South Park does digital

My last few entries seem to have gotten a little heavy, so here's something that made me chuckle. It's South Park dabbling with the digital world and trying to work out how many 'theoretical dollars' it's worth.

And the conclusion?

Stan: Boy, I'm sure glad that's over with.

Butters: Me too!

Kyle: Yeah, but you know, I've learned something today. We thought we could make money on the Internet. But, while the Internet is new and existing for creative people, it hasn't matured as a distribution mechanism to the extent that one should trade real and immediate opportunities for income for the promise of future online revenue. It will be a few years before digital distribution of media on the Internet can be monetized to the extent that necessitates content producers to forego their fair value in more traditional media.

Stan: Yeah.

Yeah?

Who can you trust?

I was following a debate on a football forum this Sunday (about Ronaldo’s penalty-taking style if anyone’s interested) and came across this statement:

“I'm prepared to believe respected newspapers over people posting on an Internet message board”

Although this was merely a rant from a fan whose argument was on the ropes it raises an interesting question – “Who do you trust when gathering information”. This reminded me of a 'trust chart' I came across a while back:


In the UK businesses are actually trusted more than the government (and are only trusted less then NGOs). This seemed like great news for our brands, so I decided to delve a little deeper and checked out ‘Edelman’s Trust Barometer’ (an annual trust and credibility survey amongst global opinion forming elites).

The latest edition confirmed the prominence of businesses on the ‘axis of trust’ but revealed that whilst people trusted our brands and companies, they didn’t always trust how they found out about them.

Sure, the conventional CEO statement, company employee, press, etc sources were all listed but the highest score achieved was "media" with a mere 38% (of people agreeing that it is a trustworthy source).

So who do we trust? It’s actually the third parties – industry analysts, academics and specialists, all scoring over 55%. This makes sense, with the general consensus believing that these sources are less swayed by company propaganda and are hence not as likely to “toe the party line”.

However, there is a final trusted group that beats all of these sources hands down – “people like me”. Out of those questioned across 18 different countries 58% agreed that if they heard information about a company from “somebody like me” they would find it credible.

So who are these “people like me”? Apologies to MOSAIC and Acorn but the overall opinion is that it has nothing to do with geography, local community, demographics or even a common industry. It’s actually much simpler: “people like me” are people who “share my interests”, “have similar political beliefs” and other such logical stuff.

This brings forth the old ‘social networking’ argument. Yes, we’ve been chatting about it for ages now (amongst people like ourselves) but it still holds true.

It’s understandable that brands are unwilling to relinquish control and offer themselves up to the world of social networking – “What if they only say bad stuff?” – but whether they like it or not it’s already happening. More importantly these peer-to-peer networks are proving more impactful than the millions invested each year just to paint a pretty picture of the company.

This doesn’t mean that every brand needs its own social network, more that they have to be smarter and reconsider how and where they talk to their customers. Peer-to-peer efforts need to be incorporated with big budget comms plans. Yes it’s big, scary and seems risky, but there are small steps out there. Think how Innocent gauged customer opinion before deciding whether to enter McDonald's or not. They found people like them (current customers) and asked them.

A final word of warning: if you’re reading this and nodding along thinking that maybe I’m somebody like you, think again – according to Edelman only 14% of people found us bloggers to be trustworthy!

Chocolate guru or marketing extraordinaire?

OK, I’ll own up straight away to watching the latest Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film this Saturday (the one with Johnny Depp in). As expected, aside from some disappointing Oompa Loompas (where's their green hair gone?), it wasn’t that bad. What I didn’t expect was to find that chocolate fanatic Willy Wonka is actually a bit of a marketing guru-cum-futurologist.

I won’t regurgitate the full plot but in a later scene Charlie visits the ‘TV room’ with Wonka and the only other child left on the factory tour, Mike Teavee. They are introduced to Wonka's new machine, the Television Chocolate Camera. This gizmo can take a giant bar of Wonka’s Chocolate and shrink it into a little sample before sending it into millions of televisions across the world. People watching their TVs can then reach in, take the sample and take a bite of the chocolate.

Although Mike Teavee vents his frustration at Wonka for not realising that he’s accidently invented a teleporter, Wonka’s real achievement is creating the ultimate in product placement (at least for the purpose of this blog!).

Imagine sampling the last bit of milk in a Cravendale ad or helping yourself to a Cadbury’s Miniature Hero before Corrie started. Or even watching Corrie and reaching in for a spoon of “Betty’s Hot Pot” – now available in all good pub chains!

Now this is all very fanciful but Rory Sutherland recently made an interesting point about ‘the medium being the product’. He notes that allowing people to respond to a DM pack by telephone or post increased response rates. This, logically, seemed strange as the key question should simply be “Do you want this product or not?” Similarly, low-cost airlines increased their customer base by using online booking - a simple effort to cut costs actually overcame the irritation of being stuck on the phone for half an hour. A simple opt-in box for Gift Aid when donating online has resulted in the generation of more money for charity. There are numerous examples.

Basically, the easier it is for consumers to reply/respond/purchase/taste/etc, the easier it is to sell the product. And Willy Wonka cracked this (well, Roald Dahl really).

TV’s tried telephone call to actions, and online, and even had a dabble with red buttons. But what it really needs is a Television Chocolate Camera. Until then it’s playing catch up with other, newer, media. Just look at those SIM only Orange banners. See the banner on a website, fill in your details without having to leave your site, 3 days later you’ve got yourself a SIM card in your postbox. Awesome.

Until then, anyone for a Smell-o-vision renassiance?

It's good to talk, but even better to listen

I was talking to a friend today about her Friday night drinks. She mentioned that she’d been to a new cocktail bar, but once she got to the bar couldn’t decide what she wanted (standard!). The barman asked a simple question – “What drinks do you like?” She told him, he made her a drink based on her answer, she loved the drink. It later transpired that her ‘special’ drink was merely a random cocktail off the menu. This mattered little – she felt special, enjoyed the experience of drinking a ‘personalised’ drink and, more importantly, told me and many others about how good it was.

It’s a simple concept really, but it got me thinking. In his “De Officiis” Cicero outlines rules to ‘Good Conversation’. Sure, this may have been some 2,000 years ago but his points still ring true:

• Speak clearly
• Speak easily but give others their turn
• Be courteous
• Deal with topics in an appropriate tone/manner
• Never criticise others behind their back
• Stick to subjects of general interest
• Don’t just talk about yourself
• Don’t lose your temper

In the marketing/advertising world we constantly talk of ‘conversations’ between brands and consumers – creating them, managing them, inspiring them, encouraging them, etc, but are we doing Cicero proud? Brands can certainly deliver clear messages on appropriate themes in a courteous way yet they often fall short on a couple of vital points: “Give others their turn” and “Don’t just talk about yourself”.

In the cocktail story above these points were vital – allow the consumer to talk back to you and listen to what they say (and act accordingly). Without these points we treat our audiences like EM Forster’s “primitive audiences of shock-heads… only kept awake by suspense”. In short, we act as nothing more than a ‘storyteller’.

In a world currently consumed in conversations us marketeers could learn a trick or two from Cicero and it’s vital to keep ALL of his rules in mind. It’s easy to be a storyteller, but what the consumer really needs is a conversationalist.

If nothing else, according to Forster storytelling can result in two possible outcomes: the audience falls asleep, or simply kills the storyteller.

A bank that makes you smile?

Bit of a random one, but this really tickled me. It's from BankWest, Australia.

Once you've finished playing with the kittens check out the folders on the left. They highlight a step by step process of how BankWest's services are all designed around making their customers a little bit happier - 'Happy Banking'.

'Research' (including interviews with flowers and toy-dogs) reveals what makes people happy in the first place, 'Experiments' test these hypotheses, and 'Actions' gives a rather sweet list of what the bank does to make you happier as a result!

I don't even bank with them and I'm a little bit happier! If nothing else, when was the last time you discovered a financial services site that kept you engaged in a good way (and not in an "Oh bugger, which mortgage product will screw me over the least" kind of way)?

Let's just hope they haven't got the standard faces of misery behind their counters on a packed Monday lunchtime!

PS A final thought - similarities to Cadbury's 'Gorilla'? Random animal + instrument + song? Alas, no Phil Collins, but these kittens can spell AND whistle...

Adtube

I watched one of those token "Best 50 Outtakes/FA Cup Finals/Hit of the 80s/Grange Hill scenes 2007" shows last Friday, but this time it was about Youtube clips.

It's a real sign of the times when Youtube gets it's own "best of the best" show, but what really caught my attention was that there was not one ad/brand viral in the ultimate list. There were plenty of dancing prisoners, sneezing pandas, karate babies, examples of advanced geekery and even a masturbating kangaroo, but not one single ad-based viral. This struck me as a little surprising.

So I went and had little look on Youtube at three of probably the most famous brand virals on the web: Cadbury's "Gorilla", Dove's "Real Beauty" Honda's "Cogs". There were multiples of every clip but based solely on the top ranked version these were the results:

• Cadbury's Gorilla = 1.9 million views
• Dove's Realy Beauty = 6 million
• Honda's Cogs = 1.3 million

They absolutely destroyed some of the figures accumulated by the clips shown on TV. In fact, if you were to type "gorilla" into a Youtube search the first thing that pops up is Cadbury's classic mix of a primate, Phil Collins and a drum kit!

Views are one thing, but as Charles Colton (and Ghandi!) once told us, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". Is imitation a sign of a good clip? If so, these three brand beauties definitely score well!

Here's my favourite versions as a little taster (look at how many hits they're getting!):

• Cadbury Spoof
• Dove Spoof
• Honda Spoof

Check out the full top 50 clips here.

Online Copycats

Loren Coleman specialises in suicide prevention and in his book, The Copycat Effect, he examines suicides committed by prominent public figures over the last 300 years. Interestingly, in the majority of cases such suicides were followed by a near immediate increase in the overall suicide rate. He also found that there were usually links between the public figures and those in the general public that killed themselves – in method and, more interestingly, in physical appearance and lifestyle.

He cites, for example, the death of Marilyn Monroe in 1962. In the month after her death there were 197 suicides in the US that corresponded closely to that of the actress, and most were young blonde women. Weird?

Perhaps not. Most people relate to celebrities, at least on some level. We admire those who stand up for what we believe in, follow those who like the same things that we like and, more often than not, like to feel that we’re just a bit like them. Now I’m not suggesting that we’ll all be topping ourselves at the first sight of our favourite celeb's death, but such sheep-like behaviour is all part of human nature.

Asch proved that we’d happily agree with the masses when answering a simple question, even if, instinctively, it felt wrong. When queuing to use the urinals we always stand at least a metre away (apparently!). It’s just what everybody does. So we follow suit.

This has huge implications when it comes to the world of online communities. Social networks provide vast opportunities for peers to link up and to publish and share their thoughts, actions, lifestyle, etc. It’s a perfect way to find more people even more like you. You can join a group, follow bloggers, chat to music fans of similar taste. Peer to peer? For sure.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not implying that the online social scene is a grooming ground for lemmings, but it is a perfect arena for the “Copycat Effect”. Rather scarily, could the Bridgend suicides be a rather tragic example?