Andrew Lark

Does Online Advertising Work?

In my role as a marketer, I get to see mountains of data. Online advertising does work, but its incredibly inefficient. Chris Anderson – the TED guy – has some interesting ideas as to why it is so ineffective. It’s a must watch for any marketer. He notes:

• the advertising value associated with one hour of an Internet user’s time is less than $.10 and one third of that goes to Google. This number is low even compared to the challenged performance of television which comes to $.25 and print which is $1.00.
• current solutions, to impose a 15 or 30 second ad in the form of a video segment, is designed to engender frustration and even hatred, worse than pop up ads

One reason he cites is a preoccupation with reach and attention with little consideration with intensity. In other words, we do little to engage and create a relationship, instead favoring the impression or opportunity to see. And he is right.

Great ads tend to still be measured on their ability to secure attention – through creativity – rather than build a relationship through engagement. He has thoughts on how to solve this – and Aker expands on this over on his blog:

• Become part of the community rather than transmitting to it.
• Embrace radical openness – just like you see at TED conferences. While the conferences only touch 800 members twice a year by putting them online the talks engage more than 320 million viewers. I like his idea that firms have employees talk about their values and experiences, to let the audience inside. Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com may be a role model.
• Recognize why people attend to stimuli and are motivated to pass it on. Within our tech communities at Dell, for people to engage they have to be motivated to showcase their knowledge and smarts. Small rewards help with that. But the real driver is the simplicity and transparency of the tools.

For me it’s less a question of whether online advertising works or not, it is a question of how efficient it is.

Loving Wikipaterns - Are you a Gnome or a Leech?

Patterns as a lens through which to look at your Wiki and its users is a very cool idea.

Over the years I've consulted to all shapes and kinds of organizations on social media - on ethe of the things that participating forces is the need for organizations to actually learn how to have a conversation. Within this notion is the need to understand the role you might be playing at any given point - and the role others are playing. This is where the "patterns" come in - things like:

• People Pattern | Leech: A leech takes content out of the wiki and sends it to people another
  way, usually by email. This reduces peoples' inclination to visit it,
  and potentially creates confusion because information is coming from
  multiple sources.
• Adoption Pattern | Magnet: The magnet pattern involves having some content exclusively on the wiki to draw users to it.

Think about using Patterns to educate and manage your next Wiki or blog project - it will definitely help drive its success. Thanks to Mike for the pointer...

US Bloggers Set for Journalistic Shield

From El Reg...

A US bill that would shield journalists, including bloggers, from revealing their sources has cleared the House Judiciary Committee, an important stage in becoming law. There is already legislation in the UK which protects journalists and bloggers.

The US Free Flow of Information Act protects journalistic sources generally, but does include several exceptions regarding terrorism, national security, imminent death and trade secret leaks.

How The New Opinion Leaders Drive Buzz On The Web...

Another interesting piece, this time on how opinion leaders drive buzz...

Bloggers, discussion-board denizens, and social networkers are courted by marketers, who believe they build buzz that can make or break new products and Web sites. But there's growing controversy surrounding such efforts, and debate over just how much sway these opinion leaders really have...

... The notion that a small subset of individuals has disproportionate influence was formulated more than 50 years ago by academics Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz in their book Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications. But it was Malcolm Gladwell's 2002 best-selling The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference that popularized the notion. Gladwell divided people into connectors, people who bring other people together; mavens, who get a kick out of passing along knowledge to others; and salesmen, who like to persuade others of the validity of an idea or product. When taken altogether, Gladwell argued, these archetypes create "epidemics" that spread like viruses throughout the population, triggering massive trends that couldn't be achieve by traditional top-down imposition of messages on the general public. The Influentials, by Jon Berry and Ed Keller, published a year after The Tipping Point, comes to many of the same conclusions.

It's critical to understand, however, that all these proponents of opinion leaders as drivers of social and commercial trends aren't talking about media stars or personalities, but about otherwise seemingly ordinary members of a community who, through accumulation of knowledge or number of connections with others, act as catalysts for change.

Blog Censorship...

The Blog censorship raises its ugly head not once but twice today.

First, from GMSV, the US military is clamping down on bloggers requiring that superiors approve of Blog posts. There are a large portion of US employers that require this if the blog is on company time and about company matters. This clearly doesn't work for the Military who have a far broader reach.

"This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging. No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has -- its most honest voice out of the war zone. And it's being silenced." -- Retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War anthology, on a new Army directive requiring soldiers to submit the contents of blog posts, message board comments and e-mail to their superior officer for a security review.

I read a few of these blogs and have been surprised that they have been able to post so freely. But then, isn't free speech one of the things we are fighting for?

Second, Digg removes posts with code in order to avoid legal action - and then says they'll stop doing that and bear the consequences. Some call this move to keep the site up an act of commercial imperative over community responsibility. I call it commonsense expediency. The notion that bloggers can post whatever they like, anytime they like, is nonsense.

In a post, founder Kevin Rose published the key himself and said: "We've always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code. But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."

Soundbites & Links

• Are blogs headed for a slowdown? "Research by Gartner, according to the magazine, found that the number of blogs will top out at about 100 million this summer. But it also noted that some 200 million blogs are no longer being updated--many of them abandoned by their authors." What a terrible measure of the health of blogging. Lets look at the growth of posts, comments, video content. This is the equivalent of measuring the health of the Internet on the basis of URL registrations. Garbage.
• I've got some Joost beta invites if you'd like one. Still can't get it to work on Vista though.
• Interesting: Scribd. Scribd is a free online library where anyone can upload. Use our embeddable PDF player to publish and view documents right in your web browser.
• Like this from Nick:

"I like to think of the blogosphere as a vast, earth-engirdling digestive track, breaking down the news of the day into ever finer particles of meaning (and ever more concentrated toxins). Another word for "parasitic," in this context, is "critical." Blogging is at its essence a critical form, a means of recycling other writings to ensure that every nutritional molecule, whether real or imagined, is fully consumed. To be called a literary parasite is no insult. It's a compliment."

• Rod Launches Xero (beta) and scores a Kiwi sports star. Brilliant move.

Dialogue-Driven Communications

Great story in AdAge this morning on P&G moving to dialogue-driven communications. They get that it's no longer about "telling and selling".

Procter & Gamble's Jim Stengel described a major cultural shift that is turning the world's largest marketer into a starter of conversations and a solver of consumers' problems rather than a one-way communicator. "It's not about telling and selling," said the chief marketing officer of the company that once lived by that simple mantra. "It's about bringing a relationship mindset to everything we do."

Too often the focus is on a "digital or nothing" strategy - with an emphasis on moving into the interactive realms. Stengel is right that the imperative needs to be different: "the need for brands to be authentic, trustworthy and generous".

And I like this view: "Market share is trust materialized."

Getting Back On Deck... Thoughts On Corporate Blogging

Haven't been blogging much later - just very busy and on the road in Europe for a week with customers and partners.

Interesting pointer from Stowe to an interview by Paul Dunay with Jack Welch about corporate blogging. Jack's advice? Be authentic.

[from Buzz Marketing for Technology: EXCLUSIVE: Jack Welch Discussing Web 2.0 by Paul Dunay]

Buzz Marketing: So what is your advice for companies adopting new Web 2.0 technologies like RSS, social networking, podcasting and videocasting?

Jack: Just be authentic. Be clear in your vision, and have one message and one view that are authentic. I worked somewhere once where they had different messages for employees, analysts and the press. There should be only one message for everyone, and fight like hell to get that message across everywhere you go.

I was asked some similar questions on corporate blogging (which I've always thought was a bit of an oxymoron).

1. Is "ghost-blogging" a no-no: At the heart of any blog is authenticity and the writer's voice. Ghost-writing runs against the very point of a blog which is to engage in a conversation with the community that surrounds you and your company. You can't ghost a conversation...
2. Is there a place for anonymous corporate blog posts (like the Economist?): No. It's hard to have a conversation with an anonymous person. The intent of a blog is not to publish but to converse. I do see room though for participatory blogs where a diverse range of bloggers blog to a single site. I think this is practical for most companies and more interesting for the readers. The Economist is an anomaly in the publishing world.
3. PR person says blogging is “reputation management”. Right or wrong? That PR Person doesn’t understand blogging or the blogosphere – they are contextualizing it through their own lens. And, they are taking a relatively hackneyed descriptor – reputation management – and applying it to a world in which it has little relevance. Various marketing niche’s have tried it with their thesis – brand managers are doing the same with “brand management”. You only have a reputation in the sense that others assign it to you. You earn it. Of course, it could be argued that everything a company does from a communications standpoint is “reputation management” – and that is the problem with the notion. You would hope that blogging would improve and not destroy your reputation right? But does that mean blogging is in fact reputation management in disguise – not at all.
4. How about internal editing of blog posts? This is common. I encourage executives to keep others involved in their posts. They have legal and HR risks associated with every conversation so why not mediate some of that risk. What they do need to do though is time-bound others involvement and be clear on the kind of feedback they are looking for. Blog posts are like bananas – they bruise easily and are best served ripe. They need to let folks know they have but a couple of hours to respond – or a day. This shouldn’t be a highly iterative process that people take a week or so to get done. Too many companies treat the blog post like a press release – at least initially.
5. Other tips: First, participatory media and platforms – from blogs to wikis and podcasts – represent one of the most significant opportunities available to companies to transform their relationship with customers. They represent one of the most significant transformational opportunities since the Internet. Don’t constrain your engagement. Drive it into every corner of your business. Many of the companies I’ve worked with have seen as much value internally as they have externally.

Second. Just do it. Get going internally and let it evolve. If you get it, get going. Don’t spend hours on consulting fees or hanging with PR people, web teams and lawyers. The technology is available as a utility. A blog can be created in minutes.

Third. The rewards significantly outweigh the risks. But the biggest rewards come not from writing blog posts but rather the comments and resulting dialogue. You shouldn’t look at this as a publishing mechanism but rather a “conversation machine”.

Other tips:

• There are no corporate bloggers – there are just bloggers. Be real. Be authentic.
• Blogging is a conversation. You need to move from transmitting to participating.
• You don’t need a blog to be blogging. Start contributing to others blogs with comments and thoughts.
• Never, never, never spin, lie or pour smoke into the blogosphere. Straight-talk will win you kudos.
• Give it time. Don’t expect raving fans at day one. In fact, expect the opposite for a bit. The blogosphere is very critical and self-correcting. Take feedback and tune accordingly.
• Have fun. This is a relatively informal medium. Revel in it.

Thoughts... Comments...

Ten Stories The Media Are Ignoring

Some surprising stories in here including this one:

Halliburton charged with selling nuclear technology to Iran

Halliburton, the notorious U.S. energy company, sold key nuclear-reactor components to a private Iranian oil company called Oriental Oil Kish as recently as 2005, using offshore subsidiaries to circumvent U.S. sanctions. The story is particularly juicy because Vice President Dick Cheney, who now claims to want to stop Iran from getting nukes, was president of Halliburton in the mid-1990s, at which time he may have advocated business dealings with Iran, in violation of U.S. law.

Source: "Halliburton Secretly Doing Business with Key Member of Iran's Nuclear Team," Jason Leopold, GlobalResearch.ca, Aug. 5, 2005.

Southwest CEO Contributes to SWA Blog...

I think it's a first but Southwest's CEO clarifies recent remarks on their seating policy on the "Nuts About Southwest" blog. This is a good move - gets the message out unfiltered, start's up a conversation with customers, and delivers more transparency.

disclosure: Southwest are a Group Lark client and did some consulting awhile back on the blog.