now that we are hitting recession good and proper and I have been preaching about the wonders of online advertising and its cost effectiveness, I was taken a back when I read about billboards using some clever technology to workout the ‘kind’ of person walking by. To quote the article by AP News;

Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer’s gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity – and can change the ads accordingly.

Now that is some cool stuff. You could even go as far as to say that it is targeting like we have never seen it, unless you saw Minority Reports, which points to the next logical step, especially if your mobile phone became an identifier chip. For me the above still works better than the behavioral targeting methods being carried out by some online ad networks, which while have a lot of uses, fail for me at the moment in two key areas. The first being an infringement on civil liberties and freedoms, as no longer do you loose amenity and the second and perhaps the more important point for marketers to consider is the element of in your face brand marketing to your ‘unknown’ audience. To be more explicit, it was not till I lived in my first flat alone did I have a need to know about what laundry detergent to use, or what vacuum cleaner to buy and a whole gambit of other things. Mass marketing taught me all these things, it told me what to take from the shelves. Behavioral marketing could never learn that it needs to persuade me. This billboard advertising allows all the right doors to be left open, while being able to make guesses about my life stage. Sheer brilliance if not one step closers to be a freaky world, where I’m nobody except to my friends at Madison Avenue.

Are Social Networks The New Word Of Mouth?

Okay so this is not a brilliant title, but it is a question that I have long tussled with. On the one hand it is obvious for anyone to see that social networks can group large number of friends together quickly, better than that, all your friends are together in one place; something that I doubt is often achievable unless it’s your wedding day. On the other hand is the way people live through social networks an exasperated version of themselves?

As a individual marketing tool, it can propel people to the top of the social calendar, like when are the host of regular or unforgettable parties. Sure on the the face of it you are as popular as can be, but is that popularity a merely superficial status with little or no meaning behind it based on an embellished identity. Is someone who has 300 friends on facebook really going a better carrier of a message than someone with 100 friends?

Here I must admit I’m slightly stumped for an answer, as it comes down to the individual, while 300 facebook friends seems a dilution of attention and therefore one has to question the friendship bond and thus influential status, however one must also pay kudos to their individual reach.

I look at Myspace, which became the tool of indie artist to express and get themselves out there. With a little help from friends (known and unknown) you can increase notoriety and achieve fame just like Lily Allan. This was the success of Myspace, which lent itself to a new generation of networks to be born. So what of Facebook, if I say something exempary about a brand, will anyone listen? will they care? and how can marketeers capitalise on this? what is a friend worth to a brand?

Ultimately, the power that an individual has to influence a group rest in the respect the invidual has earned, this maybe through exempartory achievements which are sporn through success and/or high social integration. I’m a firm believer that if you say something in context on a network or otherwise then people will listen and the word of mouth affect will work. However, the right people still have to say it? the quality of friendship is more important than quantity. In essence old principals still apply and while social networks can be used as word of mouth tools, but in my opinion conversations on them are too short to have the impact that an enthused individual down the pub will have.

How can marketers capitalise on social networks? well nothing comes for free in this world and it is still about the right message, delievered in the right way to the right people. This article from chasnote.com talks more about ROI in social media, but one things brands do need to be aware of and that is of negative PR, which on will spread like wild fire, and have numerous groups formed around the issue, my favourite I HATE EXAMS.

Happy New Year to the WebMarketR Crowd

First post of the new year, so this is us greeting you all with well wishes for 2009, we hope that it will be a prosperous one despite economic turmoil and all that jazz. Both Babac and myself are happily rested after the break and plan to give WebMarketR a little more attention and love. That means more posts, constant design changes until we can agree on something and hopefully our spin on things.

Plus we both have twitter accounts that we tweet on, so keep an eye on what we have to say here and here.

Is Online Advertising Recession Proof?

Working in the industry I guess I have to be careful about what I say here. Unlike Alistair Darling I try to be careful about my use of words when talking about sensitive subjects as recession. But I was reading an article in Business Week today, which prompted this long lingering question of how recession proof are we. Their article I think sums up much of what those of us who work in the industry think; which ultimately Online verses traditional ad formats has some versatility in its implementation. Strategic campaigns can be well place, if marketers know that the budget will be around to fund them, but Online gives you shorter lead times, to make choices between tactical or strategic campaigns depending on the brands interests are at that time. This ability to be free from months of consulting, planning and execution can be priceless in an increasingly erratic economy and it is for this reason that Online should fair better than most. Recession proof, not totally, but I know which side of the fence I would like to be when storm hits… roll on 2009.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

Wishing you all a festive holiday and see you all in 2009.

Breaking the Habit

Why hasn’t conversational marketing taken off? Well, I see only one reason and that is that the people who run the online media world are too busy with the day to day that they fail to care or notice.

Banners, among other usual contenders are what people see as online marketing. Most fail to see outside of the box, which is totally understandable – a working day for most is exactly that a working day, where doing is everything and thinking creatively is not necessarily high up there. If you are selling, you have a small amount of time to connect with what people understand. Education maybe part of selling, but I wager you only have a certain level of tolerance as a buyer to receive it and as a sales person there is only so much you can do.

Selling to the busy, especially those that buy day in and day out the same stuff, also decreases acceptance levels. Habits are habits, the are formed because humans need routine and comfort; it’s our ability to see a microcosm into the future, which makes us feel safe.

It’s the bold whom take on the challenge of the new, who see the concept and embrace it. Are they the successful among us? Maybe. Whatever they are they are the ones that break new ground for the rest of us to follow. For the rest of us to learn from their successes and failures, and to push on with momentum.

I’ve said it before, engagement is everything! Marketers just need to find that golden ticket to break the mundane and go for the new ground.

Quick Poll, do you click?

Some campaigns I’m working on…

Just wanted to share a couple of cool campaigns I’ve been working on @ work this week – Asus/Intel’s WePC.com & Vodafone’s Live Guy.

See my writeups on both @

WePC.com – http://www.netcommunities.com/blog/net_communities_and_wepc_com

Live Guy – http://www.netcommunities.com/blog/find_live_guy

Both are really good examples of conversational / social media in action. Check ‘em out!

Nike UK’s 40% discount code – innocent leak or first class guerilla marketing?

40% off these? Dream on...

I spent a fair whack of my Saturday parked @ Nike.co.uk’s online store. Why oh why? Well, just like a fair bunch of like minded folks, I was there to scoop my generous 40% discount across the full online range…or so I thought…

Late last week news started to spread online about a code which enabled this massive discount – details were vague about exactly how the code was obtained, but it was claimed that the code was ‘leaked’ by an employee, and the code itself – UKEMPL1115 – seemed to suggest that it may be some sort of staff discount code. By Friday afternoon the deal had very much gone viral – see Google or forum threads @ HotUKDeals & MoneySavingExperts.

By Saturday night the code seems to have stopped working altogether, and people who had successfully placed orders before began to receive emails informing them that their order had been canceled.

Had we just all been punk’d? No doubt in my mind!

Thinking rationally the whole Employee code leak just sounds full of holes. The voucher code just seems so flakey – would Nike really offer a discount code online for employees? I sincerely doubt it – surely its just asking for something like this to happen. Also, IF they did would it be so obvious as that – it’s not very cryptic is it? And 40%?!?! Have Nike employees really got it that good? A bit of searching online proved inconclusive, with some placing Nike employee discount at 20%, others at 30% but none quite at 40%. I really doubt its as high as this….

What was it mum used to say – If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is…

To me this just sounds like a crafty guerrilla marketing ploy – the glue being the unbelievable offer, and the purpose being to get us to the Nike site and wet our appetite. You think you are getting something, then it gets taken away from you – you then want it back (even if you never had it in the first place, and in order to get it back is going to cost you considerable more ££). That’s exactly how I feel – thinking rationally, I’d never thought about getting those running shoes (cost v benefit), until I thought that I was getting them for 40% off. @ 40% off I sold myself the benefits of having these shoes, but when this discount was taken away I still harboured the desire to own these shoes.

Anyone else come across a similar guerilla marketing ploy, or have more on this story?? Thoughts / comments welcome…