Andrew Lark

INFLUENCEABLES

Johnnie has a bit on the coverage of Duncan Watt's ideas on Influencers vs. Influenceables... If you haven't read it, you should... His view is that that ordinary people have just as much influence as influential people have in making something popular. Cory, Guy, Seth, Spike, and scores of others have all chimed in.

On The Media interviewed Clive Thompson who wrote the Fast Company article that compellingly explains Duncan Watts’ word-of-mouth randomness theory. In the radio interview (available online here), Clive summarizes Duncan’s complex theory this way,

“It’s not how influential each person is, it’s how influenceable everyone else is. If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start it.”

It really got me thinking.  I'm ready to hold Gladwell's ideas and Watt's in my head at the same time.  I don't think they are exclusive.

What I don't agree with is that society is "ready" to embrace trends - especially commercial trends.  That's what marketers do.  They prepare society for trends and then activate those trends... Kind of like Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm.

There are instances where society becomes ready to embrace a trend - like Green -- and smart marketers figure out how to leverage that.

Why 47% of Campaigns Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeeds

Jon Beattie of Marker is up at the Future of Online Advertising Conference - he's put together a great summary of a keynote on why 47% of campaigns fail - a summary of the presentation by Greg Stuart at the Future of Online Advertising conference today in New York. Greg is the former CEO, IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and co-author of “What Sticks“.

He claims: Over US$112 billion ad spend is wasted out of a total of $295bn - Advertisers and agencies use the excuse of “publicity” to justify a failed campaign.

Here are the three highlights I liked:

1. Did the campaign message get through? 31% of campaigns failed
2. Out of 5 advertisers (P&G, J&J, Kraft, Nestle, McDonald’s) that did creative research of online campaigns: 1 was okay; 2 found half didn’t work; 2 all ads failed and had to start again
3. McDonald’s took 20 per cent from TV put 13.4% into online kept the rest and increased awareness by 5 per cent when it had previously leveled out using traditional media.

That Timesheet Thing Again

Stumbled onto this piece (sub required) from Peter Arnell that hits nicely at what I keep ranting on timesheets and agency billing about. In this case, replace hours billed with request for a full time equivalent employee:

It is time to reconcile archaic FTE accounting with the talent-driven, multidimensional world we live in today. There is more creative doing, more crossing of traditional boundaries, more thinking and contributing by talent who multitask and participate on many levels at once. Great ideas are the cultural currency that clients will profit from in the end, and attaining this level of contribution does not run on a clock or time sheet.

Let's put a typical staffing allocation formula in terms of MasterCard:
An experienced account director: FTE of 1
A sane creative team: FTE of 3.2
A person with one good idea: Priceless

The goal of clients should be to seek what is priceless at a cost agencies and their talent deserve.

Source: Advertising Age - CMO Strategy - Peter Arnell: Find Value in Results You Cannot Measure

Measurement Landscape Shifts

One of the two leaders in communications measurement - CYMFONY - just got gobbled up. Consolidation was inevitible in this market - and as I've said before, it won't serve communicators as well as it will serve marketers.

Ultimately what we needed was an evolution of communications measurement that was an inch wide and a mile deep. Maybe we will get that... But back to the announcement:

Steven Fredericks, TNS MI president and CEO, said the company had been looking to acquire a company in the market influence analytics space for about a year and decided on Cymfony because "they were the most advanced in terms of the technology."

"We decided we had to go and get the leader [in the space]," he added. "We think this whole area is going to explode in the next couple of years. We think it's going to reach the tipping point very quickly and we wanted to target it."

Now, CYMFONY is a very fine company with some great talent and neat innovations - I'm not sure there is much credence to them being the most advanced in technology or being the leader in the space, but then his guess is as good as mine on both fronts. What I do agree absolutely with is that this validates the incredible investment of time and money made by the big measurement vendors.

Where CYMFONY had established an enviable lead is in measuring conversations across blogs and in the various recommendation zones of sites such as Amazon. When coupled with core media data, this is immensely powerful to everyone from product management through customer service. Brand tracking is just one dimension that this capability delivers. CYMFONY were on the right track in delving into product monitoring, reputation analytics, and marketing performance measurement.

The real rub here is that the kind of data and insight CYMFONY and Biz360 have been generating is of immense value to media planners and marketers as a whole. TNS are now armed with the most complete set of tools for the CMO and that will make for a pretty compelling proposition that others will have trouble competing with - especially the smaller vendors who are already under substantial pressure. As Katie says, the giants are lining-up.

We needed a powerhouse and we got one. Congrats to TNS and go for it - you have a very large market waiting for what you have just created. In many respects they could be answering a question that many of us have had about this space for some time - "is communications measurement a feature of a broader marketing performance and analytics tool-kit, or, a stand-alone industry serving the communicator...?"

BTW, hat-tip to CYMFONY's PR team - they did a great job of SEO optimizing the announcement and complementing the press release with blog posts and a podcast.

Prediction Markets at confab.yahoo

Good read over at Read/Write web and the Software Abstractions Blog. Quick summary.

1. Prediction Markets are a great mechanism to extract knowledge already present within the organization and to make better predictions
2. These markets highlight both the collective wisdom which no one person knows individually, and common knowledge which no one is willing to talk about openly
3. They work properly only when they have an adequate number of knowledgeable participants who work individually
4. Participants must have reasonable incentives (financial or social) to make their efforts worthwhile
5. If the group is large enough, the ratio of experts vs amateurs does not have much impact; often, the real experts are unexpected
6. The results of a Prediction Market are probabilities; they must be confirmed through other, external, means

Loved the idea of tracking team progress against a goal using collective wisdom and predictive markets theory. This should be a feature in all project management software.

A Manifestation of the Medium

Interesting idea Tim:

You may think I’m getting obsessed with Google News these days. I assure you I’m not but I did think it was quite revealing that when I searched on ‘Edelman Walmart blog’ I got twelve news responses. When I used the site to search for blogs with the same criteria I got 1,458 responses. That means for every news item there were over 120 blog mentions. Going back to my HP item the ratio was more like 1.5 blog mentions to each news item. I guess this shows how the blogging world works.

Neither of us have the time to validate this but I suspect that they vast majority of the blog posts are "echoes".

The echo in traditional media tends to be word of mouth and email chatter. The echo in the blogosphere tends to be text reposts - as in "Nice post on Tim's blog - I agree...".

So, while it would appear that there is more activity, that activity is a manifestation of the medium. The blogosphere in effect becomes a barometer of interest with one of your audiences - bloggers, and their constituents. What it isn't - necessarily - is a reflection of interest by your target audience.

See Katie on this as well...

Measuring Engagement

The degree to which readers engage with media should be a critical factor in understanding the value of that media. My view has been that the degree to which actions intended from any marketing activity - say downloads - occur is proportional to participation in that media by readers/ views/ the community. For this reason I like Scoble's idea on measuring media engagement.

This will require a step-change in thinking by communicators. Rather than looking at the reach of publications, we need to think in terms of participation.

Illuminating Buzz's experience in downloads driven by USA Today vs. Scoble is our experience with online tech media. From them, the traffic is nominal. But a post by James Governor of Redmonk referring to LogLogic on average drives a 14% spike in traffic to the site. This is just one dimension of participation and probably the most base level (traffic, link push-through, etc.).

Where Scoble starts going with this idea is really interesting and where you get to the heart of participation. Do people not only scoot from James to us but when they arrive do they start doing things - like downloading, viewing, registering, commenting? That is where traffic becomes exponentially available.

So which is more valuable to me. InfoWorld or Monkchips? The lazy answer is both. But in resource constrained start-ups you punt on the media driving hardcore participation.

Measuring Blogs...

One of the most frequently asked of me at conferences and the like is "how do you measure the effectiveness of blogs. Charlene Li at Forrester weighs in on a methodology to quantify the return on investment in blogging starting with:

1. return on impressions
2. return on media impact
3. return on target influence
4. return on earned media.

This is an interesting view in that it looks at the ROI element of the equation. Some of the other areas we also see benefits in are:

1. Reduced cost of customer acquisition: customers are looking at the blog for education and insight reducing the requirement for hard materials and ongoing dialogue with sales engineers. In short, blogs reduce the sales cycle. We can measure this in hours of people time taken back.
2. Reduced SEO costs: By participating in other blogs (especially those of pundits and analysts) we see more inbound traffic against key topic areas reducing our dependency on paid search to drive traffic. We've seen this go as high as 25%.
3. Participation reduces research costs: Closed blog communities are a great source of insight for polling and thought taking. They reduce the cost of insight.

Charlene points over to Fraser Likel's paper “Perspectives on the ROI of Media Relations Publicity Efforts” which also has some good thinking in this area.

I suggest to companies that they start by aligning the blog goals with business goals and let the metrics flow from there.

Engagement Level - A New Metric of Success for Online Advertising

Worth a read. Measuring engagement should be a priority for communicators as well. And I would extend the mandate to include all marketing.

Measurement Moves

Measurement leader Cymfony today launched its Influence 2.0 initiative with a new set of analytics - Market Influence Analytics:

Messages in the Influence 2.0 world must run the gauntlet of traditional and social media sources on the way to reach their intended target. Along the way they are amended, appended, extended and up-ended. Understanding the paths of influence and how this affects the audience's reception of the message requires a different kind of service than PR measurement or CGM monitoring.

Taking a quick look at what they are up to, Cymfony is making some strong moves toward understanding the power of recommendation (their measurement engine has a unique advantage here) that should make them attractive to any F1000 looking to track influence vs. opportunities to see. Here is what they have to say on the initiative:

Cymfony's goal is to kick off an industry-wide effort to fully understand the changes underway, and educate companies, brands, marketers, PR professionals and others who aren't as deeply immersed in these changes as we are.

This is a great initiative and I like what they are up to here. Igniting a dialog is as important as launching the ideas and solutions. Understanding recommendation and its relationship to OTS should be something that every communicator is looking at. Moreover, it extends the communications measurement mandate into the heart of product, brand and marketing management.

You can read more in the first chapter of their eBook and are encouraging you to contribute to the conversation via their wiki. And they've updated their site along with new blog.

Deb Eastman of Biz360 has also launched a blog.

Technorati : Marketing Measurement, PR, Public Relations

Media Rating Points...

I've been meaning to write on the recently proposed Media Rating Points system. If you are a small business that can't afford to pay for a media measurement solution, or an agency that needs a means of communicating results, then this could work well. I don't like the idea of rating coverage... this introduces a layer of opinion and complexity not needed. Focus on opportunities to see and frequency of messages.

The MRP™ system includes templates and reach data. The templates can be downloaded free of charge by clicking here.

Don Bartholomew has a summary of the evaluation/measurement findings from the latest GAP IV study from the Strategic Public Relations Center at USC Annenberg.

Key findings include that respondents spent only 4% of their budgets on evaluation. In terms of measuring PR performance (articles generated etc.) this could be right but if this number includes measuring impact (did we change minds, move markets, influence decisions?) then it is way low. That number should be closer to 15-20%.

Read Don's post for a thorough analysis and the differing metrics used by PR departments that report to the C-suite and those that report to Marketing. Having run both functions in a number of companies I was always impressed how the brand teams started with deep research into the customer. The PR teams generally started with a brainstorm. I'll say no more.

Katie has more on this...

Technorati : PR, PR Measurement
Del.icio.us : PR

Edelman Gobbles Up A&R Partners

A&R are one of the most highly regarded independent PR agencies in the Valley. At least one part of that statement stands, but not the independent bit. Edelman is the new owner, completing a much needed strengthening their tech capabilities that makes them a real force now in the Nth American tech market. Bizarrely the story is running on PRWeek and on Steve's blog, nothing on Edelman or A&R.

Edelman's tech footprint also includes Zeno with long-term clients like Oracle. So it's now Next Fifteen with brands like Bite, Outcast and Text 100 pitted against Edelman with Zeno and A&R. Are we looking at the two break-away holding company brands in tech worldwide?

While Edelman will have to deal with the inevitable integration issues that come with any merger(retaining clients and staff, and dealing with conflicts - the big three), what it looks like they are going to do is similar to Next Fifteen - that is, keep the brands independent and fuel their growth. Merging Edelman's tech group into A&R solves another issue - the conflict with Microsoft.

More than anything though, this looks to be about fueling growth through talent acquisition. I meet with plenty of agency heads and they are all saying the same thing. Can't find great talent, can barely find good talent. This is a talent starved market.

Good move by Edelman.

Using Statistics

HBR has a nice little piece on using statitics that is very applicable to anyone undertaking measurement for communications or marketing. The central tenents are:

1. Know what you know-and what you're only asserting

2. Be clear about what you want to discover

3. Don't take causality for granted

4. With statistics, you can't prove things with 100 percent certainty

5. With statistics, you can't prove things with 100 percent certainty

The last one is important in communicating upwards to management. Does anyone care you increased coverage 3.2%? Probably not.

Technorati : PR

Updated: Edelman In Deal with Technorati

Steve has provided answers to my questions in the comments section - so here goes a quick update:

Rubel reports that Edelman has a deal to "fast-track the development of localized versions of their offering in German, Korean, Italian, French and Chinese." I'm not sure what this means so a couple of questions for Steve & Co.:

• Is Edelman paying or funding software development at Technorati? What specifically does fast-track mean? Or to use Peter's words "support"? Is this a case of simply paying to lock-up Technorati for a period of time? Or as Stowe alludes to, is this about getting Technorati some needed cash for global expansion? Edelman is paying to accelerate Technorati's deployment in Europe - as such the probably deserve the short exclusive they are getting.
• What does "exclusive" mean? Does this mean the only way to get access to pre-beta Technorati in those countries is via Edelman? The success of so many Web2.0 properties - Technorati included - has been predicated on getting not particularly robust products into the market allowing people to participate. Isn't this going to turn a public tool into a proprietary one for a period of time - is it about, at least initially, supporting the growth of the blogosphere for Edelman clients? Why not open it to everyone? Reading between the lines of Steve's remarks it seems unlikely that Technorati could have done this as quick without Edelman's support - so, fair game on the exclusive. Ultimately we benefit from a faster time to market on Technorati services.
• Doesn't this call into question Technorati's independence and neutrality. I'm sure its just a coincidence but Steve's favorite blogs are featured on Technorati's home page this morning. In fairness to Steve, this is a rolling banner. Fair response from Steve. This will be an issue for Technorati going forward.

It is great that Edelman is lending its weight to such an important initiative. I'm a big fan of Richard and Steve. But fortunately they aren't the only ones so this does seem to run counter to the notion of "participatory" and open.

While a propriety lock-in to Technorati's international versions is a terrific coup for Edelman - and I am sure is a very profitable commercial relationship for Technorati - doesn't it leave bloggers and other companies as deeply engaged in the blogosphere out in the cold? Steve's comments point to this accelerating the availability of services - Edelman's price is cold cash. Our price is that they get a bit of an exclusive for something we have to wait less for. Seems fair in the context of the commercial realities of the blogosphere.

More reading at PR Squared.

Blog-Based Analysts Shake Up IT Research

According to InformationWeek. They're right! We not only get huge value from the likes of James Governor - but we also benefit from the conversation they ignite in the market. On any given day they can account for around 5% of our web traffic. We're no Sun or IBM, but that's a ton of clicks.

A new breed of IT analysts is sharing insights over the Internet, leaving traditional research firms trying to catch up using the same methods....

...E-pundits such as Vinnie Mirchandani, Dennis Howlett, James Governor, and Stephen O'Grady use the Web to promote their perspectives on topics that suit their different areas of expertise. Through blogs, they open up dialogues in which ideas are exchanged with IT pros, bloggers, and fellow analysts. And they rely on their years of experience to give them credibility and win client contracts that fund their online efforts: Mirchandani was with Gartner, Howlett spent 30 years in finance and accounting, and Governor and O'Grady were analysts at Illuminata.

..."Analysis isn't and shouldn't be a one-way conversation," McGovern says. "Blogging allows meaningful dialogue to emerge and allows others to gain additional insights in a highly transparent way. I don't get the opportunity to read blogs while at work, but at home, I passionately follow James Governor of RedMonk (MonkChips), Brenda Michelson of Seybold (Elemental Links), and Dan Blum of the Burton Group (Identerati) as they are highly relevant to not only work but personal interests."

One thing they don't touch on is the ability of these firms to touch the long tail of tech. By this I mean start-ups. This is a woefully under served segment of the tech market - by media and analysts. These analysts aren't tied to focusing on the basis of extremely large paying customers. In addition, they aren't tied by conventional products - as a start-up I can only afford one set of written insight and certainly can't afford to pay per inquiry or briefing. With these new generation analysts the value comes from the conversation and forward looking insight. They aren't as much rear window facing (basing comment on client insight) they are aggregating conversations from across the "network" to form opinions and views.

Now that is worth paying for.

Six Degrees Of Reputation

Great review on the use and abuse of online review and recommendation systems.

This paper reports initial findings from a study that used quantitative and qualitative research methods and custom–built software to investigate online economies of reputation and user practices in online product reviews at several leading e–commerce sites (primarily Amazon.com). We explore several cases in which book and CD reviews were copied whole or in part from one item to another and show that hundreds of product reviews on Amazon.com might be copies of one another. We further explain the strategies involved in these suspect product reviews, and the ways in which the collapse of the barriers between authors and readers affect the ways in which these information goods are being produced and exchanged. We report on techniques that are employed by authors, artists, editors, and readers to ensure they promote their agendas while they build their identities as experts. We suggest a framework for discussing the changes of the categories of authorship, creativity, expertise, and reputation that are being re–negotiated in this multi–tier reputation economy.

Ten Blogs | PR & Marketing

I'm frequently asked what blogs I follow regularly. The simple answer would be to direct people to my blogroll - but I haven't updated that in ages. Another item for the "to-do on a rainy day" list. So, I'm going to start a short series of posts with my top ten blogs in different categories.

My blog reader is a bit like the New York Times Sunday edition - very diverse. I enjoy the serendipity of stumbling across all kinds of relevant content. So I'm going to start with the practical - the marketing and PR blogs I scan daily.

I keep my hundreds of feeds in different folders - these are pulled from my "Read Today" folder and are the ones I spend time on most.

1. Micro Persuasion: I look at Steve's blog mainly for breaking Web2.0 and PR news. I'd say I read it less as a blog and more as a source of news. I also like what Jeremy as to say over at PopPR and also Johnnie Moore.
2. Richard Edelman - 6 A.M: Great views and opinions. I like Richard's perspective on the industry. His postings aren't that frequent but I also enjoy reading Harold Burson.
3. KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog: Katie is the pioneer of so much of what we see today in measurement. If you are into accountable communications and marketing, you should start here.
4. Keith O'Brien: I like his writing in PRWeek and like the blog.
5. Holmes Blog: I breathed a sigh of relief when PRWeek launched in the US - it just seemed so wrong that all the US PR Industry had was a facsimile newsletter. Saying that, Paul's writing on PR issues and trends is unmatched - the .pdf Holmes Report is a must to subscribe to.
6. Armadgeddon: AR is the least appreciated element of the communications and marketing mix - yet the analysts are as, if not more, influential than the media. The dialogue is good and the observations relevant - if not a tad AR-biased. Some of the posts on transparency and the relationship between Analysts and paying companies are off the mark in my mind.
7. James Governor: Not a marketing or PR blog but James' observations on AR and marketing are very thoughtful.
8. The 463: A tech policy blog. We need more of them. Also read Tim Dyson's blog - leader of Next Fifteen, the mother ship for brands like Bite and Outcast.
9. The Long Tail & Gladwell: Again, not strictly marketing blogs but that is the lens through which I look at them.
10. Marketing Headhunter: Lots of good thoughts from Harry.

OK - so there is more than ten... Ooops, forgot one for all PR and media types. Read Jay Rosen whenever he posts.

Google Trends & Measurement

Google trends is going to be of interest to any communicator interested in measurement. It's a quick way to see where attention is being directed and what folks are interested in.

Steve has a big post on this and a good case study on using the different blog measurement tools. He makes my case - visually - that the next big frontier in communications measurement will be correlation. That is the "mash-up" of a variety of communications measurement tools and sources to provide an integrated view of performance and effects of different programs.

I'm going to add a post on this over the weekend that explains some of my thinking but here are a couple of other takeaways I would add to the list as I correlate our marketing data:

• News drives conversation and searches (not a big revelation) - agree with Steve.
• It's important to set up searches for a new brand before it launches, just to make sure it doesn't leak - Yes. You also need to consider the impact of brands or search terms that deliver many results. These cloud the output.
• It takes time to go from conversation to and searches to actual traffic. Yes.
• You can benchmark your product launch against that of a competitor using these tools to see how you did. You can also layer in clip report data.
• If you are in tech, look at the impact of some of the next generation analysts - the impact in terms of traffic to your site can be remarkable.
• Measure the relative cost of SEO vs. other elements of the marketing mix using these tools.
• Think about configuring landing pages on your site for news announcements. Don't expect people to hop around your site aggregating the various elements of what you are talking about. Your blog is a perfect place to do this.

A Different Kind Of Measurement

The results of monitoring and measuring emotion and sentiment in the blogosphere afford all kinds of opportunity to rethink visual rendering of data. Do you use a bar chart? A table? Take a look at these projects. Some remarkable graphics and thinking.

The first is Lovelines. "Through large scale blog analysis, Lovelines illuminates the topography of the emotional landscape between love and hate, as experienced by countless normal humans keeping personal online journals."

"Using a data collection engine created by the artists for their recent collaboration, We Feel Fine, Lovelines examines thousands of blogs every few minutes to find expressions of love and hate, posted by all manner of people.

Created by Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar, projects like these show that measurement is in fact an art, and moving.

See more at number27.org.

Plagiarism Rampant In the Blogosphere

Plagiarism is apparently rampant in the Blogosphere... Oh dear...

One thing that is clear to me as I scan blogs is that few are content originators. Most are what I call "content illuminators". These are people who take other content and cast a new light on it with thoughtful observations and commentary. The majority seem to be "content pointers" - directing readers to news and views of interest.

The BG piece seems to confuse, at times, plagiarism and content origination. There is a difference between pointing to and illuminating others work and representing their content as your own. Maybe I misread the piece. My rules are simple - where you exclusively became aware of something via another blogger, show a little link love. And, do unto others as you'd have them do to you - don't knowingly steal content.

Steve covers the BG story. Nicholas writes an open letter to someone stealing his content. There is a piece in the Merc this morning titles "Of Plagiarism and Punishment".

And, there is the story on the front page of the FT last week (Lucy Kellaway's piece in the FT is worth the subscription price alone...) of the Raytheon CEO who's book - Unwritten Rules of Management - Raytheon distributed more than one-quarter of a million copies of. As the FT tells it:

"... a young engineer who spotted that 17 of the rules bore an uncanny resemblance to a book called The Unwritten Laws of Engineering published in 1944 by W.J. King. The young man wrote this up in his blog. From there, the story made it into newspapers." FT

Eventually his board nailed him by requiring him to forgo his pay rise for the year. It seems they have pulled the Rules, but here is a pretty good synopsis.

Gladwell is also onto Plagerism. Plagergate is upon us... He points back to an earlier New Yorker piece which is worth a read... He flags the relevant passage:

. . . this is the second problem with plagiarism. It is not merely extremist. It has also become disconnected from the broader question of what does and does not inhibit creativity. We accept the right of one writer to engage in a full-scale knockoff of another—think how many serial-killer novels have been cloned from "The Silence of the Lambs." Yet, when Kathy Acker incorporated parts of a Harold Robbins sex scene verbatim in a satiric novel, she was denounced as a plagiarist (and threatened with a lawsuit). When I worked at a newspaper, we were routinely dispatched to "match" a story from the Times: to do a new version of someone else's idea. But had we "matched" any of the Times' words—even the most banal of phrases—it could have been a firing offense. The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.

Gluttony...

Is good, really good. And do, here are three food blogs I'm liking:

Chocolate & Zucchini
Holy Shitake
The Food Section
Delicious (not a blog but a great mag...)
Gastroblog

Foodies

Thanks to Noel for this Chron story on Food Blogs. Great read. I've been tracking a few myself - the writing and reporting in this space is of a really high standard.

• 101 Cookbooks - stunning design
• Vinography - lotsa wine
• Bourrezvisage - Lotsa good links
• Movable Feast
• Cooking With Amy
• Becks Posh Nosh
• ChezPim - Really great site
• Beaucastel - A Wine site
• Cuisine - Not a blog, from the NZ Magazine, Cuisine - a real stunner...
• Jamie Oliver (thanks to (Fergus)