I’ve been wanting to write a post on social networking for a while now but it’s taken me ages, mostly because I’ve been mainly engaged in rampant friendgeneering.

let me explain.

about a month ago I joined facebook, an act which quickly and forever changed my internet browsing habits. it became and remains the first and last site I visit in any online session, and keep it on in the background whilst tabbing thru other sites. a straw poll suggests that I am not alone. this is significant.

the other key behaviour I noticed myself adopting in the early weeks of facebook was some very serious (and along with my housemate, competitive) ‘friendgeneering’ – a term coined by my colleague and friend John V Willshire in his Artrocker Blog, to describe:

"the accumulation of friends that everyone goes through … because (a) it’s like engineering in it’s very methodical, processed, designed nature, unlike making friends in real life and (b) I have too much time on my hands clearly, and can sit around thinking of terms like ‘friendgeneering’"

now whilst it’s certainly true that John has too much free time – the phrase actually very succinctly captures the various acts of friend-collection I went through, and only stopped when I felt that a certain critical mass had been achieved (note: I don’t know why I felt I’d reached my personal critical mass – would be interesting to find out if other users had similar experiences). I felt uncomfortable until ‘enough’ of them were there with me, and feel a great deal more comfortable now that they are there.

it’s a concept Faris Yakob – writing on his blog TIGS – described in a post in which he termed continuous partial presence:

"…everyone is always there. The most important feature of instant messenger programmes, in some ways, isn’t the actual messages – it’s the buddy list. With your buddy list there, you’re always in a group, you’re friends are always present, whenver they’re online. This is why it was so compelling, to begin with, to younger people – kids are far more likely to hang out in large social groups. This continuous partial presence is oddly satisfying, and also a feature of services like Twitter and Jaiku"

in her book Watching The English, Kate Fox describes how the mobile phone has had a similar effect:

"The mobile phone has, I believe, become the modern equivelant of the garden fence or village green. the space-age technology of mobile phones has allowed us to return to the more natural and humane communication patterns of pre-industrial society, when we lived in small, stable communities, and enjoyed frequent ‘grooming talk’ with a tightly integrated social network of family and friends"

what both of these commentaries identify is the fact that the content of the status updates, photos, and now videos (and more) I put on facebook, aren’t as important as the act of putting them up there in the first place. it’s the contemporary equivelant of "good morning, send my best to X" that was typical of times gone by, and just as reassuring. indeed – as Fox suggests – the origins of my ‘comfort’ at having my friendgeneered buddies continually partially present, may be ancient indeed… as old as the highly communal nature of homo sapien society itself.

this last fact alone is reason enough for advertisers and brands to take facebook and it’s rapidly expanding contemporaries very seriously indeed. it fulfills and deeply ingrained social need, and I fully anticipate that I will become as inseperable from my social network of choice as I am from my mobile phone.

but the reasons go beyond human social need… the act of media planning in many regards is – at it’s basest – the identification and communication to, aggregated audiences (for obvious reasons I exclude direct forms of marketing from this description). between October 06 and April 07, facebook increased it’s base from 500k to 3.69m; over the same period readership of the Sun dropped from 3.1m to 3.0m (source NRS). facebook and social network sites per se are big, growing and committed aggregations of audience.

to that end, you can try putting an ad on facebook, but I wouldn’t recommend it; facebook is a place and space for friends, and a pushed media impact from a keen brand is an invasion – unless a brand suceeds in rewarding my just for watching it (for example Virgin Media feeding me live Big Brother updates, rather than a banner asking me to sign up now)…

the commercial model aside (till another day), other ways exist for brands to capitalise on this bigger-than-the-Sun audience (globally) of which I am a proud and active part; a facebook group created around your brand – or something for which it stands – is a great deal more involving that a bit of flash, and also acts as a badge for a social network user should they choose to join. plus, with the opening up of application development to third parties, brands should be asking themselves what applications they could develop to graciously and appropriately feed and enhance online activities.

brands that understand how to talk to an audience in this way understand that it’s not how many friends you can reach; but how you talk to them, that counts.

advertising, planning

Mediation’s (Completly Unproven) Rank of Media Channel Carbon Badness

…is how John Grant described how best to approach the communication of greenness at an event hosted this week by the account planning group.

the ascent of greenness on the public agenda has been swift and universal; Grant quoted Phil Gandy from research company Landor who described it as "One of the most complete and speedy revolutions in consumer attitudes ever seen" (click here for press release).

Grant was discussing what advertising account planners can bring to the table in combating climate change, with specific reference to how brands successfully communicate and capitalise on – genuine – green credentials.

he’s blogging about his upcoming book – The Green Marketing Manifesto – at greenormal, from where you can link to his presentation (alternatively click here).

Grant outlined five principles when communicating a brand’s greenness:

green is a principle, not a proposition
be certain that your business and the green marketing itself will live up to the standards which you set for yourself
it’s a complex moving target
it’s barely started
there’s not one green marketing strategy, there’s many

but there was one particular aspect of marking green credentials that wasn’t discussed, one that’s already caused more than one of my clients to reconsider their own marketing activities; that of the media with which you communicate your greenness.

it’s one thing to be able to say that you’re a carbon-neutral brand, but to what extent can you say the same for your media schedule? I’m planning on getting round to some more thorough investigation into this, but here’s my hunch for the run down of how media channels perform – from best to worst…

RADIO you’d have thought is the best performing channel. the only product is radio waves. so carbon release is restricted to content production and broadcast, and the electricity required by radio receivers. that said the channel’s expansion into TV and online distribution could see this change significantly…

ONLINE intuitively ranks well. no paper; just the electricity to run the machine and the servers to hold the content. but what a lot of servers there are… a quick search led me to Martin Stable’s blog where he discusses this topic; he quotes an article in Wired Magazine entitled The Information Factories;

"Ask.com operations VP Dayne Sampson estimates that the five leading search companies together have some 2 million servers, each shedding 300 watts of heat annually, a total of 600 megawatts. These are linked to hard drives that dissipate perhaps another gigawatt. Fifty percent again as much power is required to cool this searing heat, for a total of 2.4 gigawatts. With a third of the incoming power already lost to the grid’s inefficiencies, and half of what’s left lost to power supplies, transformers, and converters, the total of electricity consumed by major search engines in 2006 approaches 5 gigawatts.

That’s an impressive quantity of electricity. Five gigawatts is almost enough to power the Las Vegas metropolitan area – with all its hotels, casinos, restaurants, and convention centers – on the hottest day of the year. So the annual operation of the world’s petascale search machines constitutes a Vegas-sized power sump. In the next year or so, it could add a dog-day Atlantic City. Air-conditioning will be the prime cost and conundrum of the petascale era. As energy analysts Peter Huber and Mark Mills projected in 1999, the planetary machine is on track to be consuming half of all the world’s output of electricity by the end of this decade."

Wired Magazine, October 2006

I’m ranking CINEMA next. big screen so lots of power but usually lots of people so – applying the same logic as car-sharing – the ability of cinemas to people-share see’s them rank above…

…TV. according to the Carbon Trust the average UK individual, in watching the average TV set, contributes 35kg of CO2 per year to the atmosphere. nice to know but not sure how it compares to other media. watch this space.

I’m ranking PRESS next. lots of recycling but still lots of paper used and not necessarily recycled. I may be misjudging the medium as the electricity use is restricted to the point of creation, although this may be balanced by the carbon output of distributing millions upon millions of newspapers and magazines each year. Images of London freesheets being dumped in bins (above) don’t help the medium’s case too much either.

which brings me to my – unproven – biggest schedule culprit; posters. according to Postar there are 123,949 poster sites in the UK. thats a lot of paper being printed on every two weeks. 82,054 of those posters are illuminated – so thats a shedload of electricity keeping them alight. despite some panels using solar power to illuminate them, I still doubt the capacity of posters to defend themselves in the court of carbon emissions.

So there it is. my unproven ranking of media channels. the upshot? if you have a carefully and elegantly crafted green message, think twice before you book that press and scrolling backlight schedule!

Disclaimer: this could be completely wrong …but I’m on the case re constructing a more thoroughly research ranking. promise.

advertising, engaging, planning

TV and Online – Forever Frenemies

in a post on The Black Box Fallacy, in which I referenced Transmedia storytelling, I concluded by noting that;

‘whats going to be fun is to see to what extent commercial advertisers
use transmedia storytelling. at the moment a campaign idea tends to be
executed across different channels. there’s little consideration given
to how what is produced can be contextualised from the off. and
there’s massive opportunity for the advertisers – and indeed the
agencies – that learn how to do this best first’

I recalled this whilst watching two recent examples of advertising campaigns. both of which are pieces of communication with two very different expressions in TV and Online channels. in both cases TV merely provides the precursor, the call to action being to go online…

the first is for Army Jobs, where a series of video clips show different aspects of Army life. in each example the execution is cut short – the ending… is to be found online.

here you not only get to view all the video’s in a dedicated player, but can also – by addressing a series of questions in the Pathfinder – identify which aspects of Army life would be most appropriate for you.

it’s all very slick and involving, making the visit from the TV execution more than worth the effort, whether you’re interested in a life in the Army or just curious to see how the stories end.

the second example is beyond surreal…

yup. it’s the R&D team who developed the Peanut Chunky inviting you to punish them if you don’t like what they’ve come up with. whether you did or didn’t like it is irrelevant, as when you get to the website you’re given the option to punish them or… punish them…

another very slick online experience not only shows you what happens when the staff are inflicted to a cactus bath or lobster down the pants. but in an added trick some of the juiciest content is locked. you unlock it by sending video clips to friends…

the most interesting thing about both of these campaigns is that the online content could have quite happily existed without the presence of a TV ad. but TV brought efficient mass reach – as well as a wealth of credibility – to the invite to engage with both of these brands.

both channels benefit hugely from the other. at it’s most basic, if either brand schedule had prioritised one channel over the other (or sacrificed a large chunk of the budget in one channel to do a broadcast job in the other!) it wouldn’t have worked. but more importantly it shows integration within or across creative agencies that will be not just beneficial but crucial in the future implementation of digital (across all channels) media schedules.

is it Transmedia storytelling? no… that would require different and dedicated content across different and dedicated channels bringing a concept to life in very different and relevant ways. but its two big and very slick steps in the right direction.

advertising, planning, researching

Some Engaging TV Research

ethnographic observation in 22 homes formed the basis of the first phase of thinkbox’s Engagement Study, which when followed by interviews established six key influences on the degree to which audiences engage with TV ads. in collaboration with ACB Research, have established an ‘engagement index’ based on the following factors:

Attention
Ad Exposure
Memory
Attitudes
Self-regulation
Self-referencing

…all of which determine the extent to which the content of an ad is processed, and to what degree it is therefore recalled to the brand engram (and ultimately – although this will be investigated at a later stage in the Payback Study – to what extent it influences purchase intention).

some of the key findings from the research were that:

TV is central to people’s lives, and the majority of viewing remains communal; 70% of viewing time was typical of "our time" as opposed to "in-between time" or "my time"
‘engagement’ can be defined in a range of ways, some of the most observable being strong interactions like playing ‘guess the ad’ to responding to music cues
overall, around 17% of viewing could be typified as ‘strong’, 51% as medium (taking notice in some way), with 32% of viewing showing no observable response or interaction
negative engagement does not equal bad engagement – the Frosties ad (below) being a prime example of an ad that was hated but which got the product discussed (in not a necessarily negative way) as a result
attention is not always vital – eating increased the engagement index
shared engagement is powerful, and both the extent to which an ad is implicitly recalled as well as emotionally engaged with is re-enforced by sharing the experience with others
the power of emotion; ‘affective’, ‘cognitive’ and ‘sensory’ ads have higher recall indexes
less than 10% of ad breaks are affected by some form of ad-avoidance
5% of commercial breaks were viewed with a laptop present and being used in the room

here’s that Frosties ad:

the first phase was then followed by 3,000 online surveys, which formed the basis for the creation of five segments:

‘Ad Enthusiasts’ (30%) – love ads and TV generally; they have higher than average recall of ads but less ‘favourability’ and purchase intent
‘TV is my friend’ (15%) – TV viewed for companionship, generally live and watch TV alone; heavy users of TV, but advertising has less affect on favourability compared to other segments
‘Ad-averse’ (18%) – TV isn’t important or relevant in their lives; despite the name, ad exposure was seen to be more likely to affect favourability / purchase intent
‘Creative Connoisseurs’ (19%) – appreciate quality of programmes and ads; actually showed the lowest recall generally
‘Thank you for the Music’ (18%) – TV isn’t that important, but they take in and recall more readily slogans and tunes; much more likely to be partially attentive – brand recognition didn’t equate into an effect on favourability or purchase intent

what matters now of course is what we are able to do with the research. getting it onto touchpoints will be a great first step, allowing planners to explore these audiences in the context of other TV info as well as other media. but ultimately the extent to which planners and buyers distribute spots amongst programmes – and indeed within the ecology of the break – will depend as much on the current context of the TV trading model as it will new news about how we can segment different audiences subject to how they engage with the nation’s favourite pastime.

that said, what this thinkbox initiative does comprehensively is add much-needed ammunition to the why spend on TV? debate. TV advertising revenues are decreasing because of fragmentation and the need of marketeers to fund internet activity on a media schedule. but – let’s be honest – TV is also suffering because it’s become less fashionable for TV to be the answer. we all believe TV advertising works, all thinkbox have to do is prove it…

advertising, engaging, planning

Thinking Inside the Box

last Friday saw tv marketing body thinkbox present findings from it’s Engagement Study, a project to understand how different audiences interact with TV and as a result how advertisers can best use TV to reach those audiences.

interestingly the first question they needed to address is what is engagement? thinkbox turned to a definition coined by their equivelant body in the States… that "engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context", which despite being very TV advertising focusses, seems as good a definition as any.

learnings were then presented from the project, including a TV audience segmentation the study has identified, as well as some extreme types of behaviours demonstrated across the segments. I’ve outlined the findings of the research in a seperate post here.

a brilliant presentation by Dr Ali Good from duckfoot research then discussed explicit vs implicit memory, and how media and advertising research is great at measuring the former but not so good at the latter… so he took the audience thru a technique for exploring implicit memory, via a great case study for Virgin Trains’ Return of the Train ad.

the last aspect of the morning was a discussion led by Sue Unerman of Mediacom on what all this research means for advertising and specifically media planning. ten questions ranged from "is it better to be noticed or ignored?" to "are we fiddling while Rome burns?", taking in everything from bemoaning the disapearance of jingles to the role of media vs creative planning strategies on the way.

advertising, planning

No end in sight for London’s Freesheet War

the announcement that News International’s thelondonpaper is set to increase ad rates from tomorrow by almost 46% comes amidst the latest volley in the battle for the capital’s evening freesheet audience. the same title recently increased it circulation by 100,000 to 500,000 – fueling further an explosion of paper onto the streets (and tube carriages).

in a presentation this morning, the title’s main rival, London Lite, outlined research that showed what most media planners suspected… that there’s essentially nothing to separate the titles, with the exception that the majority of thelondonpaper readers prefer the editorial and layout of London Lite. the thing is – so what?

the same research showed that there is around 50% cross-over between the titles. they’re reaching the same audience and so as far as an agency is concerned we should be going with the most cost efficient title – something that won’t bode too well alongside tomorrow’s significant rate increase.

this is all a little like watching two boxers of equal weight and ability (if very different styles) battle it out in a ring. who no matter how exhausted they get, have powerful backers with deep resources in each corner pushing them right back into the ring…

its a costly war for both parties. money is being lost. but there’s even more to lose if either title vanishes – and pride can be a very powerful motivator.

advertising, planning

Begun, the Media Owner Science Wars have

I’ve noticed a recent escalation in the battle for share of media planners’ minds, by media owners. it marks what is probably the third age of the media planner (MP) / media owner (MO) relationship.

the first was informational – MO gets the MP what they need to know and all was a bit one way. phase two became a great deal more collaborative – with MOs generating ideas and concepts relevant and unique to the media channels they represented. NB this subject was recently picked up by the IPA Strategy Group in a debate centered around whose best to come up with media ideas? – MPs or MOs. both – silly – is of course the correct answer, we are – or should be – a generation of collaborators.

but recently a new front has opened. it was marked by two different presentations from two different MOs. the first – from Carlton Screen presented findings by work research which demonstrated the extent to which single vs multi tasking affects our ability to take in and recall information.

the above image shows a drawing produced when someone who had been shown a series of ads in the cinema was asked to draw all they could remember. the ad was for Abbey National. source

essentially it produced behavioral evidence for the assertion that "attention plus emotive experience equals higher level of recall", but it was grounded in psychology and neuroscience in order to do so.

you can see full details of the research here.

the second intellectual volley came from Metro newspaper, who last week invited MPs to attend not only a presentation on engagement, but a presentation by none other than Johnny Ball, who talked us through the four rules of engagement. this wasn’t just a media owner presentation – it was a full blown television production. let battle commence.

for more on Johnny and Metro click here.

what both of these projects represent is an escalation in the arms race that MOs use to grab share of mind – and hence share of schedule – with MPs. the challenge for MOs is that as buying is increasingly commoditized, the conversations with MPs are increasingly based on what the media channel can strategically – and scientifically – bring to a schedule.

did we learn anything we didn’t know intuitively from these experiences. I suspect not. did we leave feeling better about the extent to which Carlton and Metro understand whats going on in planners’ worlds. I suspect yes. mission accomplished… let battle continues.

advertising, branding, engaging, planning

five thoughts on peer to peer (viral) marketing

whilst there aren’t rules per se, and the way a brand creates viral – or what I’d suggest we term peer to peer marketing – will vary depending on the market, brand, and most significantly the target audience; there are some general principles that I think are pertinent:

one – motivation

the consumer’s motivation to pass on will always be grounded in what’s in it for them, this can be one of a variety of things…

> credibility – getting kudos for finding something first, the act of passing it on is implicit proof of this

> financial reward – people who do something as a result of you passing something on earns the sender a reward (many online promotions work like this)

> exclusivity – you could famously only join Gmail if you were asked to join by an existing member

the rule of thumb therefore is don’t create peer to peer marketing material on your terms, but on consumers’ …what’s in it for them?

two – mechanism

consider how the material will be seeded, received, consumed and passed on…

> seeding / receiving – who are you originally sending it to and how? material that comes from a known source will have more credibility

> consumption – is it easy and quick to access the material?

> passed on – is it easy and quick to pass it on? – remember consumers are time poor and information heavy

facilitate the spread – minimise viral file size (or host remotely) and allow forwarding easy

three – methodology

historically – viral comms were spread via the garden fence; communities were geographically limited

with the advent of tintinet – it became possible to quickly reach a multitude of people very quickly (exponential spreading of material)

more recently the creation of hosting platforms has attracted attention – eg MySpace, YouTube… which has meant that material is hosted independently of the viral location of it (ie it’s the link that’s viral – the content is hosted by an aggregator eg YouTube)

so… consider where and how you choose to host – it will convey independence (or otherwise), but this will have consequences for the extent to which – as creator – you are given credit

four – contemporacy

novelty value – if it or it’s like has been seen before, it will be less likely to be passed on

currency – easier to spread if its grounded in current affairs or the zeitgeist

reportage – ideal is to get established media to report the activity – such breakthroughs are rare but massively extend the reach of the viral as well as convey credibility and ‘buzz’

make it relevant to something beyond the current state and needs of your brand

five – measurement

whatever you’re putting out there, make sure you keep track of what’s happening to it

who’s getting it, who’s passing it on, who comments? – technorati, delicious and blogpulse all can help brands do this

Host the content somewhere where there is inbuilt measurement (YouTube, MySpace etc)

basically… don’t send off all you hard work into the ether without tying a lead on it first

advertising, planning

Good and aren’t good enough any more

I like this ad. I like the line and the insight behind it – namely that in a time-poor, work-dominated busy London life it’s no longer enough to expect love to find you; you have to find it for yourself. Make it happen. With a little help from Match.com of course.

It’s also a good looking ad – it’s bright and stands out on a drab underground platform. But I hope that the campaign hasn’t stopped with this one good rectangular underground ad… Good ads are all well and good. But good ads simply aren’t good enough any more.

Its an insight (and indeed a brand promise) that deserves to be taken further – in short it’s a comms insight and there’s the potential for media channels to be much more than just the medium for the conveying of the make love happen message. Rather, there is the opportunity for the role of media to be a facilitator of making love happen, or the educator to help the increasing numbers of single people to make it happen.

A few starters for ten:

Awards for venues that are proven to offer the best chances of meeting a Match
Commission a survey to identify the best places to meet people
Inserts in magazines featuring entertaining advice on finding a Match
Free cinema screenings with drinks afterwards when you register – use the common ground offered by movies, maximise this with in-cinema media
Online in-ad questionnaire – an application that determines (based on where you go out / what you like / do) your best strategy for getting a Match

None of these of course could and should better the product (ie the site), but they do offer the opportunity for media to be a true taster for what’s on offer; and – crucially – to make the brand evident through behaviour, not just through messaging. I hope that Match.com are doing it …their insight deserves it.

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MEDIATION

negotiating the future of media and communications

Category Archives: planning

Mediation’s (Completly Unproven) Rank of Media Channel Carbon Badness

TV and Online – Forever Frenemies

Some Engaging TV Research

Thinking Inside the Box

No end in sight for London’s Freesheet War

Begun, the Media Owner Science Wars have

five thoughts on peer to peer (viral) marketing

Good and aren’t good enough any more