I landed last night in spite of some nasty weather over Chicago and will be blogging the show today and tomorrow. Stop by booth #406 if you’re interested in meeting some of the Telligent team.

I’m also presenting tomorrow on "Choosing A White Label Social Network", and will be blogging some of that content here later today.  The CoverItLive Widget below will have my updates over the next few days, so send me some comments or let me know if you have any questions. Hope to meet some of you in Chicago.

Last week Reuters UK reported that Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) rejected the latest bid from WPP, the world’s second largest ad firm.
Sounds like they’re closer to becoming bedfellows with WPP’s German counterpart, GfK.

I thought WPP chieftain Martin Sorrell covered all the bases as he described his firm’s motivation:

“Growth is being driven by continuous pressure on clients to raise
their like-for-like revenue growth and to optimise their investment
against a backdrop of changing demographics, decreasing product
differentiation, intensifying global competition, the fragmentation of
the media and the impact of digital development.”

The forces at work here are disruptive to say the least. The big agencies are getting pressure from clients to move away from costly print and TV ads and move to more conversational forms of marketing and advertising. It’s not enough to just deploy a microsite and track page views. Customers want real-time information and they’re demanding it on their terms.

If I were a mid-market or large brand, I’d cut down on the one-off microsites and email-based newsletters and move the conversation to more interactive environments. Many companies have figured out that tapping the collective wisdom of their customer base provides huge value. Evidence of this is the large number of customer-driven communities and B2B networks getting sponsorship deals from consumer brands and software companies. It’s likely these communities are where your customers are lurking anyway or they’re building their own versions. Why not engage with them on their terms and in their environments?

I’m not calling for the death of traditional marketing techniques - unless there’s no infusion of 21st Century smarts.

Yesterday’s BusinessWire breakfast was proof that some PR firms do get it. It also proved if the jury’s still out on their capabilities, they’re plugging in the right people to execute. Enter Waggener Edstrom and their new digital duo Jim Olson and David Almacy. Both were asked by BusinessWire to host their so-called “wireside” chat about PR in the Digital Age. I actually Twittered some of the session from my Blackberry Pearl, at one point looking up during a post as Almacy remarked that, “some of you might be Twittering this presentation right now.” I looked up to see a bunch of blank stares. Oh well, nice try David.

Olson, a big brand guy and former VP at Overture, kicked off the discussion with his list of digital trends. One of the things he confirmed was what we’re all seeing happen in front of us — video. As he put it, the web now is in full motion and has a voice. Video is mainstream.

( Jim Olson and David Almacy | Pics taken by Blackberry Pearl)

The second point was the broad notion of “interactivity“, where users are now part of the mix — like it or not. Citing the oft-used citizen journalism term, Olson explained how media companies have had to rethink the way news is produced and delivered.

Individual Addressability was another term Olson used to describe the ability to tailor content to the right constituents. This is a big one in a lot of ways. It brings the Long Tail into the fold and helps all of us get a clearer picture of the impact of our marketing and advertising spend. Olson quoted the old advertising saying, “I know half my advertising dollars are wasted - I just don’t know which half!” Well folks, that’s a changing. And that’s the lure of content with digital DNA.

The last few points dealt with the potential ramifications of a growing global internet community and the proliferation of mobile devices. On the former, Olson pointed to statistics showing how China will soon surpass the U.S. with more than 200M internet users. The numbers aren’t so surprising for a country of more than a billion, but the message was more about preparation. Think about the challenges (cultural, technological) that poses for U.S. marketers. Olson was dead on titling the slide, “The Revolution is not being televised.”

The last digital piece he dissected was the mobile movement, drawing a definitive stake in the sand by proclaiming, “Mobile is the new PC”. He reminded us more than half the planet’s mobile devices are in developing countries. A fitting end to his pitch was a quote from GE’s CEO - “I want my communicators to be role models for creativity and innovation.”

David Almacy took the floor next with a little faster tempo. A well-traveled political advisor and former web guru for the White House, Almacy came across as part geek and part strategist. That’s just what the Doctor ordered for the big PR agencies being called on by the big brands.

His White House 2.0 discussion was fascinating. It’s daunting to even think of developing a Web 2.0 strategy for the leader of the free world. Even more interesting was hearing Almacy talk about the early backlash from the President’s office when he launched the first Presidential podcasts. Once the first distasteful threads started to bubble up, he was asked to remove the content from iTunes. But in true web evangelist form, Almacy stuck to his guns, finally winning out after the comments evened out with an acceptable positive and negative mix.

I told my colleagues, we can’t take the podcast down, we’re on the front page of iTunes!

The other thing Almacy knifed through was the bevy of social media tools and services. He obviously caught me nodding as he rattled off all the newest Web 2.0 kids on the block, everything from Digg to Twitter and Pownce. The takeaway though wasn’t being jargon-capable, it was more about curiosity and exploration. As he put it..

I only have a few Tweets out there but I had to see what it was all about. 

And that’s really the sense I got from yesterday’s event. There was a lot of tire-kicking, a lot of curiosity, and heck of a lot of passion. It was apparent the room was full of communicators trying to keep a foothold on the shifting ground beneath them.

A few weeks back we worked an Art Fest in Addison,Tx, helping promote my sister-in-law’s jewelry works. And like any good marketer, my head’s always on a swivel absorbing the ways companies try to reach us. My wife and I liked the fact the Jack FM set-up was green and clean. No emissions, low power usage, etc.

 
And speaking of clean, the other image is from Micro Target Media and comes straight to you from a genuine Addsion, Tx Port-o-Potty. It cracked me up that the PROs — portable restaurant operators — got into the acronym game. But apparently I should have done my homework. PRO is a common term as you can see in the comment thread.

And you wonder why social media and brand measurement is so hot. It took what, less than 48 hours for somebody to track me down. WOW.

I haven’t been a big mind mapper in the past, mostly because of the complexity of the applications. In Web 2.0 times, anything with a learning curve of more than a half hour and my login credentials grow stale. But MindMeister, an Ajax-based mapping tool, has converted me. At least in the short-term. I used it a while back to document some of the things I  found myself doing over and over on certain projects and thought I’d just publish to the web. It’s by no means meant to be comprehensive, it’s more about open sourcing my social media workflow. And on a Web 2.0 app note, I really like the Twitter integration allowing you to be alerted of updates to the mind map via SMS. That’s smart.

I noticed some of the buzz surrounding Ad Age’s Digital Marketing Conference this week and couldn’t help but think of Jerry Bowles’ recent post about the Social Media Content Audit. He makes the point that a lot of the stuff we need to establish a networked community is right under our nose.

  Cadillac’s top ad exec agreed.

..some marketers might be surprised to see the communities that already exist online. Liz Vanzura, global director of advertising for Cadillac, found 300 Cadillac communities in Yahoo Groups and 1,500 YouTube videos tagged Cadillac when she went out to create MyCadillacStory.com. They were already there. We were just providing a unique forum where they could interact using video technology.

Could finding the starting point for social media strategy be as simple as combing through an annual report and a few press releases? You bet. When you’re evangelizing how the new web creates value, you better know your client’s business and be able to identify the folks most likely to champion the cause. Good job Jerry.

This post has been marinating for a while in my Live Writer queue. It’s one of those “take a step back and quickly observe” posts. You know, when you realize there’s knowledge to be gleaned from some of your web creations. And with some recent developments in the internet advertising space, I thought it was a good time to resurrect some quick observations. In this case, I’m referencing Google’s AdSense, but I run ads from the other usual suspects as well — namely MSFT, Yahoo, and FeedBurner.

Before you call me a sell out, hear me out on some coffee-shop observations

—————————————————————————————–

1. Competitive Intelligence

This is an easy one. Once you get rid of your paranoia and turn off Google’s competitive ad filter, your competition will be at your blog’s doorstep shortly.

2. Marketing and Advertising insight

Take a quick look at the kind of ads your site serves. Once your content  settles and gets indexed, an aggregate theme begins to develop as you look at the ads. Many times this helps me understand if my content is providing the right context for you, my user.

3. Product discovery and selection

My colleagues and I joke about this one. Anytime we have some downtime and get in an exploratory mode for new webby tools and services, we just take a quick spin through 5 or 10 pages and voila!

4. Business Development

This one’s also terribly apparent. You’re a digital agency and you provide email marketing services. I probably shouldn’t admit this and open source my email marketing strategy, but one of the solutions we’re using for a few of our clients is IntelliContact. How’d we find them? Yep, the ad running on my blog.

5. Brand and Community Building

As you begin to develop consistency in your content, you’ll notice the ads begin to tell your story. WOW Feed has a lot of Web 2.0, social media, and agency-oriented content. If you look around you’ll usually notice some very targeted Ads on at least a few of those topics. Users, in turn, get a quick sense of what the site’s all about..a sense of what conversations are taking place.

FAST Search & Transfer is betting there’s a lot of folks tired of Google’s chokehold on the internet advertising market. The search provider is pitching to put you in control of your own Ad network. Translation: Quit paying third parties like Google and Yahoo.

The Norway-based company released news yesterday morning of AdMomentum, billed as an alternative to internet advertising’s big three - Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. IDC’s Sue Feldman commented on contextual advertising and described FAST’s Ad platform:

Online ad revenue drives the digital economy, and no one has a lock on that revenue stream today,” said Feldman, IDC’s Vice President for Search and Digital Marketplace Technologies. “Online advertising – particularly contextual advertising – continues to soar. IDC believes that large publishers and ad networks can seize a significant share of this revenue. FAST AdMomentum provides the infrastructure for publishers to manage and monetize their online content. It’s a digital marketplace in a box.

You’re probably thinking, big deal right? Nobody’s catching Google. Even if you’re right, think about how wide open the internet ad market is right now. The scramble for number two or even number five or six in market share is worth billions. I’m sure FAST has done the math.

But I’m thinking there’s more to this battle than just fighting for the big brand websites. What about FAST’s position with enterprise customers?

Some of the world’s largest companies use their technology (much of it behind the firewall) to enhance their information management strategies — the company clearly has a strong brand in that respect. The question is, who can expand the footprint of the enterprise customer first? Will it be Google with its search and bevy of web 2.0 apps or a company like FAST whose genealogy already has a decidedly enterprisey slant.

It seems like there’s plenty of customers who could help FAST chip away at Google’s AdSense. If ACME already has FAST infrastructure, why wouldn’t they pilot FAST? Wouldn’t it be an easy ROI to use an existing backend from FAST while ramping up your Ad resources?

I also think it’s a bit naive to think large organizations will be tied to one Ad platform. Someone mentioned how Google customers might threaten to employ FAST to get a better deal. Not sure it really matters. The smart companies will tailor their advertising strategies so precisely, they’ll quickly figure out Google and FAST can each serve their own purpose. One size fits all is dead.

And what about all the channel and OEM communities that companies like FAST have? To me, those are armies entering the enterprise through all sorts of other Trojan horses — back doors like this.

Speaking of back door entrances into the enterprise, it made me think of a comment I ran across (on Rubicon exec Michael Mace’s blog) from Robert Scoble a while back describing Google vs. Microsoft. Although the parallels may not be the same in scale, I think Scoble paints a scenario that can be played out for all sorts of David and Goliath matchups.

Google hasn’t made an impact on the enterprise yet. And I don’t see them challenging Microsoft or taking money off the Office team’s plate in the enterprise for the next two years. Further out, however, they are positioned to come in and take some business from Microsoft. The first thing Google will do is stop the growth of Microsoft Office. Small startups aren’t going to buy Office anymore, they’re going to use the free apps on the Internet. Is Google going to get Chevron to switch from Exchange? No. Not soon. What they are going to do is add new value that Microsoft can’t, like the Google calendar team showing me how to put my calendar on my blog. It’s really nice. Those kinds of things are what you’ll see enterprise companies start to use in little projects here and there. Google will sneak in the back door, just as Microsoft did 25 years ago with DOS and PCs.

So with the above in mind, what’s it gonna take for FAST to take real market share? Running your own Ad network will take some muscle.

Maybe I’ll have the chance to ask the FAST product managers this week in San Diego about  the platform’s complexity, but it’s not even that. It has more to do with an enterprise’s propensity to outsource all the functions related to web advertising. That’s a big reason so many companies look to AdSense, Panama, and Microsoft’s AdCenter. Outside of producing content, all the stuff related to development, payment, stats, etc., is handled effortlessly, maybe too effortlessly. We’ve gotten lazy and the big advertisers are profiting.

So, are we to the point where corporations are finally ready to act like real media companies? You have to think it’s just a matter of time before internal marketing and PR teams get tired of everyone reaching into the coffer.

Marketing Sherpa has just released their â€œMarketing Wisdom” report for 2007. These are always packed with tips from marketers coast-to-coast and as you might expect, this year’s version includes a lot of social media discussion. From blogs and RSS to search engine optimization (SEO) and email marketing, you can see what the best and brightest have to say.  

Download the PDF here.

You’ll see more of this as companies are finally figuring out that creating real dialogue with customers means simply letting them be a part of the conversation. You gotta take the good with the bad.

Note:: First seen @ Organic’s blog

Take a look at this slide show and tell me if you come away as unimpressed as I was. My only takeaway from the weak memorable ads was how traditional advertising continues to get turned on its head by consumer-generated media (CGM). Enter the Chevy Tahoe user-generated campaign. If you didn’t see that debacle coming, you gotta be living underground. Or maybe you’ve just never seen YouTube. Chevy’s only saving grace was actually running all the ads — positive or negative. 

What I can’t figure out is how some of these decisions come about? Was the agency and client simply chasing publicity or was it just a case of the non-existent strategy? (Hint: Don’t always do user-generated media because everyone else is doing it.)

As if traditional radio advertisers didn’t have enough to worry about, Google’s now letting select AdWords customers launch audio campaigns. 

From the AP wire story:

Google is betting its technology can do for radio what it has already done for the Internet by automating the process for selling and distributing ads to an audience where the messages are most likely to pique consumer interest. As it does on the Web, Google plans to charge a commission for helping radio stations sell ads.

                                       <<Screenshot via CNET>>  

BrandWeek recently wrote about car maker Kia’s soft launch of their forthcoming 2007 Rondo. I think the strategy is unfolding right here in front of us. Get some influencers buzzing (very overused term) about your advertising strategy, pitch a few beat writers and you’re off.

My gut tells me they won’t see much of an uptick unless they have a brilliantly planned grassroots effort in the works. How can you “hope” to generate buzz with light direct mail and search engine marketing?

..there will be no print ads or broadcast spots. Instead, over the next 30 days, there will merely be some direct mail to targeted consumers, a presence on several search engines and, hopefully, some buzz.

I would have an events calendar that would put me and my Rondo in the back pocket of every one of my consumers every time they walked out the door in my target markets. And I think you have to go deeper than that. How ’bout monitoring your competitors’ brand on the web to see what’s driving some of those purchasing decisions. Once you’re privy to those conversations, you can plan an effective strategy that blends the best of traditional and new media approaches.

On the heels of my “always be branding” soapbox, I ran across BrandWeek’s coverage of a recent study that tracked how people have brand discussions.

The report, from The Keller Fay Group and PR firm Manning Selvage & Lee, sampled responses from 1,100 people between June and August.

And according to Keller Fay CEO Ed Keller, more than 80% of conversations about brands happen offline.

That doesn’t surprise me too much. Think about the last time you made a big purchase. You probably sought all kinds of opinions from your influencer network, right?

What we’re seeing here is reflections of everyday conversations,” he said. One of the most important findings, Keller said, is that 15% of the population consists of what he calls “conversation catalysts,” or “influencers.”

In a ho-hum story from Ad Age about how media execs should always be pushing the envelope, I saw the excerpt below.

Mediaedge:cia research found that most men now who read circulars about consumer electronics aren’t doing it to scope out deals, but instead to get the lay of the land and keep up with the new products.

I’d say there’s a lot of brand equity for the retailers who push all those Sunday circulars on us. At some point, you just give up and make the purchase, right?

Always be branding. Your brand is what defines you. It can be the one thing your customer thinks of right before making that split-second decision to go with you or your competitor.

When we’re working with clients we’re trying to absorb everything that constitutes a brand. Is there a corporate and conservative nature to the brand? What about colors and fonts? It all plays into the experience. I mean, can you imagine UPS saying, “what can yellow do for you”? 

One of our recent brand efforts was for one of our clients in the restaurant business, Mary’s Cajun Corner. We wanted a bit more playful feel, but one that also captured the look of a national brand.

Let us know if we can help you brand you.

If you haven’t visited the Reflection Fine Art Gallery (RFA), you can stop by tonight (October 20th) for Friday Night @ the Gallery and checkout out the Metamorphosis Show featuring the past and present inspirations of JD Miller. Complimentary wine will be served, but you have to drop gallery go-to-girl Brandy Carlson an RSVP.

And if you’ll excuse us for a moment of shameless self promotion. I thought I’d post some of the creative one of my partners did for  Modern Luxury Magazine. The ad was designed to promote RFA’s 2nd Anniversary and we thought it really captured much of what makes JD Miller’s work so unique. If you can’t make it tonight, let Brandy know you’d like to schedule a viewing.

Technorati tags: JD+Miller, Reflection+Fine+Art+Gallery, uptown+dallas, dallas+art, gallery+walk, reflectionist+experience

Is wireless stepchild Bluetooth finally settling into a groove? This Philly story is the latest in a series of Bluecasting announcements. Honestly, having been a Bluetooth victim user for years, I’m a bit skeptical of how well the bluecasters can pull this stuff off.

I remember back in early 2002 on a flight back to Dallas using Bluetooth to transfer Powerpoint files to my colleague about five rows up the aisle. Back then, it was really a novelty, but even then you could see the utility.

About the only Bluetooth ad I’d be willing to receive in the Philly context would be train schedule updates. It seems users would be more willing to tune in to a B2B ad if the company was sincerely trying to provide value.

Something like this perhaps?

Good morning, AMTRAK 732 will not arrive until 11:30 a.m. Another morning stuck in Suburban Station, brought to you by your friends at Acme Corporation

In a recent discussion on the Marketing Profs blog, BL Ocham argues that viral campaigns take a hell of a lot more to pull off than most think. And while I agree with her premise, I left the article wondering, what about the little guy in all of this?

Here’s the bottom line: mounting a viral campaign requires not only social media, which provides remarkable new tools, but also integration with offline marketing, from street teams and guerilla marketing, to billboards, TV, radio, and print. - BL Ochman

Some of this is really common sense. Most of the companies BL mentions have big budgets for this kinda stuff, the Fortune 5000 if you will. I have to believe there’s not any company that size that wouldn’t have an integrated strategy that spans all sorts of media, right?

The bigger challenge in her scenario is figuring out how the small to medium sized business (SMB) pull it off. With smaller budgets, clients are faced with figuring out how to spread their dollars across multiple channels, sometimes sacrificing depth and focus along the way. SMBs don’t have the luxury of large media buys. Instead, they should focus on building alliances with companies or networks that already have relationships with their target market. If SMBs focus on developing everything in-house and staffing the production, the odds of pulling off a viral campaign are scary low.

It’s much easier to get folks with a captive audience to put skin in the game if they’re confident your product or service will add value to their customers.

Either way, marketing firms, web consultants, and interactive agencies are all guilty of getting clients excited about the upside of viral strategies that promise millions of email forwards and YouTube views.  But it really boils down to a well thought out strategy that focuses on the customer. Don’t start out thinking you need to create a video or where you’ll make that media buy. Be the customer. Go where they go. Interact where they interact. And figure out what it takes to be a part of their network.

tags: viral+marketing, marketing+strategy, new+media, social+tools, social+media, guerrilla+marketing, WoM, integrated+marketing, marketing+campaigns, digital+strategy

OK, this is a little creepy, but the marketing strategy is clever. The ad below appeared on WOW Feed within 30 minutes of blogging about a CNET article that urged you and me to gripe when we can’t get free Wi-Fi. The writer mentioned Starbucks and of course I tagged it Starbucks, for obvious reasons, other than the irony of being at a Starbucks while I’m writing this. Usually it takes a while for blog content to get indexed, allowing AdSense to serve up another set, but in this case it took minutes. You can see what a mini-campaign like this can do from a viral and grassroots perspective. It’s obvious the folks at The Business Blog Summit aren’t relying on Anne Saunders to read WOW Feed and call’em up for blog services. What they are banking on is that bloggers like me will do exactly what I’m doing now.

 

tags: starbucks, viral+marketing, guerrilla+marketing, grass+roots+marketing, online+advertising, google, google+adsense, blogs, business+blogs