The next installment in my favorite movie series, Saw V, comes to theaters this Friday, October 24th. Let me tell you how a unique tool used in its promotion blows my mind - nasty pun intended
Here’s what engagement with movies used to look like:
The consumer sees a movie trailer a few months before the film’s release. In the weeks preceding the big release date, the consumer sees a few 30-second commercial spots on TV. Perhaps they catch a glimpse of the movie poster during a visit to the theater. Finally, the big night arrives, and it’s up to the producers to immerse the consumer in a 2-hour experience that will encourage them to speak positively about the film with their friends.
The quality of the movie is out of marketers’ hands, yes. But marketers have found a new way to ensure that consumers are spending more than 2 hours with their movie brands, thereby increasing the chances that they will share their engagement with others. Furthermore, marketers are transcending the concept of word-of-mouth, a crucial determinant in the movie-going process. In a 2006 Los Angeles Times poll on the moviegoing habits of teens and young adults, 38% of those surveyed said they share their opinions about a movie during or right after the film or on the same day. It is hardcore fans alone who hit up the message boards. So how can marketers gain and virally spread the interest of casual movie-goers, people who may have a slight interest in their films?
Mashups aren’t entirely new to the YouTube universe. People have been recreating trailers for a while now, posting “re-cut” versions on YouTube for pure entertainment purposes (sometimes, hilariously inappropriate entertainment purposes). Marketers found a way to turn these blatant copyright violations into promotional machines. The mashup has become an incredible marketing tool.
You want the proof?
In 3 days, I spent 10 hours creating mashup trailers from the Saw movie series. 10 hours of TRUE engagement. 10 hours of FREE engagement. And you better believe that I am creating buzz with my friends. Upon posting the mashup tool to my Facebook profile, I uncovered three more Saw fans, manifested in the form of public wall posts, status updates, and news-feed glory.
It’s a simple concept: incent me to chop up your movie by entering my work into a contest with a sweet prize. I am likely to spend hours perfecting my trailer, spread the word, and see your movie. Combined, DVR adoption and the internet have opened doors such that a 30-second commercial should serve as no more than a reminder. Make consumers feel your brand by finding ways they would like to interact.
It used to be a scary thing - giving control of your brand to your consumers. But isn’t marketing about giving the people what they want?
I have a personal but public Wiki and Blog that I post to on a fairly regular basis
I frequently use Motley Fools’ CAPS network for participation and research into investment ideas
I blog scan 50+ feeds of varied matter through Google’s Reader
I can say that I am more connected this year than I have ever been before in my life, even when in school. For example, yesterday:
My birthday arrived and I woke up to receive a phone call from a previous co-worker wishing me a happy birthday. I checked Facebook to see I had 3 current and previous co-workers sent a quick message to wish me a happy birthday. I left the house and stopped by my usual coffee shop for my morning fix and was greeted by “Happy Birthday!” by the employees who also gave me a free drink.
I subsequently arrived at work to a barrage of greetings and received a hail of additional notes through facebook and email from over 20 different folk I have different levels of communication with. My last “Happy Birthday!” actually came from my own Mother in the latter part of the afternoon (granted she had already sent a birthday card).”
A vast majority of this recognition came about because of the simple birthday notifications that comes with Facebook and displays current and upcoming birthdays. However I also received communication this week, albeit brief and simple, from:
My high school valedictorian I connected with after the last reunion
The AJUG president I speak to at most once a month, commented on my music preferences
I saw two past brides I shot pictures of post them and got to see comments on them
I got status comments from a handful of friends I don’t get the chance to speak with very often
Kept us with close friends on vacation and updating their status via mobile
Learned about some cool events I want to go to this week
Updated information about an upcoming Halloween party I am throwing to all my invitees
Like the cell phone or internet, I just can’t imagine going back to the more disconnected way of life even 10 years ago.
Are they still relevant?
A quick search on the intertubes reveals that social networks are as relevant as ever.
Facebook - The hot talked company Facebook has the highest growth rate, and at Forrester we predict it to achieve the same number of registered users as MySpace in Q4 of 2008, or early 2009 given the current growth rate.
General Growth: * More than 60 million active users * An average of 250,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007 * An average of 3% weekly growth since Jan. 2007 * Active users doubling every 6 months
So a majority of agency execs are now predicting that online advertising could pass traditional advertising within the next five years. Now, I was at a traditional media agency for my entire career before coming to the interactive segment in early ‘07. My main reason for doing so followed the same sentiments that outlines the tone of the article - I felt that traditional wasn’t doing enough to prepare for the storm.
For years, traditional media has been looking at interactive the same way I look at dachshunds - feisty but with no realistic fear of being overpowered by one. So what happenes when a corporate media powerhouse actually does start to feel threatened? First they … hey, wait; you’re not even paying attention to me are you? You’re still thinking about whether or not you’ve ever seen a feisty dachshund, huh? Well I’m here to tell you that I’ve never met a dachshund that didn’t want to tear out my larynx, but was physically/comically limited in doing so … so trust me, they’re just waiting for their chance.
The Dachshund: Nature’s Waddling Assassin.
Now back to my point. What happens when a corporate media powerhouse starts to feel threatened? They go out, buy an interactive shop, install a puppet regime, and then think they can run it the same way as a traditional agency. Unfortunately, they’re going to find that without a proper plan to their single-stream approach of buying and placing media, they will be flooded by multiple streams of constantly-evolving ways to reach the consumer.
Yet they still give an eye roll and a pat on the head to cute little interactive. “Here you go Online Media, take this nickel down to Woolworth’s and buy yourself a big ol’ Charleston Chew so the big boys can talk about real work stuff for a while.” Heck, in my kool-aid drinking days I even tongue-in-cheekly referred to interactive media as a “pop craze” that was too unpolished to be a threat for years.
However, the future is now coming faster than anyone expected and it’s just a matter of time before interactive drives the media landscape. So maybe I’ll just hang my hat here for a while. Well, at least until the inevitable article in 2027 that reads, “New study predicts brainchip advertising to surpass online within decade.” That’s if the Dachshunds don’t rise against us first.
By way of their AdWords blog, Google just announced that they will be penalizing companies whose landing pages load slowly; it will become an additional factor into Quality Score. Essentially, if you receive a low Quality Score as a result of a slow landing page you’ll receive higher minimum bids (it’ll cost you more).
Here’s their reasoning for adding load time criteria:
“Two reasons: first, users have the best experience when they don’t have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate.”
Naturally, I see a lot of value in this - as we are an agency focused on the user experience. It seems like such a natural thing to weight this along with other criteria, and it will certainly improve the AdWords experience for the end user.
However, this does mean that folks - and their agencies - using AdWords need to pay some attention to their load times. Now, Google is giving you a chance to improve before they toss penalties at you. They will be offering time evaluations and providing a huge 30-day window to make adjustments.
Ever since I could remember, I’ve watched the Super Bowl strictly for the commercials. Not being a huge NFL fan, the game doesn’t really all that much matter to me (however, I did pull for the NY Giants this year). But in the past few years I feel like the commercials have gone downhill, and from what I can gather, I’m not the only one. This year I took notes on the commercials and did a bit of analyzing.
Of the 60 commercials I kept tabs on (I excluded all FOX commercials and may have included locally shown commercials), it broke down to 41 brands who spent the dollars (approximately $2.7 million dollars for 30 seconds!) to air several sub-par commercials. It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized there wasn’t much integration with the online channels that many of these brands have created. Only 23 brands listed URLs in their commercials! You’d think with spending that much money on a commercial(s), they’d do everything possible to extend the brand experience online. Of the 23 URLs displayed along the way, 13 were direct links to the brand’s website, 3 were URLs that either mirrored or redirected to the same page used as the homepage, and 7 were microsites dedicated to the campaign.
What’s even more surprising to me is that many recognizable brands didn’t include their website URL on their commercials (Coca-Cola, Bud Light, Budweiser, Victoria’s Secret, and Gatorade). Yes, we’re familiar with your brands, but are we familiar with what you’re doing online? Maybe, but why chance it? With the way marketing is heading, it’s safe to say all of the brands have a website, but is the URL known? Make it easy for consumers to find you and put your address in front of them when they’re captive!
I have to admit, my favorite commercial was the Tide-to-Go talking stain, it was priceless (and so true). I have a hard time focusing on what someone is saying if there’s a stain on their shirt, so distracting! In case you missed it, you can view the commercial here. The microsite allows visitors to watch the ad again, participate in contests, as well as take part in filming a spoof and interacting with their channel on YouTube. To me, Tide-to-Go got it right this year: entertaining commercial, microsite dedicated to the commercial, and social/interactive/engaging aspects of the site. Way to go!
And in case you missed any of the other commercials, you can view them on MySpace – they have them hosted for your convenience. And if you’re interested, I’ve listed out the brands (and linked to their sites) that make up the numbers mentioned above.
Slate blogger Mickey Kaus has been pushing an interesting theory on political consumerism, namely that the news cycle and technology have evolved and advanced so far - and in such coordination - that consumers are more adept at cycling news and information much more quickly than even a few years ago, “that voters are comfortable processing information at the vastly increased speed it can come at them”.
He cites this phenomenon, called Feiler Faster Thesis, on why everyone got NH wrong in Barack’s favor:
“…Voters who don’t really follow politics are much less informed than they used to be, which causes polls to shift rapidly when they do inform themselves … You’ve got a vast uninformed pool of voters that only begins to make up its mind until the very last minute–after the last poll is taken, maybe–and then reaches its decision by furiously ingesting information at a Feileresque pace.”
But what if we were to put this in general, non-wonkish marketing perspective: due to technology’s rapid dissemination of information and socialization of product and brand “truthyness”, the temporal market place for any brand or product is being truncated and only the most immediate message are penetrating.
One the one hand, long term investment in brand awareness creates only fleeting - not sustainable - consideration momentum that can be capitalized on (why Barack saw an Iowa bounce, but it disappeared overnight; why Hillary’s crying episode quickly overshadowed the Iowa results leading right up until voters made up their minds).
Retail sciences are exploring this trend widely, focusing on the “moment of truth”, when a consumer pulls a product from their shelves. But are agency strategists keeping up with the consideration cycle and funnel of today’s rapidly promiscuous consumer?
I’ve contended for some time now that the sales funnel looks less like an upside down triangle and much more like an extraordinarily thin hourglass, which continuously curves into itself. Maybe Kaus is right, and that it’s not so thin after all.
If you’re a sports or music enthusiast, you’ve no doubt done the “help 2” before: strolling outside an arena or stadium holding up a couple of fingers to attract scalpers – or secondary market entrepreneurs, onsite re-sellers, etc. - who may have the goods you need.
Inevitably, the tickets they’re offering will be above face value - partly a marginal surcharge to cover their legal risk, and partly because ticket prices are set artificially low. Now, prices are synthetically low for a few reasons – unknown demand, to keep the stadium packed for a better overall experience (and to massage the artist’s ego, sell more beer, et al.), and to ensure access for the regular guy, Joe Mullet Headed Face Painter.
Ironically, and against the recommendation of almost every economist alive, scalping is for the most part illegal or dis-encouraged.
But the web has changed all of that – secondary ticket markets are a fruitful utility linking seat to potential fanny and identifying what the market really can bare. In fact, the NFL is exploring a possible relationship with one of the more popular online ticket resale exchanges, and some conventional thinking is that this will completely democratize the ticket buying process, at once identifying a market’s strike price and eventually freezing out the most loyal but more shallow-pocketed Fan.
But, what if we had this type of market with commercial media – a real time auction linking marketer to consumer? Well, probably two things immediately: 1) costs would sky-rocket, and 2) then they would plummet. Probably overnight.
Initially, artificial demand would propel media buying concerns (who currently over estimate the demand anyway, thus the Upfront) to pay way too much for the premium – probably even remnant - inventory. “Disposable” content, like reality shows and sports – where you pretty much have to see them when they occur – will make the quickest gains, and the crappy shows we all complain about will get the scraps. The actual demand would quickly be exposed, and costs would sink.
But, what would it be exposing – a true market for eyeballs, or a true market for the pockets connected to those eyeballs? Or even better, a true market for the value of the engagement? Broadcast has had it both ways: selling both general volume and/or particular audience qualities simultaneously and often contradictorily (MTV has been positioning itself recently with an engagement play, to some chuckles, but trying none the less) .
Some major marketers for years have been asking for an open market to traditional ad space inventory, but no one can agree on the product value: the cost to create the content + “what”? Of course, “what”ever someone is willing to pay – but this only works if the market is relatively transparent (and another reason no one thinks the writer’s strike will end anytime soon).
Mostly through ad networks and search models (Google even played, without effect, with an open auction model for print space), web advertising is creeping into the democratization of other kinds of media, at least creating a model for how inventory can be arbitraged.
Just something to keep in mind: Small marketers (the Joe Mullet Headed Face Painters) may be left out in the cold, even with a clearer cost structure and lower entry point; content will generally improve at the high end, sink lower at the bottom end; more “disposable” content will flood the market (until the production companies realize how much they’re giving up in lost syndication cash) and a third market will - and has already started to - open up: even more valuable inventories created by individuals themselves and their self-managed content networks.
Look, I’m as big a fan of the head fake shimmy to scallywag, foot shuffle back to head fake shimmy as the next guy, and love ironic jewelry that says something even more ironically specific when the jewelry is eaten, but I will not be upgrading to Direct TV’s HD offering - thank you very much, Beyonce.
In one of the most preposterous TV commercials of all time (I originally thought it was a parody of some kind), our luminary is starring in a music video that is going swimmingly, just beautifully, until she’s reminded that she’s actually hawking Direct TV, and desperately needs to upgrade me to a $29.99 HD package. But she doesn’t stop the video part, just injects the commercial part, or is it the other way around. I’m so confused.
But, then the mouthful of her gold “upgrade” medallion cleared it all up for me. However, the thing is, I’d much rather have the “upgrade” necklace than the Direct TV upgrade. All I can find, though, is a necklace with Beyonce herself on it, not the actual “Upgrade” necklace that would match my “With a 2-yr service agreement” bracelet, and “After mail-in rebate” anklet.
All kidding aside, this piece of advertising, and the hideously frequent volume of its showing, is really why the average consumer gets turned off by our trade, and why smart strategy is increasingly moving toward actual and resonant consumer insights driving brand gains. What could possibly be the core insight here? That Beyonce is an expert on High Definition television? Or that she really believes that $29.99 is the optimum price point for 75 of the hottest HD channels…
No, what we have here is the classic “music to sell stuff to” theorem, wherein a marketing exec, typically on the client side (but not always), heard the song or saw Beyonce’s video, and said, “You know, it has the word ‘upgrade’ in it, and people know who Beyonce is, and we can cover the cost of her talent fee by simply cutting up the music video with some VO about the offer…, as long as we run 1,200 GRPs a week during the holidays, man this stuff is going to sell itself”.
So in honor of one of the most ungainly, clumsy and annoying commercials ever to air under the “music to sell stuff to” theory, what other gems have gone untapped? Please submit your idea for a song that ‘totally’ needs to be paired with a product; example:
Anyone remember that 2002 Tom Cruise movie The Minority Report? One scene has Tom Cruise frantically running about the city. He eventually walks through some public area where there’s a slew of 3D hologram ads; and they all know his name and turn toward him, trying to sell whatever product they represent. This high-tech advertising is made possible because “in the future” humans have a tracking mechanism implanted in them. These implants can be detected and it seems that certain high-level information is publicly accessible to any system that can detect the implant. This publicly accessible information makes it possible for the ads to respond and adjust on-the-fly to someone just walking by.
Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s what every online advertising mechanism currently tries to do - customizing ads and content with what they know about the user viewing the content. The primary exception is that this ability has mostly been contained to the domain of the website, requiring a profile on that website. This ability to customize advertising to user profiles has been evolving for some time, from customizing ads based on searches (probably the most intelligent customization not requiring profiles) to ads, based on preferences and behaviors in online social networks.
So here comes what feels like another step towards that sci-fi future where no matter where you go or what you are doing, everyone seems to know who you are and how to sell to you.
Google has announced that today they will launch a new set of social networking APIs named OpenSocial. OpenSocial will provide a basic set of functions that will allow developers to access profile information and basic features from any social network that decides to accept the open invitation to play along. A band of existing networks have already backed the platform, including Plaxo, Ning, LinkedIn, Orkut and Friendster.
Google is taking the infamous Google approach to providing such tools:
Part 1)Magnanimously provide a solution that has the intent of making developer’s jobs easier (who currently find themselves having to add another social networking API to their tool belt on a regular basis)
Part 2) Create a more standardized social community so that ads can be delivered across more platforms to more people with more accuracy than ever before so that everyone can make more money (with Google at the center of that exchange)
I have to admit, it will be interesting to see this unravels as the product matures and the powers at be take sides.
The music world has always been a tough gig, but it just got tougher! In recent news, it has become clear that Vivendi is utterly pissed upset with Apple. Vivendi seems to be fighting Apple’s iPod + iTunes services with two approaches in order to reduce apple’s music download dominant share.
It started this summer when NBC Universal yanked their Fall shows from iTunes because Apple rightfully refused to charge $5 per TV episode (NBC Universal is 20% owned by Vivendi). In the end, NBC Universal moved their Fall season shows to Unbox Service from Amazon, which allows Tivo subscribers to download shows onto their Tivo digital video recorder (in my opinion a bad move!). Fast-forward to today, Universal Music Group (UMG) which is 100% subsidiary of Vivendi has decided to challenge Apple in creating their own music service.
While details of the emerging music service are in flux (currently covered by BusinessWeek), it appears that UMG is testing out two models:
Challenge the iPod Player
Provide an all-you-can-eat subscription service that’s FREE with the purchase of select devices. The thought is that hardware manufacturers will subsidize the subscription fee. Of course, the idea is to the subscription with Zune, the ailing media player from Microsoft.
Challenge the iTunes Store
Distribute music that’s playable on any devices via outlets such as Walmart, Google and Best Buy. The idea is to challenge Apple, which only offers a limited number of DRM free songs through the iTunes store.
Additional Challenges for UMG
While the fight between Universal Music Group and Apple is just starting, UMG is also facing challenges on a second front — their signed artists. In recent news, both Radiohead and Madonna have independently decided to leave their music labels making insiders wonder whether distributors are even necessary in this age of the internet.
Clearly, this is not a good time to get into the music world as things are only getting uglier.
At Spunlogic, we have a lot of great experience and unique ideas to share. From work with clients to new approaches and trends, in this award winning blog you'll find Spunlogic experts sharing their opinions and ideas on all aspects of interactive marketing.
