Advertising

How to Measure Super Bowl Success

The Super Bowl, despite being a decent game this year, is a pretty fascinating marketing event.  Our culture, which will generally go to great lengths to avoid commercials, will, on this one day of the year, pay as much attention to the advertising as they do to the entertainment programming that it’s interrupting.

Television advertising has generally been sustained by its flawed metrics.  Viewership counts are wildly inflated by companies like Neilsen and exhaustive data about how people generally ignore commercials and are rarely able to retain even the simplest message is universally discarded.

This football game may be the only time all year that reach numbers are actually accurate since viewers are actually paying attention and are more likely to go to the bathroom on 3rd and 2.  Under that assumption, it’s hard to put any ad ahead of any other on the basis of reach.  So how do you measure success?

The USA Today, which represents a fairly decent cross section of the country, launched their Super Bowl Ad Meter to try to address the problem.  The methodology was similar to many focus groups where about 300 volunteer viewers were given a dial to express when they saw something they liked, disliked or were neutral about.  The results were somewhat discouraging to many advertising people, as the group generally responded more favorably to the low concept work from brands like Bud Light, Doritos and Pepsi Max, the last of which employed the old can-in-the-balls punchline.  Whether or not these 300 people were in line with the demographic that will run out and buy a new Chrysler or Web domain is debatable but it’s just about as good as you can do in measuring at least the entertainment value of the spots.

Since we’re pretty much at the peak of inflated expectations in the evolution of social media, it was no surprise that Radian6 and Mullen got together to come up with a social media measurement of success, the Brand Bowl.  It was an interesting idea except for the fact that it is based largely on an automated sentiment analysis technology that has some major shortcomings.  The methodology takes a large number of keywords related to the spots and computes positive tweets plus neutral tweets minus negative tweets to score each ad.  This works great if every tweet was like “I loved the VW ad…Darth Vader rocks!” or “God I hate Bud Light…Coors 4ever!” but that’s not how social media works.  Tweets like “What’s up with Chrysler? Do I need to love Detroit to buy one of their gas guzzlers now?” would be recorded as neutral, which is scored the same as positive, when it’s not.  There’s no super computer that has been able to detect sarcasm and Twitter is rife with it.  Back when I had interns, I tested the sentiment engines of multiple monitoring services against the common sense of college graduates and found that sentiment engines were always off my a minimum of 20%, which isn’t statistically acceptable.

So, which do you trust, the minute-by-minute feelings of a random group of 300 people or a large volume of Tweets sent through a potentially flawed sentiment engine?  Neither is perfect but which is more flawed?

Let’s look at the somewhat controversial Groupon spots by CP+B.

The USA Today focus group didn’t really like this campaign.  In fact, in came in at #41, well into the lower half of all the spots surveyed.

In Radian6/Mullen’s Brand Bowl, the spot is currently resting at #3, up from #7 when I looked last night.  There have been over 4,000 tweets as of writing this, yet it is the only spot in the top 10 with a negative sentiment score.  People are talking about this spot…but what are they saying?

You don’t need a algorithm to see that people were left with a bad taste in their mouth from these spots.  Everyone from Read Write Web to Paid Content to the commenters on Groupon’s blog are chiming in and the vast majority have concluded that it is an insensitive, ham-fisted approach to commercial comedy (sadly, I just found out the Christopher Guest was involved with directing the spots).  Groupon, which didn’t suffer from much of an awareness problem before the ads, is now a central brand in the discussion of how brands exploit a crisis without sensitivity.  I’m sure Kenneth Cole is very happy they’ve joined the club.

So, this brings us back to the classic word-of-mouth marketing argument: is it a success if people are talking about it?  CP+B’s mission statement is to create advertising that people talk about but the don’t really specify whether or not they need to be positive about it.  This is somewhat of a no brainer for an agency because controversy gives your work more exposure, as opposed to most immediately forgettable advertising.  It helps agencies but does it actually help the brands?

I’m hoping, possibly in vain, that this represents a bit of a tipping point in the overly simplistic idea that marketing can be successful if you can only make people talk about it.  10-15 years ago I could see why this myth persisted.  You had anecdotal evidence that people were talking and there was enough neutral editorial coverage to make a case that overall sentiment wasn’t trending negative.

We don’t live in those times anymore.

The reaction to the Groupon spots must have been foreseen since the Kenneth Cole flub was such a close parallel.  The only difference is that the Kenneth Cole tweet may have been a momentary lack of judgment as opposed to being carefully orchestrated in a multi-million dollar campaign.  The intelligent people at Groupon and their agency knew this would offend people and still made conscious decisions, like leaving out the charity angle in the television creative, to allow the reaction to play out.  They didn’t care if people had a negative reaction, as long as they were talking about it.

Creatively, this is lazy and it undermines a brand that was on the verge of becoming a household name.  Groupon is often dismissed as a coupon site but there is a much bigger story there.  People are connecting with small businesses in new ways and are being incentivized to get out and explore local experiences of all kinds.  I’ve heard dozens of these stories in the past year, from people trying out kayaking because of a deal or some amazing massage that helped someone discover a new independently owned spa in their neighborhood.  There is so much that is central to the stakeholder value in Groupon that is undermined by a cheap publicity ploy.  Sure, you’ll hear all about how many more people visited Groupon.com this week than previously but squandering an opportunity to create long term brand value on one of the highest impact marketing platforms of the year is really a shame at this stage of their development.

Chrysler’s ad had a similar fate to Groupon in the Ad Meter and Brand Bowl.  In fact, it ranked just below Groupon in the Ad Meter and just above them in the Brand Bowl.  They key difference was that Chrysler had a +14 sentiment score versus Groupon’s -4.  While the sentiment scoring can be dismissed to a degree, the message you see being pulled through in social media can’t.  Wieden + Kennedy’s spot challenged what people thought about Detroit and American car manufacturers and actually made a persuasive argument for buying a Chrysler.  It was suddenly a brand that stood for something and the discussion you’ll find around it pertains to that very important aspect of the creative.

There are a lot of ways to measure success in advertising and changes in media habits and the amount of data we can collect may be resulting in a constantly changing set of standards for this success.  Focus groups will always be compelling due to the level of feedback you can get but scaling them to represent a larger demographic and peer influence is always going to be an obstacle.  Likewise, monitoring sentiment is social media will always be a challenge and may never be fully automated but it’s a step in the right direction.  With measurement standards for creative completely absent, you’re left with instinct and your best judgment but also a giant media toolbox.  The challenge isn’t in finding the shortcuts, it’s in having the foresight to avoid them.

Why Facebook is Making Marketers Stupid

I should probably preface this post by saying that I’ve never been impressed with Facebook as a technology or a form of media.  When you deconstruct Facebook, there are very few Facebook features that aren’t executed better somewhere else.  Photo sharing is weak at best compared to Flickr and others.  The new location-based services are a shadow of Gowalla and Foursquare.  Even status updates as a microblogging platform are lagging behind Friendfeed, a company Facebook acquired a long time ago.  In fact, aside from the default news feed algorithm, I can’t point to one thing that Facebook does better than anyone else.  Yet nothing really compares to it’s user base and a social network is ultimately defined by its user base so Facebook wins.  For now.

However, as a marketing platform, no one can convince me that Facebook is anything but a watered down form of CRM.  There were three stories that I came across this week that really irked me and, judging by the fact that I came across them through trusted sources, have convinced me that Facebook is actually making marketers stupid.

Case #1: Hitwise, a company full of great tech and smart people, reported that Facebook had passed Google as the most visited Web site of 2010 (8.93% of all US visits vs Google’s 7.19%).  It seems a little fishy but I don’t completely doubt it.  What bothers me was the reaction to this news by many respected marketers.  While I have no interest in calling anyone out, a quick stroll through the marketing blog echochamber (i.e. the AdAge Power 150) will show you that many used this stat to add more credibility to their often bloated Facebook marketing programs.  More visitors, more eyeballs…the age old recipe for online advertising success.  What’s not to understand?

My problem is that it ignores behavior.  Someone on Google is looking, literally searching, for something and when you’re marketing to them there based on keywords you’re reaching someone who is extremely receptive to your message if it matches their criteria.  It’s someone with a question that is looking for an answer.

In the case of Facebook, users are, for the most part, just killing time.  They’re browsing photos or reading status updates or occasionally playing a game.  They’re not shopping, looking for specific information, researching something or doing anything else that makes them particularly receptive to advertiser messaging.  Sure, they may click a Like button here and there but the general behavior doesn’t match someone who is receptive to changing their car insurance or shifting their sentiment about an airline.  In the grand scheme of online media, a Facebook user is as close to couch potato as you can get without actually turning on your TV and putting your feet up.

Passing Google in total visitors in the US does not make Facebook a better marketing platform than the most trusted search engine in the world.

Case #2: The story that Pampers sold out of 1,000 discounted diapers in one hour through an e-commerce gateway on Facebook.  There was a lot of foaming at the mouth on this one and, since it’s a P&G, there’s no doubt that every consumer packaged goods brand took notice and used it to get the wheels in motion to sell “directly” through Facebook.

While it’s generally hard to argue with sales, I think you can make a pretty good argument against the user flow on Pamper’s little e-commerce engine on Facebook.  You first make your way to the FBML “Shop Now” tab on the Pampers page, which is essentially a splash page (a roadblock on an e-commerce site?).  Clicking the “Shop Now” button on that page (I have to do this twice?) actually opens a new window for a Pamper’s branded Amazon Web store app.  As you move through the sales cycle, you actually get thrown back out into Amazon.com to finish the transaction.

So what was the purpose of being in the Facebook environment in the first place, other than to compromise the user experience and limit my shopping options (vs Amazon.com)?  If Pampers can sell 1,000 diapers in an hour through a crippled e-commerce platform, imagine how fast they could sell through a streamlined experience that actually showcased their product in the best possible light without having to compete with Facebook’s nav?

Case #3:  Maybe I’m a little sensitive to metrics and terminology but the story that really got me this past week was a Mashable post touting the importance of Likes for brands.  The POV used a video from Kraft Foods/Oreo taken from a GasPedal event that was maddeningly titled “How Oreo Learned to Fish Where the Fish Are.”  Oreo is a brand that has a lot of genuine affinity among consumers so I won’t argue that Facebook is a worthless platform for them but I will argue against a point that’s made at about 1:40 into the video as the set up for their whole program.

The statement was “Facebook has really become the de facto brand destination,” which was followed by an example regarding Starbucks.  You see, Starbucks, as per this claim, has about 995 thousand monthly visitors to Starbucks.com and roughly 12 million Facebook fans.  According to the most recent data I can find, about 20% of Facebook users are active on the monthly basis, which is pretty high compared to other community sites.  So, over the course of the month, about 2.4 million “fans” might engage with Oreo on Facebook.  If the average Facebook user has about 130 friends and the average user who friends brands has around 200 friends, then what are the chances that any Starbucks content appears in your default feed?  Let’s be generous and say that the News Feed algorithm filters content from all but 30% of your friends and Likes, even though probably even less make it through for an account with 200+ friends.  That now brings the number of people that are exposed to your messaging to around 700,000.  So my question is that would you rather have 700,000 people possibly exposed to your message in their News Feed on a third party site or would you rather have 995,000 come to your Web site where you can collect information, sell product and have almost no restrictions on engagement?

I don’t mean to suggest that all Facebook marketing is worthless.  In fact, I think it’s a great communications tool for a lot of brands, even with the obvious scaling problems.  My problem is with strategy that is fueled by bad measurement and a misunderstanding of established user experience standards.  While Facebook and social media marketing may be comparatively young, that’s not an excuse to throw out everything online marketers have learned over the past 15 years.

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Why Boutiques are Kicking Your Ass

Kicking the ass of traditional agenciesJeremiah Owyang today made a lot of boutique social media agencies very happy with his new report showing how smaller specialty agencies are wiping the floors with larger agencies in average yearly social media budgets.  Since Owyang often gets applause when he advises brands not to hire “gurus and ninjas” to run social media, has he been proven wrong by his own report or is there something else going on here?

The Altimeter report concludes that smaller agencies aren’t winning because they’re “ninjas” but perhaps a few other reasons, such as:

  • Smaller agencies have a “specialized skillset” that larger agencies haven’t focused on
  • Traditional agencies are too “campaign focused,” which has proven not to be effective
  • Not being rooted in outdated measurement, smaller agencies are better at measuring engagement
  • Larger agencies won’t “get their hands dirty” and get directly involved in the stakeholder engagement that is driving a lot of the larger budgets

While a few of these may be true, there is a larger issue at play as well.  The average annual spend difference for “mature” brands is only a matter of around $150k/year between the traditional agencies and the boutiques that are kicking their ass.  A $200k contract from someone like P&G may be a big deal to a small agency with 8 employees but JWT isn’t going to even get on the call for that much money.  We’re still talking about table scraps here in relation the larger chunks of budget being applied to advertising and other channels.

The good news for the larger agencies is that the work still stinks and has very little business impact.  If you look at even the comparably small resource allocations that the top ten Facebook pages are requiring to keep their “Like” numbers high, it would be hard to make a good business case for brands like Red Bull and Coca-Cola to repeat that again next year.  The reality is that brands are budgeting for social media just enough to keep them from looking stupid for not spending on social media.

Brands continue to dabble in ways that appear to be much bigger than they really are.  The new Ford Explorer got launched within Facebook to a flurry of applause from the social media echochamber but the launch still paled in comparison to even the smallest television campaign.

The real test of who is winning this battle for social media mindshare will be when the agencies are the ones who are mature and start pitching and winning pieces of business that rival the marketing outlays in other channels.  When brands start ponying up for the bigger ideas and the average size of these contracts begin to gain a digit or two, then we will finally see who is trusted with the beloved social media.  Until then, I’d be hesitant to count out the big agencies until you start to dangle a larger carrot for them to chase.

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Does the Creative Dept of Your Agency Need to be Shaken Up?

French painterSocial media presents an interesting challenge to agency creative departments.  In many ways, the rise of a largely consumer generated media entity is a potential pitfall for ad creatives.  By definition, it seems that they are almost completely unnecessary in a consumer generated world yet they’re still part of it.

Fortunately for the creative class, brands have been elbowing their way into this space for a few years now and most of them aren’t willing to give up control of their brand to the masses.  Instead, they’re always looking for new ways to “get their message out” at any cost through these channels and that falls squarely into the strength of the modern agency structure.  “Help me push in an environment I’m not comfortable in!”

This has created an interesting distinction between paid media and earned media.  In areas of the world like China, where BBS dominates, brands have been more reluctant to jump in because the channels provided few, if any, safeguards. Brands haven’t made as strong of a shift away from paid media in these markets because the opportunities in social media haven’t really matched up to many of their strengths as marketers.  Why waste resources in earned media when you get a better return through traditional channels?

In the US and UK, things are different.  The social media market for advertisers has largely adopted a version of the traditional advertising model.  If you look at the glorified brochureware sites that support most packaged good brands, you’ll often find a social media element squeezed in amongst a heavily manicured Flash animation or a wrapper for video.  Design a can, submit your picture with our product, make our next commercial, tell us what this means to you…rarely a compelling interaction and usually a behavior that needs to be significantly incentivized to be successful.

Why is this?

The reason is largely due to the pedigree of the creative class.  With few exceptions, most creative professionals come from a background in visual design or film.  It’s no wonder that agencies have embraced the concept of the “viral video” when it is primarily a version of the 60-second spot with less constraints.

There is a problem though.  Social media isn’t about video or visual design.

Yes, video and visual design play an important role in some aspects of social media but it is, by no means, a requirement.  When you look at actual creativity within the social space, it’s not something that’s clearly driven by titles like designer, copywriter or producer.  It’s a new kind of creativity that involves almost a mix of UX and sociology.  How do people want to engage with this brand in a social context and what is the most compelling way to facilitate that engagement?  Hint: it rarely requires a Flash microsite or shooting a video.

What is required is shaking up the creative structure of most agencies.  You’re starting to see plenty of social media strategists at big interactive firms but how many social media creatives do you see?  How many creative directors are really experts on social media and don’t come from design backgrounds?  How many even understand basic principles and ethics of word-of-mouth marketing, which is the closest discipline to social media?

As always, I love to be corrected so if you know of any social media specialists that sit within the creative department of a major agency please let me know and I will post an update.  If you’re in a creative director role and think you’re doing just fine, I’d be equally interested to hear from you.

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Bud Light: The Difference is Friendability

facebook-bud-lightBrands have struggled with how to integrate with emerging media channels for a long long time now.  Social networks are no longer “new” to most people under 40-years-old.  Brands have been creating MySpace pages and online communities for almost a decade.  Unfortunately for many companies, not all brands are the kinds of brands that people want to interact with on those platforms.

Some brands, like perhaps an online shoe store, fall into this category.  Do I really want to be “friends” with the company that ships me shoes?  This is the challenge that Zappos must’ve felt.  However, Zappos is a company that has a pretty clear idea of who their customers are and how they might want to interact with their brand.  If you look at how they use a channel like Twitter, you can see a somewhat organic conversation taking place between Zappos employees (including the CEO) and a select group of stakeholders.  If you’re really interested in how the company operates, they even offer a variety of behind-the-scenes content on their Facebook page.  It’s not for everyone but it’s a way to build a deeper connection with a select group of stakeholders who have a pretty high probability of becoming advocates for your brand.

That’s fine for a company that ships shoes but what if you’re a beer brand?  Your brand is synonymous with fun and socializing.  There are few brands that would seem so uniquely suited for seamless social media integration than an alcohol brand that is so closely associated with the very behavior that these platforms are trying to extend.

Then why do brands like Bud Light fail so clumsily in this regard?

As I was traveling and concerned that my favorite hockey team might be falling out of playoff contention, I checked ESPN, only to find a prominent and expensive banner ad from Bud Light asking me to become their friend on Facebook.  Being somewhat nuetral to Bud Light as a brand but fascinated by what a company that spends hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising would do with a platform like Facebook, I clicked through and prepared to become a “fan” of the brand.

Unfortunately, once you click through, you’re greeted with BL Central.  At BL Central you either send a beer (or a basketball[?]) to a friend, which is quite possibly one of the most innane and low level social interactions enabled by Facebook, or you can watch a series of commercials, which you may have already seen a few dozen times depending on whether or not you own a TV.  What else does one of the largest media buyers in American advertising invest in?  How about some desktop backgrounds and a PDF of the March Madness basketball tournament that hasn’t been updated since the tournament started?

So why does Budweiser have such weak profile of their customers compared to a company like Zappos, who has a much smaller and difficult customer base to reach?  Why can’t a relatively bottomless media budget and the help of some of the most skilled agencies in the country do anything to convert someone like myself into a brand advocate?

The difference is the brand culture.  Bud has bought their way into our culture through paid media in an era when brands had limited options to reach consumers in a meangingful way.  Yes, “friending” Bub Light will result in a certain amount of advocacy when your social network sees your association with the brand but it’s unlikely anyone will see your desktop background and, if they do, the reflection isn’t wholly positive on the brand.

It’s worth noting that this hasn’t hurt Bud Light.  The company sells a lot of beer and shows no signs of fading.  Similarly, their activity in social media is hardly a huge part of their marketing expenditures.

The failure is in the missed opportunity.  How could Bud Light fund a social utility that would promote their brand image for the same amount they spend on disposable media?  How could Bud Light’s numerous sponsorships – real brand experiences for many people – leverage social media to enhance the events and places that now only act as logo holders for the brand?  How could Bud Light come to life online like it does in a bar or any of the settings it exists organically?  If Zappos can invite you to their water cooler what’s stopping Bud Light from clinking glasses with you?

The answer is that they can and probably will but, for now, companies that were born into this environment will excell at building their brands in this tiny corner of the media universe while the brands that are positioned to benefit the most will continue to stumble around looking for ways to replicate the simplicity of how they originally carved out their niche in our culture.

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SXSW: Interactive Beyond the Screen

sxsw-2009 Jamie Monberg just finished a panel on taking interactive beyond the screen and into real interactions with stakeholders. One great example used was McDonalds, a company that spends millions in marketing but has done very little to improve the drive-in experience. Another example used on the power of interactive design was how Apple overcame Xerox through interface design and understanding that their success depended on personal interactions (although I’m ot sure if Apple is a great example due to their limited communications strategy).

Don’t Hassle Me, I Advertise Local

dont_hassle_me_im_local_shirt-p235996556728301186yqms_400Sarah Lacy stoked the fires of a debate that a lot people, including myself, aren’t looking forward to having in a recent article in Business Week.  Will local advertising online be hurt by the same pressures that are killing local newspapers?

Obviously, many people are betting that the answer will be no.  The New York Times is launching a series of local blogs and ESPN is just begining to roll out a series of local sports sites.  Even a hack like me is involved in an attempt to capitalize on the Great Newspaper Extinction.  Are we all wrong?

It’s clearly not Craig’s fault alone.  It’s also highly unlikely that an overabundance of inventory is driving the price down since there really aren’t too many online media properties that have nailed the local thing.

I’d love for someone to prove me wrong here but I think it’s the advertisers.  Yes, I’m sure the economy factors in substantially, but I really think it’s far more of a cultural factor.  Media buyers were always more comfortable with newspapers in their regional buys but the small businesses that are the staples of this segment aren’t as comfortable with ad networks and buying across disparate channels.  Sure, they can probably understand basic CPM advertising but they don’t understand bidding for space across multiple sites and the various advanced targeting that is available through all the modern ad networks.  Alienate people with technology and they will go away.

So maybe the blame needs to be shared.  The ad networks haven’t made the adjustments necessary to keep the advertisers spending in a rapidly evolving media landscape.  Of course, i don’t think this is a permanent trend.  In fact, I think we’ll see the advertisers come back long before the economy follows.  It’s more of a learning curve than a overarching environmental condition.

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Shilling 2.0

Shilling is a bit of an art form these days.  If you watch the NonSociety girls shill for the Blueprint Cleanse, you genuinely believe that they like the product.  You probably don’t stop and think if they would pay $85/day or $1600/month for it.  Is that really shilling if they like the product and act like regular user but probably wouldn’t buy it?  They’re not being paid.

Let’s revisit the definition, shall we?

Slang
n.
One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle.

v. shilled, shill·ing, shills
v.intr.
To act as a shill.
v.tr.
1. To act as a shill for (a deceitful enterprise).
2. To lure (a person) into a swindle.

Maybe buying the Blueprint Cleanse isn’t a swindle, per se, but whether or not it’s a genuine endorsement of value is certainly a question worth exploring.

Enter the poster child for unscrupulous behavior in online marketing; PayPerPost.  The company has become a little more self-aware over recent months and has made some branding changes in order to give them some distance from the problems of the past.  I think they’re called Izea now – or maybe that’s just an umbrella brand – and they have a bunch of interesting and somewhat sketchy ways you can market your products online.

Kmart took the bait.  The “contest” portion of the campaign is outlined here but the general gist is that Kmart gives a selected group of bloggers $500 to go shopping at Kmart and blog about their experience.  The bloggers then go gleefully spend $500 and tell everyone how great it is.

Loren Feldman got into it and posted a two and a half minute video all about how he’s never been to Kmart before but was amazed at all the stuff they had.  Yes, amazed that a department store has a lot of stuff in it.  This is a slight deviation from Feldman’s normal videos that often include his shirtless rants about how much he dislikes Robert Scoble or his gentle portrayal of black bloggers in his signature “Tech Nigga” piece.  Would Kmart ever advertise on this blog if they were at all monitoring this program at a high level?

But Izea wasn’t only preying on the dregs of blogging, they also got Chris Brogan to join in.  Chris’s post on his Dad-o-Matic blog made a little more sense.  He talked about shopping with children and eventually ended with a genuine revelation he had about how much he saved after spending $567.  I wouldn’t say it was the best media placement for Kmart but it did make a degree of sense (Brogan chose not to post this on his infinitely more popular blog for what I would assume to be obvious reasons).

Welcome to Shilling 2.0.  This new kind of shilling walks a very fine line between genuine and unethical.  I’m sure Feldman and Brogan can defend themselves in a myriad of different ways but is this really a good way to market a product?  If it’s really ethical then why can’t journalists do it?

The reason is because paying people for their opinions affects sentiment and is somewhat misleading.  This isn’t a crime but it isn’t a great way to show the value of your product or service.  Not all bloggers need to act like journalists but following ethical guidelines is one way to build credibility.  The opinion of credible sources adds to the credibility of your brand values.

So what’s the difference between this and sampling ice cream before you buy at Ben and Jerry’s?  It’s simple.  Value.  When you give someone a $500 gift certificate you’re giving them something of considerable value and there is a general assumption that you expect something in return.  Sure, all Izea asked them for was their opinion and to promote their contest but surely they wouldn’t pay $500 to each blogger just for that.  Kmart invested in this campaign to secure editorial content, which is more valuable than ad impressions, and wanted to tap into the networks that the bloggers reach by using them as advocates.  It wasn’t promised but it’s expected when you compensate with something of value.

I’ve been to Kmart.  It’s not amazing when you see how much stuff is there.  Every department store has a lot of products so that’s hardly a key differentiator for Kmart.  I’ve also never been compelled to tell anyone else when I discovered on my receipt that I saved money at a department store.  It happens every time I go to the grocery store so it’s not a big deal to me.  It’s not a big deal to you either.  Unless someone gave you $500.

Does Being a Magpie Mean Being a Spammer?

Who doesn’t want to convert their tweets into bling bling?  Yeah!  I just get to keep doing what I normally do and signing up for this little service will convert my musings into cold hard cash.  Woo hoo!  Where do I sign up?  I want to be a Magpie!

You may want to give this a little more consideration.

Yes, I know that there are very few Web properties that can survive without a revenue model so it is somewhat inevitable that we will all one day be staring at ads while we use Twitter.  I’m not resistant to that concept.

What I am resistant to is the transformation of consumer or peer content into advertising.  I understand that consumers are powering behavioral targeted advertising all the time but, if you truly view this kind of technology as conversational, this approach to monetizing social media is roughly the same as if your friend uncontrollably said “buy a Toyota!” every five minutes while you were discussing cars.

Also, as much as Magpie’s flow charts show cute little businesses like organic bakeries and “Suzie’s Veggie Shop,” these services will eventually be bought by media agencies that aren’t exactly famous for protecting the reputation of their advocates.  Do you really want advertisers controlling the messages you’re sending out online?  Do you want to risk that a future employer will know the difference between a racy ad embedded in your tweet and the information you voluntarily control?

Unfortunately, Magpie doesn’t address these concerns in their FAQ.  They tell you to “keep your followers happy and don’t risk annoying them with too many magpie-tweets” but they don’t really address what is means to turn your microblog into an ad.

Twitter asks the simple question “what are you doing?”  If Magpie is answering that for you with an ad then I think you’re missing the point.

Don’t Mess with Motrin Moms

Apparently Twitter can cause quite a headache for the people over at Motrin (how could I not?).  Yes, this ad motivated hundreds of young mothers to light up the Twitterverse with a defense of their baby carriers and the other tools of motherhood.  Apparently, mother’s don’t like to be told that they “look crazy” and now that mommy bloggers are a significant, and quite cohesive, part of the blogging community it doesn’t take long for them to take action.

Motrin reacted much as you would expect.  There is an apology on their Web site and they are trying to remove the ads from everywhere they can.  Obviously the ads will never go away and now, thanks to the controversy, they will probably reach more people than originally intended.

So, did Motrin do the right thing?  Were the ads offensive?

I say no.  While I can certainly understand why this can hit a nerve with new mothers, I don’t think the message is that far off for a lot of mothers that probably do feel strange walking around with a baby sling and do feel pain from carrying around the extra weight.  Is it disrespectful?  Not really.  Does it stereotype mothers in a negative way?  Not really.

This is a classic overraction by a company that sees one channel flooded with negativity.  I’m sure this spot could still do very well with focus groups and they’d find that the overwhelming majority of their target market isn’t offended.  The reality is that a few very vocal women were offended and the people they influence just fell in line.  I don’t think this affects their mainstream consumer and, if it did, I doubt the reaction would be overwhelmingly negative.  This was simply an Internet phenomenon and it will soon die exactly where is began.

Yes, listening is important but your reaction is equally important.  If every brand acts like Motrin then all advertising will become so safe and white washed that it will lose all impact and just turn into wasted media dollars.

Plus, have you ever held one of those things for a long time?  Dem babies is heavy!  Baby hauling pain may need something a little stronger than Motrin.

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