The Quisenblog

For decades, we in marketing have had little choice but to subscribe to the paradigm of “media attrition.” It goes something like this: “If we hit 1,000,000 people with the same message, we’re bound to influence the behavior of 1%.”

That means we spend money to deliver the same message to 1,000,000 folks with the expectation that we may actually get 10,000 of them to take action.

The Internet turns this notion of scale on its head. What the Internet doesn’t deliver in numbers it delivers in impact and influence. The Internet is about whom, not about how many. You no longer have to intrude on 1,000,000 people to influence the behavior of 10,000. You only need to take really good care of 1,000.

Those 1,000 people you take care of just happen to be 1,000 of your best customers, the ones who relish hearing from you, who look forward to engagement with you, and who will (with a little coaxing on your part) be the medium of singing your praises within their spheres of influence and beyond. Before long, you’ll find their numbers swelling to a number of 10,000 or more.

So whereas 1,000,000 used to equal 10,000, now 1,000 does.

One of the arguments against social media and online campaigns is that they operate on too small a scale. It is unrealistic to expect the number of eyeballs from an online campaign that you would get from a traditional mass media campaign. But if you think of it in terms of “engagement,” it can be suddenly competitive in scale with mass media.

An excellent example is the “Rollerskating Babies” video produced by Evian. It garnered more than 3 million YouTube hits in the first week after launch. That’s 3 million opt-in views with no paid media (and that’s before the morning news shows got on board).

There are other variables, of course. But the point here is that social media and online campaigns shouldn’t be dismissed strictly on the basis of reach.

Do the math.

Posted by Mickey

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Mickey Media, On Customers Evian, mass media, media attrition, online campaigns, Rollerskating Babies, Social Media

What could be more ironic than this? A so-called digital media “expert,” who when sent to present to a Fortune 500 company on social media, gets bit on the butt by…you guessed it…social media.

It happened recently when an executive named James Andrews from Ketchum in New York posted an unflattering Twitter entry while en route to present to the worldwide communications group at FedEx in Memphis, Tennessee. Andrews tweeted:

No doubt Mr. Andrews was playing to his buddies back in New York. But this particular microblog blew up in his face. Turns out a FedEx employee found it online and forwarded it up the ladder to much of the FedEx corporate brass. The shake out was swift and sure. To say Mr. Andrews presentation was not well received would be an understatement. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this 24 word entry costs Ketchum a major piece of business. At the very least, it would make any thinking executive question the agency’s “expert status” when it comes to social media.

This is a great lesson on the power of social media and the Internet. Once you put something out there, it’s out there, for all eternity. It’s sorta like being overheard at a cocktail party, except there are 80 million people who might have heard you, and your conversation is recorded for all future guests, in case they missed it.

These days, anything you say online (or anything that is said about you online) is a simple Google search away from everyone. And we mean everyone. Your customers. Your employees. Your co-workers. Your boss. That account you just pitched. That employer you just interviewed with. Your second grade teacher. Your cousin in Wenatchee. Everyone.

So maybe you oughta think twice before putting those drunken photos from Cabo on Facebook. Or sending that vitriolic rant to the local paper in support of marijuana decriminalization. Or, in Mr. Andrews case, making disparaging remarks about the hometown of one of your key clients.

To sum it all up, you are what you post.

Posted by Mickey

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Mickey New Media advertising, marketing, microblog, Social Media, Spokane, Twitter

One of the things I love about technology is that every so often, you’ll come across something so amazing, intuitive and unique that adds real value to your life. I came across one of those things last week, in the form of a web site called Tabbloid.

If you’re like me, you probably subscribe to a number of interesting blogs and e-newsletters. Problem is, after a while, my inbox gets a little unruly, and it’s a challenge to keep organized or make sure I haven’t missed anything. Hence Tabbloid. Tabbloid is a way to manage your incoming blogs, e-newsletters and other RSS feeds. You just type in the URL, set the intervals you’d like to receive them (you can even specify the exact time of day) and Tabbloid emails you a customized PDF of the most recent editions of your favorite blogs, organized much like a newspaper. You can read it on your computer screen (with the embedded links still live) or you can print it out for on-the-go reading.

So who is responsible for Tabbloid? None other than Hewlett-Packard. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? HP, whose core competency is printing the written word, coming out with a great reason to print the written word. Is Tabbloid going to be responsible for the sales of thousands of more laser jets? It’s debatable. But what it does do is give users a very good reason to acknowledge that paper is still an imperative part of the office environment, regardless of all the talk of the “paperless office.”

An ongoing challenge in marketing is to continually find interesting, unique, surprising ways to execute your Brand Vision. Sort of like HP did with Tabbloid.

Posted by Mickey

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Mickey Uncategorized advertising, marketing, print, RSS, Social Media, Spokane, Tabbloid