Important marketing memes of 2009

And we're back!

Memes are important thought trends in contemporary culture. They are widely distributed, fresh, and organically generated concepts and ideas that emanate and circulate rapidly in a network of plugged-in people. At their worst, memes can propagate racism. At their best, memes can propagate lolcatz like Ceiling Cat!


So I should probably cover up.

Anyway, to start off the new year, it's relevant to think about memes that might matter in marketing in 2009. Let's talk about the concepts, trends, and practices of marketers that will become more commonplace and popular. Let's talk about the ideas that will quickly disseminate through agencies and client teams, mastered by the savvy group of consumers, and eventually expectorated back to the teeming masses of mainstream culture.

In other words, let's talk about what are relevant marketing trends for 2009:

THE 'EXPERIENCE IT' MEME


In the context of the rising tide of greater relevance in advertising, some lucky consumers will find themselves the subject of rare interactions with marketers that go deeper than the banal and shallow ad pitch. Without buying, a privileged few prospects will be invited to try a product, brand, or service. But what they're really trying is an experience.

Remember when you were invited to try Gmail when it was still in beta mode? (Remember how awesome that felt!?)

Testing experience with consumers firsthand is like playing in a sandbox. It's safe, controlled, and a great petri dish to catalyze learnings for experiential improvements. Furthermore, you want to actively segment an select prospects to participate in the experience who you know will then actively go out and spread word of mouth among their networks.

Seeding networks is nothing new, but in 2009 expect to see more seeding based on complete brand experiences rather than simple trial testing or free offers. It's the culmination of consumers' undeniable influence on social diffusion of brands and the demand by consumers for things which they can live, rather than things which they can simply wear, listen to, or eat.

THE COLLABORATION MEME


You know how individual consumers are encouraged to put their stamp of approval on something? They're able to personalize their brands either through participating in the product development and customization process, influence brand direction by vocalizing their needs in web forums and social media, and make the brand their own through non-traditional uses.

Now take the personalization to a broader scale. You and your network personalize your product. You and your friends personalize your brand experience.

Gen Ys are social creatures. We thrive on instant communications within our highly networked worlds (that's why we go mental when the DSL isn't working...). Digitally socializing is an intensive part of our lives and the impact of one's network on the things we associate with is immense.

So why would a marketer allow your network to collaborate with you when developing your personal brand relationship with them? Because it's a direct acknowledgment by the marketer of the things that matter to the consumer: their friends. It's an invitation by the marketer for you to show your network that they are influencers.

Look for this style of meme to pop up with everything from iPod playlists to fashion to media content.

THE INTEGRATED MARKETING MIX MEME



This one is big. Integrated marketing communications refers to the choreography among different ad channels, all targeting the prospects with related messages, calls-to-action, and incentives. It's not merely enough anymore to pair a TV spot with a website. It's insufficient to have a radio play in the same market as targeted magazine drops.

Integrated marketing is a mix of advertising channels that are optimal to distribute the message YET still convey relevance to the end consumer. This is critical. Furthermore, this does not underscore an increase in the overall number of message impressions received by the prospect consumer. Instead, it speaks to two things: 1) a curriculum style that gradually educated prospect consumers about a product/service/brand that they would respond to; 2) a coordinated effort by a marketer to demonstrate relevance to consumers across multiple platforms.

What is still unexplained is whether marketers will contract out their entire marcom budget to a single agency that is capable of doing all things (integrated), or whether marketers will act as directors and fragment their marcom budget out to a variety of specialized agencies.

It's hard for me to call this one a meme because I believe this is a sea change in marketing towards relevance-based integrated campaign development. Perhaps it's meme-like insofar that there will be rapid awareness in 2009 and some traditional marketers will make nascet inroads to developing a more balanced communications strategy.

BTW, when I was thinking about an element to include for the word 'choreography', the Indian version of 'Thriller immediately came to mind...!

Marketing best practices

Killing two birds with one stone is great isn't it?

I'm writing an appendix about advertising channel marketing strategy right now for a report as part of my 601 project and I thought about posting the analysis up to the blog!

I love original content!!!

It's really abbreviated, but it's a quick comparison of old and new best practices of various online and offline advertising channels. I've tried to be comprehensive and unbiased here (although I personally think that untargeted advertising can go to Hell....) but it's a good synopsis of the different benefits and recommendations for effectiveness for each channel.

You'll see that throughout this chart I'm really in support of integrated campaigns. That means marketing communications that simultaneously leverage the other active channels. It's the newspaper ad that tells you to go online and try virtually test drive the new model car, it's the radio spot that tells you to look for Count Chocula sampling this Saturday at Metro stores in the GTA.

God, how I wish there was a product sampling of Count Chocula....but I digress.

Oh, and BBAs, plagiarize away! Just don't expect to develop unoriginal, uncited analysis and hand it to me to give to one of our clients.

Advertising channel	Channel description	Old best practices	New best practices
Website development	Includes website design, management, analysis, promotional microsite development. Important channel for speaking directly to tech-savvy, younger consumers.	Clear site navigation and shallow site structure with few deep levels. Integrate web metrics tracking for site optimization and online marketing. Promotion in offline marketing communications as a source of extra information about a brand.	Site users have the opportunity to create content and interact bilaterally with the site. Important to integrate websites with offline communications including print and television (often these drive consumers to the website). Provide relevant brand and product information in multiple formats, allowing consumers an opportunity to take content with them or send to their friends off the site. Promoted in offline communications as a destination in itself and a place to go as part of Web 2.0 consumer interactivity.
Email	Includes email design, deployment, analysis, and potential integration with database segmentation. Important channel for direct marketing and establishing brand relevance.	Use an attention grabbing subject line. Display the best content “above the fold” of the screen. Do not be too copy-heavy, leverage text and pictures. Communicate exclusive offers, promotions, and deals to “our best customers”.	Perform active segmentation and response analysis on house list to determine most optimal messages/content to be included in targeted email to consumers. Must be easy for consumers to unsubscribe or change their email settings. Position as nonintrusive consumer touchpoint that is relevant to you. Email is highly useful to create a curriculum or education campaign for new consumers or a multi-wave campaign.
Social media	Includes brand promotion through social media public relations, viral content development and distribution, network ‘seeding’, and identity development on social network profile sites. Important channel for brand identity building through online affiliations and new project promotion.	Note, because this is such a new channel, best practices are being developed as part of an ongoing mutation of the medium. Social media is too young to have any “old” best practices, because marketers are still trying to understand how to use it effectively.	Pay attention to emerging consumer memes and viral trends online. Ride these. Create a clear identity that allows users to comment, rate, or interact with the brand’s social media presence. Use social media PR sparingly and only to announce exciting brand developments or significant launches. “Feedback 3.0” is the act of brands actively responding to and commenting back to their commentators in online forums. (TrendWatching.com)
In-store retail promotion	Includes design of product packaging and printed promotional materials, development of coupons and offers. Also includes total management of promotional projects and events, including multiple-party promotions.	Eye-popping visuals and unique creative execution. Display in preferred locations in retail environments (end of aisle, eye level, front of store and produce area). Promotions are used to highlight exciting new product launches or as a boost to seasonally low sales.	Retail promotions are immediately relevant to the consumer (because they are physically interacting with the product and have opted-in). Therefore how are promotions used by brands to develop long-term positive relationships with their consumers? Promotions must be thought of like big impressions for brand building and used for activating new brand strategy. Strong integration of promotions with other non-tangible brand communications.
Experiential	Includes the planning, execution, and management of in-person demonstrations, sampling, physical product interactions, sensory advertising, and other impression-based advertising experiences.	Create innovative and original experiences – make the consumer say “wow, I’ve never seen this before”. High traffic locations are effective to reach as many people as possible. Eye-catching or permits prolonged or repeat impressions.	Demonstrate measurability and big impact on sales by using experiential techniques. Cannot simply generate a ‘big splash’. Use experiential advertising projects as opportunities to also establish customer listening posts and gain valuable primary research about brand perceptions and usage.
Direct mail	Includes the design, writing, segmentation, deployment, analysis, and management of print advertising, flyers, brochures, offers, product samples, and house-list magazines that are targeted to specific consumers (not mass mail).	‘Test and learn’ – perform frequent empirically controlled tests to different consumer segments to understand what is the optimal form of creative and offer to generate higher response. Personalize direct mail and provide a compelling reason to open it (similar to an email subject line)	Integrated use of direct mail with CRM database for clients. Understand customer behavior across response channels (direct mail, web, email, SMS). Like in-store retail promotion, direct mail establishes an intimate connection between the brand and consumer because it is highly interactive and tangible. Clear announcement of purpose and call to action so that customer understands role of direct mail in context of all other interactions they have with the brand.
Out-of-home	Includes the design, deployment, and management of all messaging that appears on outdoor ‘surfaces’ in high-traffic or visible areas. Note, limited effectiveness of this channel at driving response and engagement from consumers. Highly passive engagement by prospects in this channel.	Like experiential and in-store retail promotion, out-of-home should be immediately understandable and capture interest. Copy must be concise and non-informational. Strictly call-to-action.	A classic medium, the best practices have no changed significantly because of limited innovation potential of the platform. Obvious integration of out-of-home advertising with existing in-market campaigns in other channels.
Mobile	Includes copywriting, segmentation, deployment, management, and analysis of text or multimedia messages distributes to mobile phone subscribers over a network. Important channel for brand building and relationship development.	Note, because this is such a new channel, best practices are being developed as part of an ongoing mutation of the medium. Mobile technology is also rapidly evolving and permits unique applications like proximity sensitive out-of-home marketing (billboards that activate when a consumer walks by) and geo-targeted messages direct to the consumer.	Must be an opt-in house list and must permit easy unsubscribe for recipients. SMS marketing is highly invasive (it’s marketing that vibrates in your pocket). Therefore the message should be targeted, relevant, and actionable by the consumer. Therefore, SMS is not optimal for informational campaigns. Instead, use for direct response or experiential purposes (e.g. respond now).
Television	Includes the design, production, media buying, and management of television commercials or infomercials. Important channel for broad awareness of brand strategy to consumers. This sets the tone of an integrated campaign with multiple channel strategies.	A great ‘hook’ to immediately capture attention. Clear link between story and brand, story and message, and brand and message. Clear call to action for viewers, or an understanding of what they are being made to believe.	Best practices somewhat unchanged for mass media. Perhaps greater concern for how television commercials are able to change behavior among consumers. Is this really an advanced form of marketing that succeeds at building a relationship with consumers? Call-to-action that is integrated with other marketing communications in market. Useful capstone to large campaigns which rely on a broad mix of mediums (out-of-home, online, promotional, print, and radio).
Radio	Includes the design, production, media buying, and management of radio commercials.	Memorable messages that listeners can associate to a brand with unaided prompting. Local message optimization because of the ability to purchase large blocks of commercial time from radio station conglomerates that own stations in different markets.	Same as above. Positive associate to highlight existing in-market or upcoming promotional campaigns for integrated marketing campaigns.
Mass print media	Includes the design, production, media buying, and management of printed advertisements in newspapers, magazines, flyers, and other non-targeted print media.	Classic principles apply here for copywriting and call-to-action development.	Same as above. Considering existing volume of print media advertising that continues to be done, important to integrate this activity with marketing mix of online and offline channels. Can be used as a traffic-driving source of consumers to online channel where more information can be found about brand.

Zalaznick: Bravo's Postmodern Queen

Yesterday, the New York Times Magazine had a terrific lead story about Lauren Zalaznick, the head of Bravo Media, a network within the NBC Universal family.

This article is required reading for all B!G Associates. Think of it like a case article from your course kit, only this one you'll actually read!

It’s a comprehensive assessment of how marketers now focus on the ‘long tail’ of consumers and the maturation of postmodern content in our lives – we recognize it, and we recognize that we are being recognized for recognizing it (think it through, it makes sense!).

Zalaznick has monetized Bravo’s programming in unique ways and has created shows that appeal to the core viewer’s aspirational values. The core viewers are, as the article describes, ‘Will & Grace’. Hip professional urban women and gay men who, although not affluent themselves, are culturally influential and possess the kind of disposable income that higher-end marketers salivate over. Zalaznick describes them as ‘the Affluencers’.

Evaluating Bravo's programming,

“What has made the programming watchable, all along, is the same thing that might keep it relevant as the economy changes, which is a certain winking skepticism about buying and selling. It’s what’s ingenious, or insidious, depending on the perspective, about the complexity of the Bravo programming.”

The whole brand is conspicuous and self-referential, turning the spotlight on real people in real situations, but without the forced scenarios that can often debase other reality shows and commit the cardinal sin of television – breaking the fourth wall. Bravo’s success is based on the fact that they acknowledge the fourth wall and interact with the viewer in relevant ways. That’s the reality.

Meme is the word: social marketing for Gen Y trends

Inspired by Sunday night’s Family Guy episode – after which everyone started proclaiming that ‘bird is the word’ on their Facebook status updates – this post is about modern marketing memes.



Memes are “ideas or behaviors that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, gestures, practices, fashions, habits, songs, and dances. Memes propagate themselves and can move through the cultural sociosphere in a manner similar to the contagious behavior of a virus.” (Wikipedia)

Right now I’m sitting in class and thinking about all the behaviors that we’ve individually learned from each other. It’s a weird dynamic here at Schulich because with so many diverse backgrounds and experiences, it’s hard to not take best practices, ideas, or perspectives from others and co-opt them as your own.

We’ve all seen examples of a meme in our classes. Look at the one student in the class who seems to know what they’re doing when it comes to writing a case or an assignment. Doesn’t everyone go to that person and ask them questions about how they completed it so that you can mirror their work? In this vein it’s social Darwinism at work: rapid social adoption of the ‘best herd practice’, or at least the practice seen to be most popular by the other members of the herd.

So memes are odd – it’s not always the best practice, not always the most popular idea. Instead, it’s an idea that has catalytic value and is able to be communicated and adopted easily by others. Consider these modern marketing memes:

• "Oh my god, my business needs a website because everyone else has one!"
• "It’s about relevance, not volume"
• "Brands are dying, consumers are only loyal to themselves now"

As a card-carrying Gen Y, I love memes. Why? Cause like most Gen Ys, I’m social but independent, extroverted and networked yet individualistic, and brought up by parents who encouraged free and creative thinking. Sharing and contributing to social discourse is therefore only part of the game. Consider these Gen Y memes:

• Talking politics when you enter college– especially if you go to an arts school, not a business school!
• Wholesome pop (the packaged reaction to the late 90s trollop pop), including the Jonas Brothers, High School Musical, Tokio Hotel, Hannah Montana
• No-barriers sharing. One’s whole life, friends, pictures, secrets, ideas, and interests are on your Facebook page
• Lolcatz, pwns, fails, YTMND

I don’t pretend to be a social anthropologist or expert semioticist, but I can analyze content and culture. It pays to keep your ear to the ground and understand memes for their power to influence people and, in turn, be shaped by people. Memes are particularly germane to contemporary marketing because of their importance in the lives of Gen Y consumers. Creating value with young consumers is a two-way street and necessitates an honest and fun approach to relationship building.

In theory, memes could act as jetpacks for brands or people to attach themselves to to quickly reach key influencers and adopters. Ok good, but how about being a meme yourself? Why mimic when you can lead?

Scariest scenarios in marketing

So what if tomorrow the tried and true marketing techniques no longer applied…what if today’s harbingers of consumer marketing disaster materialized tomorrow in Zarathustrian proportions (shit hits the fan)?

A lot of these what-if scenarios are actually here, in practice among us, being tested on us, becoming marginally more effective as we go about our mundane lives.

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

So as the PSA bunnies tell me, I need to keep myself aware of what’s going on so that I can Stay Alert, Stay Safe.

Here are the ten scariest scenarios in marketing:

10. Workplace advertising

Imagine, your Outlook calendar reminder pops up and announces the status update with your boss in 15 minutes. It also announces that “this meeting is sponsored by Fanta. Don’t you want a Fanta Fanta…” It’s a very real possibility that marketing will break through one of the final bastions of consumer invisibility, the office. Marketing in the office will not be subtle like before and you’ll be forced to confront brand logos, taglines, and jingles in company emails, in the lunchroom, and at corporate events.

Freakiness factor: 7
Likelihood to happen: 1
Total: 8

9. Continuing to pay more for green products

Imagine, sustainable consumer practices never really grip a majority of household buyers and prices for items like green toilet paper, organic cereal, and biodegradable dishwashing detergent remain much higher than for conventional, less eco-friendly products. The danger of this is that without a price incentive to buy green, consumers will never make environmentally sustainable buying decisions.

Freakiness factor: 6
Likelihood to happen: 3
Total: 9

8. A brand purchases your street and city block

‘My address? It’s 60 Starbucks Street East, Suite 500.’

If Dubai is selling naming rights to its Metro stations, what’s preventing cash-strapped cities like Toronto from letting companies name streets and subdivisions in new urban developments?

Freakiness factor: 9
Likelihood to happen: 3
Total: 12

7. Guerrilla marketers become brand terrorists

The year: 2020. The place: Toronto’s gritty downtown core.

Guerrilla marketers, cast aside as communications channel rejects have become an Orc-like subspecies, ascending from the sewers to intimidate and scare unsuspecting consumers with messages designed to associate fear with a certain brand. Companies employ these nefarious techniques as smear-campaigns against their competitors and to maintain their competitive advantage by attacking another brand through psychological warfare.

Freakiness factor: 9
Likelihood to happen: 4
Total: 13

6. Google sells or loses your data – for real!

Imagine all those Google searches you do for disgusting key terms. Imagine all those emails you wrote. Imagine all those addresses you looked up. All gone, or worse, sold to some third party. Google apparently does a very good job of maintaining data security and their mantra ‘don’t be evil’ is something quite tangible in the organization. But just think how much trust we’ve put into Google with our personal details over the years…

Freakiness factor: 10
Likelihood to happen: 4
Total: 14

5. Tiered payment model for online content

Rogers and Bell Sympatico have decimated the other players in the broadband internet access market and it’s a literal oligopoly. They now implement a tiered payment model in which consumers must pay more to engage in perceived ‘high-value’ online activities such as streaming, music downloading, or....gasp, blogging! Content can be payment-based too as the ISPs are able to actually see what sites you visit.

Freakiness factor: 6
Likelihood to happen: 9
Total: 15

4. The death of the newspaper and television

The last page is turned, the last word is read. The last commercial is watched, the last remote control button is pressed.

Televisions are finally turned off and newspaper presses no longer roll. This seems like an inevitable possibility considering the immense growth and democracy of online content creation and distribution. But what about editorial, journalistic, and professional standards? Is the demise of printed and televised media the death knell for these things too?

Freakiness factor: 7
Likelihood to happen: 9
Total: 16

3. Ads on your iPod

So music players are getting considerably less expensive because of smaller and faster processors and greater memory capacity. But suddenly you find that the reason you only paid $50 for your new 200GB iPod is because before you can watch the Sopranos episode you transferred over, you are forced to watch a sponsored ad from HBO. Before you listen to Hilary Duff's 'Wake up', you are forced to listen to a 10 second promo for downloadable ringtunes from Rogers Wireless.

Freakiness factor: 10
Likelihood to happen: 7
Total: 17

2. Selling commercial time in your voicemail

The mobile phone companies have finally figured out how to give you free and unlimited phone service. All you do is buy the phone you want and you’re set. Unfortunately, it means that your phone becomes a vibrating advertising tool from Hell. You’re subjected to radio commercials while you wait for someone to answer the line and you’re stuck listening to ad spots while calling your voicemail.

Freakiness factor: 9
Likelihood to happen: 9
Total: 18

1. Cell phones that passively track your whereabouts and proximity to RFIDs

This one is actually well on its way to full scale market rollout in some places in Europe and certainly in Japan. Your cellphone becomes a transponder and broadcasts a signal to the network letting service providers and marketers know where you are and what billboards you’re close to. As you walk by a digital panel on the street, proximity sensors activate and display an ad that is deemed to be relevant to you. You’re watched and marketed to wherever you go.

Freakiness factor: 10
Likelihood to happen: 9
Total: 19

So these are a few of my favourite fears. Some of them I actually think consumers might warm to (e.g.cellphone RFID), if marketers can figure out how to implement them unintrusively. Otherwise, be on your toes!

Effective email marketing: Doing it right

Saturday is my day to go through the piles of email in my Gmail inbox from the week. I’m glad I did because it made me reflect on some of the best practices of email campaigns. To explain the importance of email marketing, please watch this video from Britney Spears:



(So poignant. Yeah, I couldn't stand to listen to it either...) On with the list of email best practices:

Recipients opt in
I really love email marketing, but for the future, it’s only going to be effective with house-list customers who are already familiar with and trusting of the brand. Purchased lists, unless they’re remarkably high quality leads, run the risk of not only being automatically filtered to spam if the email client is unfamiliar with the sender, but also being passed over and deleted by the recipient who sees it as an irrelevant message.

Key takeaway: Use email for relationship building, not acquisition. Don’t misconstrue ‘cheap’ for ‘effective’ as a driver of overall campaign value.

Test and learn
Campaigns represent opportunities to learn from your customers and solicit valuable data-based information. In addition to the substantial link and segmentation tracking that you’ll no doubt build into the campaign, why not throw in some differentiated layout or subject line testing for good measure! Copy testing is also useful, especially when you can learn whether your email recipients like punchy, ‘header-style’ copy or longer, ‘body-style’. Don’t forget to add another layer of testing and try landing page optimization with an A/B split of the inbound links from the email.

Key takeaway: Emails must always be refreshed and improved (optimized!) to make sure you stay relevant with your customers. Through testing, you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t.

Offers and giveaways
Response to consumer emails is enhanced by the offer of a special feature or free giveaway. Try a contest or promotion to launch a new product and remember to use this as another opportunity to collect consumer data. Analyze their responses. I like to think of these giveaways as the sizzle to an email. Remember to mention the free giveaway in the subject line – it will draw the greatest possible open rate of any subject line. Incentives work, use them.

Key takeaway: People like free stuff. Give it to them. Email is a perfect way to tell your customers that they are the select few to receive a special offer.

Content optimization
You’ll learn through testing and customer segmentation what content works for what groups of people, however you can’t go wrong by providing lots of information in an easy to digest form. Lists work well, as do quick specs. Ultimately however, your customers will tell you through their clicks what they find attractive and what your client has in the email as filler.

Key takeaway: Short and sweet. Focus the email on communicating information honestly and compellingly. Email is not a good medium in which to be coy or deceptive. You’ll be burned for it.

Channel integration
Email marketing satisfies one component of your overall CRM strategy. Since you’ll likely be using email in combination with other channels (e.g. direct mail, web, in-store, telephone, SMS), make sure that as far as your communication strategy goes, the left hand knows what the right is doing. A little vague I know, let me explain: you know how Aeroplan will send you an email with your updated account balance? Great. How about when American Eagle uses email to notify you of an upcoming online sale at their website? Super.

Key takeaway: Email marketing does not exist in a vacuum. It is an effective component of your overall marketing communication strategy. Effective emails have a high degree of verisimilitude to the consumer’s other experiences with the brand and their account.

So go ahead and call bullshit on all those Nostradamian gurus who question the effectiveness of email as a marketing medium and predict its demise as customers become more selective with their brands. The sophistication of email deployment technology now means that emails are modular and are unique to each recipient. A campaign can have a massive number of permutations depending on the desired segmentation, content inclusion, and testing. When done right, email is a highly cost-effective marketing channel that is perhaps the most poised of any communications media to convey relevance to the customer.

...btw, these were all Britney Spears' thoughts on email, not mine.

Getting mad

I’ve been in a really great mood lately, but let me explain why it’s great to be in a rage when designing creative and writing content.

1. You work faster. Being happy means that you have time to smell the roses and enjoy what you’re working on. Being in a rage lets you fly through the project and only concentrate on the important details, completely missing the larger scope of the task
2. You say what you really mean. Everything is on the table and anything goes when you’re angry and ready to write. I also find that the words flow better because you’re firing on more cylinders. Feel free to include slang, personal attacks, and other forms of verbal abuse in the copy.
3. You develop hyperfocus on the task at hand and are able to block out all distractions that are preventing you from getting the work completed.
4. You don’t have to proofread or edit the work later on. If you were angry, you wouldn’t have made any msitakes. Besides, it shows a creative edginess. Reviewing work when you’re not in a bad mood is always a poor decision because you may find that the work has to be redone!

So here are some helpful tips to get really angry for when you have to write copy and mock up an ad or an email:

• Think about the last huge argument you had. What did you really wish you had said but forgot to?
• Think about the bureaucracy and mania of office politics that prevents you from getting noticed for your hard (read: rage-fuelled) work
• Think about that driver who cut you off then acted like it was your fault when you blasted your horn at them in frustration
• Think about the professor who antagonized students and contributed to a stifling learning environment – shout out to Prof. K!
• Think about how a coworker accidentally ate your sandwich even though it was labeled and said “Max’s Sandwich, HANDS OFF!”

So go ahead and get angry. Take it out on the client’s work. Everyone will be so impressed by the maturity with which you handled such a difficult situation. They’ll learn not to mess with you when they see that vein throbbing on your forehead and those fingers pounding away at the keys. They’ll understand that it’s not venting, it’s progress…

Brainy vs. bonehead marketing

Tuesday June 17 is “Download Day” for Mozilla Firefox Version 3, a sophisticated update of an already powerful and easy-to-use browser.

I’m not sure how I learned about Download Day – it was most likely viral – either from Stumbling Upon the landing page advertising the event (highly rated by my fellow Stumblers), or perhaps because I added it as an event in my Facebook calendar. I clicked over to the Mozilla site and quickly signed up to pledge my support. Today I received an email invite from Mozilla reminding me of the day and to tell all my friends. A publicity buzz is being created because Mozilla aims to make this the single-largest downloaded program ever on a single day.

What a terrific example of a company that has its Web 2.0 house in order!

• Strong viral promotion to create evangelists in everyday web surfers
• The actual converting action, me downloading the new browser, is the perfect form of ‘experiential’ online advertising
• Participating in an event with very democratic popular roots makes me feel like I’m part of a community of like-minded consumers, an important component to building trust and interpersonal relationships with the brand

On another note, Aeroplan and Yahoo announced paid music downloads in return for Aeroplan points, a move that has to be the dumbest loyalty marketing reward option I’ve ever heard of. In return for 5,500 Aeroplan points (that’s the equivalent of spending $5,500 on a co-branded credit card or a round trip flight from Toronto to Venezuela), you get 50 songs to download from the Aeroplan Music Store.

So I redeem my Aeroplan points for songs which I could have otherwise downloaded for free?

Remind me again why anyone would use this service?

Furthermore, who is this supposed to attract? Aeroplan is an elite loyalty program and the average age of its members is likely over 35. They’re business people, retirees, and family vacationers who actively earn and redeem points. If they’re listening to music it’s likely on cd. If they’re web-savvy enough to listen to MP3s, why wouldn’t they be using great paid services like iTunes or even better piracy and P2P services like bitTorrent? I think the online music space is crowded enough.

Aeroplan wants you to redeem your points for non-travel rewards. Flying is expensive. There are actually some non-revenue generating flights to vacation destinations because so many passengers are flying on points (although Aeroplan was spun off from Air Canada so the airline is compensated in cash for every flight redeemed). This explains why merch and entertainment options have become so prominent in the Aeroplan reward catalogue.

What is so boneheaded is the decision to not make this a free service. Again, downloading is ‘not illegal’ in Canada, and there’s even less risk when the files you share are torrents and you’re part of a cloud of other users exchanging only pieces of a single file.

Instead of redeeming points for songs, why not earn points when you download songs? Sounds interesting. A self-sustaining model could have been developed if more attention was paid to the marketing strategy. Aeroplan would also have appeared considerably less reactive and anxious to enter the online media realm.

Kiss

A month ago I had the occasion to attend a technology conference in Waterloo where various speakers, including the editor of Wired and Google’s former Chief Innovation Officer, discussed the evolution of the internet and where technology is headed. A major theme of the conference was the ‘nicheification’ of online content and the fact that with user-generated editing capability so firmly entrenched as a Web 2.0 best practice, the potential market of consumers is getting more and more fragmented.

However, another point brought up during the conference, and one that I wanted to elaborate on tonight, is the idea that all content is moving toward a free media model. Today at work I was reviewing creative and the phrase “free information” was used in our marketing copy. “Free information” I thought, was kinda redundant.

Isn’t all information free now? Shouldn’t all information be free?

Did you know that the cost of streaming ten hours of video from YouTube to one viewer only costs ¼ of 1 cent? So with technology that basically allows for nearly unlimited access to any media content at zero cost, how do marketers justify asking consumers to pay for information?

Prince provides an interesting corollary here. I consider Prince to be a musical genius and a marketing genius. Refer to the 2007 Superbowl Halftime Show for sufficient reason to tremble at his other-worldly skill with an axe. To promote a 2007 concert at Wembley Stadium in London, Prince gave away free copies of his latest CD in the London Daily Mail newspaper. Free content, huge publicity. Of course it helps that Prince owns his record company, NPG records, but it was still a very innovative move. At a time when the record industry is languishing from stronger content distribution competitors and an inherently flawed value proposition, Prince essentially broke ground on a new revenue model. At nearly $200 per seat, the money comes from concert ticket sales, not from CDs. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also concede that Prince recently sued fans for unlawfully distributing his music. Additionally it was difficult to find actual Prince videos that have not been removed or silenced on YouTube. Thankfully Songza came through. It seems that he’ll promote his music, but on his terms.

I’m about to tuck in for the night and watch an episode of the Sopranos that I downloaded from a torrent site. I did not pay for this content. If I bought DVDs of all six seasons of The Sopranos, I would have probably paid $300. Frankly, the concept of paying for media content is anathema to anyone under the age of 25.

So let’s get used to free content. Let’s demand more of it. Remember that as consumers and as marketers, we always have options.