It is back-to-school time again and it is always exciting to see kids and parents alike getting ready for the ever-important dive into the next year. This year was a little different for me since it’s my little brother, not my kid, going off to college for the first time. When I realized that I hadn’t said goodbye on his last night, he looked at me puzzled and said, “I’ll see you in a couple of days,” leaving me completely baffled. “I will be online.”
That sentence has been gnawing at me since I heard it. Are online connections really gaining so much strength for Millenials? More importantly, what does that mean for marketers? Does that mean a phone call, Facebook poke or text is nearing the same impact as a face-to-face conversation?
Millenials have grown up with rabid texting, online gaming and social networks all being native in their daily lives. It appears that these types of connections are becoming increasingly more relevant and tangible to them. Now from an advertising/marketing point of view, does this mean that an online connection with a Millenial has more emotional weight than with any other generation? Would an online tech-support agent really make a Millenial feel better about a brand or product because they felt a greater connection on the computer than on the phone or in person?
As the Millenial generation grows and becomes increasingly important to marketers, let us keep in mind that the obsessive habits, like texting, that other generations can sometimes think of as ridiculous could actually be deep Millenial connections in the making.
As Oprah progresses toward her television finale, it is interesting to see her media machine continue to move forward despite criticism over lower ratings. Q4 2010 will see an iPad edition of O magazine. In addition to the standard iPad magazine, it will also sell books, which will no doubt once again make everyone else in the business incredibly jealous of Oprah, while simultaneously forcing them to admire her ability to monetize her channel at every end. The app portends it will be more of an interactive community with commentaries and feedback along with content and literary commerce.
And this got me thinking about African American women. How will this affect them (if at all), and is this unique or are others picking up on it as well? It turns out that despite Oprah’s claim that she’s every woman, her audience is still disproportionately African American. While black women make up about 13 percent of all women nationally, they make up more than a quarter of Oprah’s readership. No big surprise there. So it stands to reason that her ability to sell just about anything will no doubt entice many non-iPad-owning black women into the market.
If that’s not enough, we have only to look at Essence magazine — also getting into the iPad business. It is important to note that Essence ran an article on May 24 discussing how the iPad was launching with a marked lack of African American–media presence. This is eerily reminiscent of the discussions of the iPhone launch. The iPhone and the Apple media platform in general have since improved in that area, so it stands to reason the iPad will as well.
Now anyone who has ever as much as stepped out of their front door knows that African American women have a unique relationship with their hair. And Essence intends to not only recognize this, but capitalize on it as well. The 2010 Essence Hot Hair special will roll out as a fully integrated, cross-platform initiative including print, iPhone, iPad and an interactive online database. These two initiatives are light years ahead of the steps taken to entice African Americans (men and women) to the iPhone.
While there aren’t any available statistics on iPad proliferation among black women, given these and likely other “follow the leader” initiatives, it’s a safe bet that they will be a noticeable portion of the overall iPad universe in a short period of time. The content and business offerings are just too compelling to think otherwise.
If there’s one thing in my career I really enjoy, it’s marketing trends. Some are persistent and become best practice. Others devolve and are recognized as fads. Monetizing social media as a discussion certainly feels more like a trend topic that will turn into a best practice. But anyone who held a marketing position at the turn of the century remembers that monetizing the original Internet model was really, really difficult and was almost given up on.
So how can we better understand the current topic and how can we help push it toward fruition? Best to strip it down to the studs and start at the beginning.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve not done my own research on this. But I did find a really good study by Regus published this month that has some startling findings. Anyone who wants to read it can find it here .
Apparently, U.S. companies are really, really bad at turning social media into a profit tactic. Not only by their own metrics, but by global standards. U.S. companies ranked ninth among 15 ranked countries in terms of percentage of companies successfully using social media for business profit, well behind India, Mexico, Spain, the Netherlands and others. Which, in a way, is sort of embarrassing since we’re the ones talking about it the most and supposedly driving the phenomenon.
What’s important to note is that U.S. small businesses are far more adept at turning social media into new customers. Forty-four percent of small businesses made it work as opposed to 27 percent of large businesses. So lesson one is that large businesses need to market socially like small businesses. Why is this?
As it turns out, the University of Maryland’s business school looked into this. And the findings are interesting. Small businesses aren’t social-media mavens. They use standard outlets, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, more than anything. Twitter has not gained a strong foothold. Small business teaches us that focus is more important than expansiveness.
The real “ah ha!” comes in two parts. Small businesses are extremely enthusiastic, with 45 percent of respondents saying they firmly believe their social-media efforts will pay off in the near future. This is as opposed to a large brand that has to invest and analyze many different media types. Sort of an “in for a penny, in for a pound” mentality. So belief, even possibly blind belief, is a critical success element.
Additionally, small businesses are transforming social media into a primary lead-generation element, as opposed to larger businesses that likely already have well-established lead-gen mechanisms (call centers, online destinations, direct mail, etc.).
But do these factors necessarily explain it? Not really. It’s very important to understand that social media is likely just friendlier to small businesses, which are traditionally more oriented toward success and profitability through customer-service relationships. But therein lies the rub. You aren’t likely to find anyone who honestly thinks social media is a passing fad. And as it becomes more persistent and better understood, the pressure will only increase on large brands to convert it into a successful, profitable marketing tactic not unlike e-commerce, or dare I say it DRTV, replete with cost-analysis metrics and LTV statements, etc.
If there’s one giant lesson in all of this though, it’s that social media isn’t like other tactics, simply because the consumer or end user has just as much say in the conversation as the brand or seller. And given the propensity for like-minded individuals to come together online, the brand can actually play a disproportionately smaller part of the conversation — especially if things become negative. Turning social media into a profit center will require managers and directors to re-orient their approach and better understand how to sell through a conversation as opposed to through a traditional funnel.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently published the Mobile Access 2010 study, and it has generated a significant amount of buzz. The introduction proclaims, “African Americans and 18- to 29-year-olds lead the way in the use of cell phone data applications …”
As insights weave their way through public discourse, they tend to grow in scope. They are attached to other topics in a sort of snowball effect. In this case, the African American mobile-data insight was attached to the topic of the digital divide. Those who still see a digital divide among different ethnic groups see African American mobile-data usage as indicative of the fact that they are still left behind in the broadband-access revolution (as if such a thing is still happening). But this idea is eclipsed by a handful of realities that many pundits either haven’t taken the time to look at or have willfully ignored.
Everyone engaged in this debate should understand that it’s actually a little more expensive to own an Internet-enabled mobile device these days than to buy a computer and get basic broadband access.
If you put yourself in the consumer’s shoes and hunt for deals — either through a catalog, a store or online — you will see that you can get a really good, brand-new laptop for $399. Couple this with basic broadband access now available at around $20 per month, and you are out a total of $640 over the year.
Conversely, you can find a great deal from a no-contract provider such as Cricket for $40 a month, paired with the lowest-cost mobile device costing around $180. Your total annual outlay is $660.
The economies of scale guiding different points of access have essentially flattened the total cost of access between these two platforms. And many of the same providers are also selling mobile broadband access, which essentially removes the geographic elements of the digital-divide argument.
We should also keep in mind that mobile Internet access has made huge leaps in terms of the overall access experience. Most mobile consumers are no longer squinting their eyes at tiny screens with ASCII-text-like WAP pages. As devices continue to evolve, the mobile-Internet experience will gain ground on the standard PC-access experience.
It’s tempting to give in to the traditional digital-divide argument. But the facts and economics tell us something very different. We should stop thinking of urban consumers as “resorting” to mobile Internet access and start following/studying their lead.
For many of his supporters, Obama’s election was a joyous moment. One that was historic for our country as well as for individuals.
We decided to check back in with a few African American Obama supporters long after the election to see what lasting impact his election has had on them.
What we found is that the Obama Effect has not faded. His election left an indelible mark on their outlook. Most significantly, it has underscored the importance of having a vision and redefined for them what’s possible.
read more »
As college graduates threw their tasseled caps in the air and loaded up their U-Hauls, we stopped a few of them on the University of Texas campus to ask them about their plans.
The job scene, while not exactly “the dismal environment encountered by last year’s grads,” isn’t great. Average starting salaries are still down, and “employers plan to make only five percent more job offers to new graduates this spring compared to last spring, when job offers were down 20 percent from 2008 levels.”1
Judging by the optimism we encountered, you would think the grads we talked to hadn’t seen these statistics, but these grads are using a different yardstick to measure success. For them, it’s not about the signing bonus, the money or the corner office, but rather the intrinsic rewards.
“The feeling of waking up every morning and believing in what you do is more important than the money you will be making,” said Aspha, who graduated with a master’s degree in accounting.
Aspha’s sentiment echoes Andre Pinard’s argument that students are shifting their viewpoint away from the idea that “fame plus money equals success.” Success is now being defined as being the best one can be.2
For recent graduates, it’s less about “money, or how much stuff they have,” and more about the idea of embarking on a journey that allows them to thrive on their own skill sets.
Harry, a recent film graduate, said, “Success is defined by doing what you want, when you want, whenever you want it.”
For Allen, who just finished his marketing degree, it’s defined as “believing in yourself, no matter what environment you came from — believing you can achieve anything.”
It will be interesting to see how these young people impact the face of corporate America as they begin their new careers.
1 “Glimmers of Hope for Grads,” The New York Times, May 24, 2010
2 “There’s A New Urban Consumer Among Us,” Engage: Teens, November 12, 2009
Most discussion surrounding social media revolves around how to get into it or how to best leverage it. But an equally important aspect is the question of how to analyze, measure and assess it.
If you are a social-media professional, you likely have access to either syndicated tools or your own internal proprietary platforms. But what about the non–social media professional? What if you don’t have a large budget or an impressive array of resources?
Good news. There are plenty of free and easy-to-use tools that allow you to dive into the social-media universe and generate deep insights that will not only help steer the campaign, but also impress your higher-ups.
As most anyone in the business will tell you, marketing and advertising has been more dynamic than static for many years. It seems that as soon as marketers have a grasp on the status quo, a new disruptive medium or approach comes to bear and changes everything all over again. Two areas of marketing specialization that have emerged are multicultural marketing and digital marketing. And as these two disciplines mature, many marketers have indicated that they can, at times, seem at odds.
One of the Internet’s many benefits is that it allows for a large amount of user control. Oftentimes, individuals lead different lives online. And for many, the Internet can be color-blind. More-traditional media platforms, such as broadcast, direct marketing, etc., have mechanisms designed to identify consumer ethnicity and direct culturally relevant messaging to the appropriate target. Digital marketing is seen as lacking in its ability to successfully segment and approach consumers in the multicultural realm.
The truth is that digital and social are merely pushing marketers to be better at their jobs when it comes to multicultural marketing. A little creativity and originality can go a long way. Rather than looking at the multicultural world from the brand’s point of view, marketers should dig deeper to understand it from the consumer’s point of view.
Take for example Carol’s Daughter. It’s a hair-care product designed specifically for African American women. A quick query in Twitter’s advanced-search mechanism shows a robust following for this product. And the participants in this social conversation are almost exclusively African American women. Many are evangelists. Some are detractors. Regardless, this one simple tool outlines the discussion in a way that offers clues as to how to structure a digital approach for competing products. Savvy SEO and SEM developers essentially have a fresh start on new key terms and points of interest that can extend well beyond Twitter into Google, Yahoo! and even CRM.
And of course, there are other digital tactics that will enhance a digital, multicultural approach. The advent of key-term geo-targeting aligns well with the fact many multicultural audiences reside in easily identifiable locales. It’s also important to note the growth of many culture-centric sites. Most multicultural consumers live in a dual world online. They surf general-market sites, but they also bookmark and frequent sites such as blackplanet.com, mediatakout.com and urbanchat.com. As these networks and sites grow, they will offer more and more value as a part of the overall multicultural/digital mix.
The key takeaway is that multicultural consumers are online, and, with the right approach, can be targeted in a very effective manner. But it will take a distinct approach and possibly different points of analysis to effectively tailor the campaign.
A couple of weeks ago we set out to talk to urban consumers about brands and came away with some big ideas about thinking small.
It may seem like an oxymoron — consumers’ preference for information about brands has increased, as has their level of expectations, but individuals are not interested in how BIG brands appear.
They’re interested in how brands understand the essence of what truly resonates with them. Today, consumers are smarter and as Michael Margolis wrote in his recent article, “they demand communication that doesn’t insult their intelligence.”
Still, many large companies struggle with the old paradigm “bigger is better.” Many still hold the opinion that bragging about how great, big and fantabulous they are will translate from market to consumer. Regrettably, they’re wrong. Consumers, during our interviews, consistently reflected the notion that they are rather turned off by brands that seemed and felt BLOATED. They distance themselves from brands that don’t reflect their values or don’t connect with them on a more personal level.
But BIG brands aren’t out of the game, so long as they keep that small-brand feel. Urban consumers told us, when large companies felt small, they saw them in a more engaging and personal light. It creates a truer, more intimate dialogue, instead of the one-way conversation they feel they experience on so many occasions.
So what can a growing corporation do to appear SMALL?
read more »
More often than not brands attempt to entice younger consumers with eye-popping images, fireworks, CGI and offers of instant gratification. But the current recession may be changing youth consumers, shaping them into more cost-conscious shoppers not unlike their parents.
A recent report by American Express showed how almost three in four parents surveyed said their children were aware of the recession. Many of the children were said to be gaining a sense of responsibility for the family budget as a result. A third of affluent children were actually suggesting holding off purchases, which was actually higher than the one in five children across all income groups.
The natural implication is that families are talking more about finance and children are listening. If younger consumers begin to emulate parental behavior, there will likely also be an increased emphasis on savings and an eye towards the future. This has obvious implications for financial services institutions that have generally focused marketing dollars on more established, traditional consumer groups. But marketers in general who are looking to engage younger consumers should give a nod to this newly-formed savvy shopper.
Gratification is still the norm for young consumers. But it could likely come in new forms such as pride in finding better deals and empowerment through enabling them to contribute to the family’s well-being.
It is also important to note the intersection between mobile technology, deal-hunting and youth. It’s no secret that younger consumers are more technologically inclined. And the proliferation of online and app- enabled deal-hunting tools, combined with youth propensity for adoption, offers a clear engagement opportunity for retailers and manufacturers.
Successfully capitalizing on this means also recognizing the need to offer some amount of creative opportunity and control. Youth consumers online and on-device are highly engaged with sites such as tektek.org, imeem.com, rockyou.com and reverbnation.com. Each offers young consumers the ability to create, share and interact – a behavioral hallmark for this consumer group.
Think Small is a BIG concept. Watch what The Cipher uncovers.
Read more about this concept at The Cipher’s latest blog post.
Coca Cola U.S. CMO Katie Bayne recently made headlines during a speech where she explained the value of the multicultural audience to her brands. The basis for her position was that multicultural consumers made up a third of all U.S. sales for Coca Cola and were projected to increase to 40 percent by 2020. This is in and of itself a sobering reminder of the changing face of America. She went further by pointing out how 51% of teens today are multicultural themselves. What was missing however was any delineation between the traditional concept of multicultural consumers and the emerging consumer base that is driven by a newer, truer multiculturalism.
Our agency fields a routine survey to stay on top of diverse segment trends and one of the most consistent findings is that younger multicultural consumers are building their own identity based on shared associations — a new melting pot if you will.
The question, asked of respondents across all age groups, is simple. “Are most of your friends or members of your social circle of the same ethnicity as you or a different ethnicity?” Most recently 58 percent of respondents ages 24 and younger indicated that the majority of their friends were of a different ethnicity.
Putting this into context means borrowing from some commonly accepted principles. Many researchers use an acculturation model to better understand generational dynamics among Hispanic consumers. Partially acculturated Hispanic consumers are said to have one foot in tradition and one in “mainstream” culture. The difference now is that the fact younger consumers are more often engaged with other ethnic groups so they are sharing and learning in more directions. Instead of adopting certain attitudes from a limited exposure to either a vertical relationship to parents and extended family and then horizontally to friends or peers in their own specific ethnic segment we see a more organic and dynamic set of relationships.
Engaging this rapidly emerging segment means moving beyond the recognition of cultural importance. Marketers and brands must also dig deep to understand how cross-cultural pollination is generating a new mindset.
Marketers and agencies are always looking for new ways to understand consumer trends. And once a trend is detected, it often gets a slick name like Frugalista or Greenwashing. Finding such trends can often take untold hours of consumer interaction and sizable budgets. But what if you don’t have the time or the budget? Enter Recyclovision.
There is currently a convergence on the horizon between household recycling and consumer self-examination. The little, green tubs many of us leave for pickup once a week often say as much about the individual or household as anything else. This is due in large part to the fact that most everything we consume is wrapped in plastic, and the expansion of which kinds of plastic can be recycled (my community recently added types 5, 7 and 10).
I recently went Eco-Diving just outside my neighborhood over a three-week period, and here’s a sample of what I surmised, with the prerequisite fancy, trend-based monikers: read more »
In keeping our eyes peeled for the next big tech breakthrough, we observed some interesting conversations happening around the convergence of privacy and technology.
As technology’s ability to track not just your conversations but also your whereabouts begins to take off, privacy is becoming an important issue.
Danah Boyd’s opening remarks on this were especially poignant at the very conference that saw the rise of Twitter (where you can literally reveal every thought the instant you have one) and the growth in momentum for Gowalla and foursquare (location-based social networks that allow users to share each other’s physical locations).
Boyd talked about consumers’ need to control their personal information. “When people feel as though they don’t have control over their environment — they don’t have control of their setting — then, they feel as though their privacy has been violated and they scream privacy foul,” said Boyd. Ms. Boyd is a social-media researcher at Microsoft Research New England.
Interestingly enough, when the shoe is on the other foot it appeared that consumer interests are flipped. When it comes to brands, consumers seem more interested in transparency than privacy.
As one attendee told us, in the sea of average products, differentiation comes from accessibility and transparency. Putting the CEO in front of the camera gives an otherwise faceless corporation a personality and humanistic quality — quite the contrary to putting up veils of privacy.
At the end of the day, when and where consumers expect privacy versus transparency will take some getting used to. Understanding it will make the difference between the rise and fall of a more meaningful brand/consumer relationship. As this paradigm evolves we will keep a pulse on the conversation. In the meantime, we always love to hear your thoughts.
This thought occurred after a presentation from Oddcast, a successful shop that capitalizes on creative technology to personalize creative vision, many times through pictures and videos within a campaign.
The presentation featured the famous clip from the movie “Alien” in which the alien bursts out of the crewmember’s chest; however, this time the face of the alien was swapped out with another picture using mymoviemoment.com.
I got so excited that I ran back to my desk and instantly plugged in my daughter’s face to see what it would look like. Needless to say, it freaked me out a little and gave me a good laugh.
I wondered, why do I love this so much? All I am doing is making myself or people I know appear in places in which I have never seen them. Why do I need to see them there?
I started thinking back to the first time I had done this. It was when the Nintendo Wii had first come out. We didn’t have that many group games to play, but didn’t really need them because there was a feature already built into the Wii that helped you create your own avatar, or Mii. I remember inviting our friends over and spending hours designing our Miis. When the XBOX came out with the same feature I jumped on it as well.
Looking back, there has always been a human instinct to leave a mark on the world. Before the virtual/avatar phase, people wrote on walls and bathroom stalls, “so-and-so was here.” Before that, couples carved their names into trees. Even in ancient times people drew images of themselves on cave walls.
With the success of programs like “Second Life,” “World of Warcraft” and Xbox’s highly anticipated Project Natal, it is apparent that the desire to place ourselves and others in different worlds is not going away anytime soon. While I may not have all of the answers to my questions just yet, perhaps the bigger question will be how can marketers capitalize on this very apparent trend to personalize?
I’m old. And I know this because I was recently reading a Brandweek article regarding Samsung’s expectations of success for its upcoming launch of 3-D TV with great skepticism.
I love big TVs. I’m not so old that I don’t appreciate the awesomeness of HD and yearn for a 60-inch. And don’t get me started on the LED. But I am old enough to remember watching “The Creature from The Black Lagoon” with red-and-blue 3-D glasses thanks to a 7-11 promotion in 1980. Even when I was a child, the whole thing seemed pretty silly, even if I was able to see his scaly paw reach out from the bog and subsequently out of my television. But still, I couldn’t help but feel like the entire experience was a tad oversold.
Fast forward to last year. I took my 13-year-old son to a 3-D movie at the Austin IMAX®. Better technology, interesting experience, same sensation.
In the Brandweek article, the Samsung executive believes 3-D TV will be a huge success based on three factors: 3-D is the future and, apparently, awesome; Consumers tend to hunker down in the home during recessions and focus their spending on that locale; and previous high adoption rates and sales success for the higher end of the panel-television category historically.
Fortunately, my age is helping me develop a little bit of wisdom. The first question that any strategist must ask is whether or not they themselves would like or use the product. But it is important to go further and ask whether or not you’re wrong. I think my position on this is pretty clear. But my wife will tell you I’ve been wrong about quite a few things. So 3-D TV may take off after all. However there are two critical facts to consider before we all rush out and get one. read more »
