Ok, so I WAS going to blog on one of my favorite topics - the desperate survival tactics of Starbucks, most recently with their new and surprisingly successful Oatmeal product launch. BUT, I decided to table this rant for a more timely and irresistible topic: JOE THE PLUMBER.

“Joe” (actually Samuel J. Wurzelbacher - whose personal story has taken an interesting political/media twist) took center stage at the third and final presidential debate when Obama referenced a conversation he had with Joe about his small business and the taxes he might face under Obama’s tax plan.

Right, so what does this have to do with interactive marketing?

Well, perhaps not surprisingly, Joe the Plumber has fueled yet another opportunistic marketing frenzy. Shortly after the debate, there was a lively bidding war on Joe the Plumber keywords. According to a recent ClickZ article, regional plumbing company Mr. Rooter topped the sponsored listings on Yahoo with “Joe Plumber.”  Cafe Press also joined the madness with a “Joe the Plumber” T-shirt. (Of course. Nothing these days escapes the grip of the screen print tee.)

ClickZ also reported: “Over at Google, the Obama-Biden campaign purchased the keywords that link to a Web site that includes a calculator.” Here taxpayers can use the microsite to calculate the personal impact of Obama’s tax plan by simply entering their salary.

And this is where opportunistic marketing meets interactive best practices.

The Obama-Biden campaign didn’t just purchase the keywords and walk away. They approached this like seasoned online marketers. They linked them to a relevant destination: a microsite that addresses the very topic that surrounded the idea of Joe the Plumber: how each candidates tax plan will impact small businesses and individuals. If McCain’s camp doesn’t respond, Obama will end up with the final word on this topic.

Purely looking at the marketing play here - this was a very smart reaction on the part of the Obama camp. Online has been a very good friend to this campaign. And make no mistake, it has happened very deliberately by a group of extemely savvy digital and social media marketers.

That’s right, Google is about to enter the world of web browsers.  Announced in a very discreet (very Google) manner in a comic book by Scott McCloud, the browser isn’t live yet but should be in beta form fairly soon.

We shouldn’t be surprised that Google is coming out with a browser, only that it took this long for them to get here.  Lots of good information on Mahalo, but here are the high points:

• New tab system allowing users to create tabs that open on top of the browser, rather than within it (hard to visualize but check the comic book and you’ll see a good example)
• Users can have an ‘incognito’ window if they prefer, in which nothing will be logged
• It will include a new JavaScript Virtual Machine (V8)

There isn’t much more to know at this point and without seeing the browser its hard to know what to think about the success of this. However, the ease with which the Google search bar has been accepted into most people’s browsers already would suggest to me that people will quickly start picking it up.

Beating out IE will be a tough sell but I’d argue this is probably the closest thing Google has released (or will release soon) that will be close in service type to their bread and butter: search.  It’s not surprising that the other services (Google Calendar, Google Docs, etc.) are slowing gaining traction but not really competing with Microsoft yet.  But a browser would be something that would be much easier to switch to and would be a nice compliment to their superior search services.

More to come…

Last week news broke that Adobe is working with Google and Yahoo to allow search engines to access content within Flash files or SWF file formats. In essence, Adobe released a code in the form of a SWF library that allowed these search engines to crawl and index text that’s embedded into the Flash file in almost any language (NOTE: bidirectional languages such as Hebrew and Arabic are currently not accessible).

I’m sure that Flash developers rejoiced at this news since text within Adobe Flash files has been invisible to search engines up until today’s advancement. But the question that comes to mind is whether this news is actually significant (since I’m blogging about it you would think that I feel that it is). In my mind, I can see three things that will come out of this change. These include:

Additional Competitive Pressure on Microsoft

In case you didn’t know, Microsoft and Adobe are at war over the Rich Internet Application development market. In April of 2007, Microsoft released Silverlight, a web browser plugin that allows developers to combine crisp animation and multimedia sound to create a rich experiences, to compete with Adobe Flash. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Flash is found on more than 98% of internet-enabled desktops, making Microsoft’s task of unseating Flash quite a feat. Now it is common knowledge that there’s little love between Microsoft and Yahoo or Google so in my opinion, Adobe is just using their search engine friendly Flash format to further drive a wedge between these companies and solidify their market share.

Additional Factor Influencing Search Engine Ranking Algorithms

Search engines take many factors into account in determining the rankings of a website. Since content within Flash files could not be accessible by search engines, interactive marketers could easily sway clients, who begged for Flash-based sites, to use AJAX in the site construction since it provided a search engine friendly way of developing robust text animations. With the announcement by Adobe, there’s been an outcry by some of the best known SEO experts (specifically Bruce Clay) about a resurgence of websites built entirely of Flash because now the text is accessible. While I can see why Bruce may be worried (I thought of the same concern when I read the news), I think that he forgot the basic rule of search engine optimization: highly ranked sites are composed of multiple pages that have unique, non-repetitive content. So for those thinking that they can build a site entirely of Flash, they’ll quickly realize that their Flash site will be composed of a single page and that goes against the rule above. So while I can’t put it past some folks to develop Flash-based websites, the trend to avoid content-rich Flash develop will likely remain at or near current levels.

Ace in the Hole for Google and Yahoo

While the first two deal with short term benefits to the search engine giants, I also believe that Google and Yahoo are viewing the a bigger value (that may not be exploitable today) in being able to search Flash files. The one area that both companies share is in their video sharing sites (Yahoo! Video and Google’s YouTube). Neither companies are able to sufficiently capitalize on the strong growth of online videos since the content within these videos is not readable to search engines. While the current Flash indexing advancement does not allow for Flash videos (which are FLV format) to be accessible by search engines, one could imagine that after this trial run both Google and Yahoo will ask Adobe to make the indexing of FLV a reality. I would also imagine that Google and Yahoo will look to buy some sort of Voice-to-Text technology so that can read their video assets and leverage them in search advertising. If you’ve looked at my blog entries you’ll know that I’ve beaten recently on Google for the lack of new search advertising assets but with this advancement one can see that there’s new value in video.

Google seems to be entering the formidable teenage years and learning that it has talent but it can’t excel at everything — in other words, it can’t rule the world! Yeah, we all know that Google was touted as a prodigy because it revolutionized the search world with its search engine/friendly user interface. And it has been accustomed to constant praise - the latest comes from Harris Poll which exclaimed that Google has towered over Microsoft in reputation. But Google is hitting a wall as it tries to expand beyond search marketing.

Google’s business can still be summed up in two words — online search. It is heavily dependent on search to sustain itself (99% of Google revenue comes from search), whether through Google-owned websites or partners network. The good news is that Google’s business model will remain viable as marketers continue to invest money in advertising alongside search results. However, Google needs an alternate revenue source if it aims to protect its current position, much in the way that Apple is reliant on more than iPod/iTunes to generate revenue (Mac desktops and laptops sales are also responsible for Apple’s continued success). The problem is that Google can’t seem to focus on alternative revenue streams — in checking out future offerings on Google Labs one will find mostly search solutions. In my opinion, this is way too narrow of a focus if Google is to consider the future.

According to a recent Washington Post article, Google actually intends to focus on several areas this year, including mobile. And while mobile has produced services like Mobile Google Maps and GOOG411, a free directory assistance service, these applications have failed to generate significant revenue for Google (currently reported at only 1% of Google’s total revenue). And to add to this pain, news has surfaced yesterday via the WSJ that phones using Android, Google’s new mobile operating system (OS), are not likely to be available by the end of this year as initially promised due to integration issues and slow-going development of customized applications that run on the OS. While this should come as no surprise — The Street hinted of a potential delay earlier this month (Google denied that this would occur) — the delay is one additional setback in Google’s struggle to expand.

So what should Google do?

Again, the people at Google are bright so they must look at where the money is flowing to make a wise bet. And while enterprise applications seems to be a lucrative area (Google can just take on the evil Microsoft Office Productivity Suite), the elongated sales cycle and issues surrounding privacy (Google can now look at your data) along with industry regulations (Sarbox) should, if they haven’t already, make Google reconsider this option.

Another area that makes most sense is mobile. Why? Well, there are several reasons including:

• With mobile phone adoption reaching 50% (see article), Google has a potential market of 3.3 billion users worldwide to target with its new OS.
• Competition is virtually non-existent. Mobile marketing is still at its early stage so Google can get in on the ground floor. If it needs a catalyst, it can use its cash to buy a company.
• Mobile devices are undergoing a major transformation. Users have always complained that these devices are not user friendly due their small screen size and speed. But with the introduction of the touch-screen interface of the newly popular iPhone and investments in mobile data infrastructure/networks, users are finding that the new breed of mobile phones are actually useful replacements for their laptops.

There’s no better place for Google to break into than the mobile world — it is the greatest opportunity that it has in the pipeline. Google just needs to get  focused about mobile and show its peers that it can be successful at more than just selling online search. Otherwise, it may face the same future that the has-been Altavista has suffered and that’s rough, especially for a company that has so much talent and potential.

Google has been taking market share from Yahoo!, the second most popular search engine according to Nielsen NetRatings (PDF format), so Yahoo! has fired their first salvo at Google. This week, Yahoo! introduced a new search utility, called the Search Assistant, to help guide visitors through a search (see image below). In essence, the Search Assistant is a drop-down menu that appears below the search bar on the Yahoo! home page whenever a user types in search terms (aka search query). The purpose of this utility is to improve the search results by either:

• Adding words to the search query. This functionality narrows the search results into a more targeted set.

• Suggesting alternate search terms. This functionality shifts the search results to related terms that may be lesser known, yet more relevant to the search query.

This tool could potentially have a significant impact on the search engine world. Why?

1. The Search Assistant will increase searches to well targeted sites. Most search queries are composed of only two to three terms. By adding terms to the existing query, the results will shift to sites that match more terms and are more focused.

2. The Search Assistant will improve the quality of search results. Since search engines are often used as the starting point to conduct online research on a specific topic, users may not be aware of industry-related terms. By introducing the user to related terms, the utility improves the quality of the results.

3. The Search Assistant will “level” the search engine marketing field. Webmasters are often focused on improving results for terms that receive significant traffic. By displaying results for lesser known terms, the search engine traffic will “shift” to lesser known sites, and in turn it will force webmasters of sites that have more generic terms to also optimize for more targeted terms.

4. The Search Assistant will eventually attract more visitors. Google beat out Yahoo! because of their clean search results page AND more relevant search results. Since search results pages virtually follow the same design, the improved search results will renew interest in Yahoo!.

Conclusion

According to internal tests, Yahoo! has discovered that 61% of users were more successful in their search when they used the Search Assistant. While that’s impressive by any measure, Yahoo! still lags in developing a competitive search engine spider (or, program that the search engine sends to collect information about each website). Google has one of the best spiders around, so if Yahoo! wants to regain market share it will have to focus their developers on that effort next.

I watched the movie ‘Click’ last night. Not so much because I was wanting to see it but, rather, because there wasn’t much else on.  I found it surprisingly relevant to my line of work and was inspired to write this post.  If you haven’t seen it, the premise is this: a stressed out Architect (Adam Sandler) is trying to get ahead at his firm by working hard for his smarmy boss (David Hasselhoff).  He gets frustrated one night due to the stress of balancing work and family.  He then flips out because he can’t find his TV remote so he sets out to buy a universal model. 

The only store open is a Bed, Bath and Beyond where, during his search for said remote controller, he comes across a door marked Beyond (I found this funny in and of itself – never thought about what the ‘beyond’ was).  Behind this door is Morty (Christopher Walken) – the resident ‘scientist’ of the ‘Beyond’ department.  He shows Mike (Adam) this new ‘universal remote’ and Mike soon discovers that the remote can control everything … EVERY thing.  He can turn down the volume of the dog, pause his kids, fast-forward his wife nagging at him.  He soon gets caught up in fast forwarding through all of the hassles of life so he can get his work done and get promoted.

AH, but this isn’t what I wanted to talk about.  After a while, the remote starts to ‘learn’ Mike’s preferences and reacts automatically to life’s situations.  Every time his wife starts yelling – fast forward.  Every time he goes to get ready for work – fast forward.  He can’t stop it.  It’s the way the remote is programmed.  So, Mike’s remote was supposedly programmed to be ‘smart’ … to learn his preferences and react automatically thus making his life easier.  But what happens is that his life becomes a huge mess.  He changes his mind about wanting to fast-forward through things, but the remote can’t unlearn. 

This so-called ‘personalization’ or artificial intelligence has been around in various forms for quite some time.  There was talk in the 70s about AI.  When the internet boomed personalization and customization were the rage.  Now Microsoft is coming out with a search engine feature  that will try to ascertain what you MEAN when you search the internet by comparing it with items on your desk top.  All of this makes the assumption that computers can predict your future behavior by examining your past behavior. 

While this theory holds true in many aspects of life, I don’t find that it does in ‘searching’ behavior.  At any given time, I may change my mind or focus or may be searching for something I may never search for again.  I may have documents on my computer from work that have nothing to do with personal searches.  I balk at the thought of someone – something – trying to second guess what my intentions are.  It’s like the former coworker of mine who insisted to me that we could tell what our users wanted by looking at what they did via our web logs. 

Examining past behavior only tells us what people did, not what they want to do.  I simply don’t understand the constant push to try to get computers to do something that, quite frankly, a lot of humans can’t even do.  Why should we expect a computer to know what we’re thinking and what we’re going to do?  Why would we WANT them to?  I certainly don’t.  Disagree?  Just watch ‘Minority Report’.

How many times have you searched the internet today? Ok .. now how many times have you helped out a charity today?

Well, if you use GoodSearch, those numbers should be the same. I have been a strict Google user for many years now, but today might be the day I change search engines. Powered by Yahoo!, GoodSearch allows you to enter the name of a charity each time you search. GoodSearch will then donate fifty percent of all ad revenue from that search to your chosen charity.

Granted, it only works out to about a penny per search, but it does add up over time. GoodSearch even lets you see how much it has added up to. Check out the Amount Raised page and it will show you how much your charity has received each month, each year and since the inception of the site. For example, they have donated $1,506.14 to my charity of choice, the Susan G. Komen foundation.

Not bad for a search engine.

Seen Ice Rocket yet? Yeah, its yet another search engine. It’s hard to turn around these days without running into a new search engine. I posted a while back about the newly designed Ask.com which I think is actually a great spin on search. Interestingly, I haven’t used it much since then. For some reason Google has some kind of hold on me that I can’t shake. It’s like that old group of friends from back in the day that you just can’t get away from, even though you know they’re no good and you should move on with your life but instead you set them up in your pad in Virginia so they can run illegal dog-fighting rings and then you’re not allowed to show up at training camp because you’re being indicted and…

Focus, Jeff, focus…ok, back on track. I’m not advocating that Ice Rocket is the new place you need to start your search (I haven’t really used it more than a few times so far), but they have started to make me realize how easy it is to take almost anything online and tie it into social networking/Web 2.0/etc. Check this out, when I search for “spunlogic” in their blog category, I get the following:

Notice the tabs they have which I’ve shown in their drop-down state. The first one I show is the “Subscribe” tab which allows you to create an RSS feed based on that search. Amazingly simple but who else is doing that? I quickly added this search to my Google homepage which looks like this:

Now I’ll be able to see the latest mentions of Spunlogic in blogs without having to go and run a new search. The second tab I highlighted is the “Share” tab, which allows me to share this search with other people. I added it to my Facebook page (which by the way, feel free to add me as a friend in Facebook), and it looks like this:

Now people that visit my Facebook page can see the same search results.
There are two points here that I think are important. First, the Web 2.0 phenomenon can seem very confusing to marketers but if you really think about it, there are very simple ways to take advantage of these things. Don’t over complicate it, just give people the ability to consume/share your content in the ways they are comfortable.

Which leads me to my second point - please stop trying to create your own social networks! People don’t want or need yet another place to create a profile and invest in another place to keep up with their friends and contacts. Instead, go where the user is. Allow them to add your content to the places they are already familiar with.

Has SEM arrived? Well, search engine marketing, absolutely.

What I’m referring to here is what Accenture - in the elegant codex of consultant speak - is calling Social Ecosystem Marketing. Basically, applying Gladwellian effect principals to advocates and peer groups, and amplifying your message to the most active and influential segment authorities. A blend of eCRM and oCRM (organic).

While I enthusiastically agree with moving from a mass, single segment approach to marketing in advocacy layers, especially for consumer package and household technology goods, what concerned me was a recent article in Adweek attempting – poorly – to demonstrate the power of this methodology (oh, and the impressively convoluted designation: Social Ecosystem Marketing – these people slay me).

The article cites a program Sprint and Unilever coauthored to target moms and, seemingly, their extended network of peers. Users were asked to log in and write shorts scripts about their days, with the crowd pleasing-est to be recorded by a cast that includes Leah Remini.

However, the piece cites as success 3,000 entries and 50,000 votes. So this is what constitutes the validation of Social Ecosystem Marketing? The story goes on to report that the program, “by definition” hit extroverted mothers who would invariably talk about Suave (the brand in play) to their girlfriends. But, in no way does the piece dig deeper into how the marketers know that the participants were extroverts, or if they extended the message at all to their net promoter sphere. Less an ecosystem, more like a bowl full of guppies.

Hilariously, the article goes on to tout the program as a way to gather consumer insights and ethnographic data through what users submitted. A new research paradigm: from declared behavior, to observed behavior, to self selected fictional  manners. Excellent.

Finally, about the name (if it sounds sorta like social science, it must be social science - but let’s play along): Two things an ecosystem relies on for sustainability are biodiversity – the more diverse a population, the more the system can absorb negative or high impact events; and stochastic phenomenon (basically, chance happenings). We hope that our marketing efforts don’t rely on chance, and marketing to Moms more likely means you’re hitting a far less diverse pocket of population than more (have you ever been to the local Outback Steaks during margarita night?).

Maybe I’m nitpicking. But if I think about the cost of just hiring Leah Remini for this program, forgetting everything else, don’t you think it would have been more cost effective to send 1 bottle of Suave to 5,000 local PTA presidents along with a packet of coupons for peer distribution?

Sampling…great. What’s elegant about that?

Leave it to Barry Diller (is it me or does he look like the grandfather on Everybody Loves Raymond?) to finally create a new way to search online and possibly compete with the almighty Google.  Ask.com’s new search engine has come up with what they call their “Ask 3D” engine - named for what they call the three dimensions of search: Expression, Results and Content.

Believe it or not, search is still one of the most underdeveloped areas in online and represents an enormous opportunity for improvement.  It’s true that Google helped to improve search engine results when Sergey and Larry cried “there must be a better way!” back in 1998, but even their new search engine was limited in that they focused on what was the current paradigm of online searching.  They made the results a little more relevant and certainly sped up the process of delivering the results.  But they did very little to help in understanding the direction of someone’s search.

Here’s an example of how Ask.com is breaking out of the norm of search engine results and delivering something different and IMO better than what we get today.  If someone searches for “golf” on Google they get the following type of results:

• Link to golf.com
• Link to PGA.com
• Link to PGATour.com
• Link to Wikipedia’s definition of golf
• Link to GolfChannel.com

Likely I didn’t search “golf” to find a link to one of those sites.  I was most likely trying to answer a question, such as “Who won the LPGA championship this past weekend” or “What are some funny golf jokes I can tell on the course this weekend” or “What are some golf courses near my house that I can try” or “How can I feel with one swing that I’m ready to go head-to-head with Tiger and with the next swing feel like I might be better off trying to play with my left hand because it can’t get any worse”.  If we can agree that people aren’t searching for links, but rather are searching to answer a question, then we can start to see the difference in what Ask.com is now producing.  Here is a sample of what you get from Ask.com when you search for “golf“:

• A “Narrow Your Search” column on the left with suggestions such as:
• Golf Tips
• Golf Courses
• Golf Jokes
• In the middle search area, the first result is “Latest Golf Headlines”, underneath which is essentially the same list of results to sites that Google listed
• On the right hand side you have Images, Shopping options and a definition for golf straight from Wikipedia

Overall this is a MUCH better experience than what you get from Google.  Did it take an extra 5 nanoseconds to come up? Sure, probably did.  Did I notice that?  No, though I’m only on my second cup of coffee so give me a few more hours and who knows.  But what Ask.com is attempting to do is answer my question, which is a huge shift in what the other engines do.

I guess you could say that Ask.com is finally living up to its name.  And since Google (which is actually googol) means the number one followed by 100 zeros, I guess they’re living up to their name too.