Measurement

Buzz Off, and Please Make It Viral

beeThere are a lot of terms in this new world of marketing that I really hate.  I’ve written before about how I believe that nothing is really “viral.”  I work in an industry where I get calls out of the blue asking me how much it would cost for us to do a viral video for brand X.  Or how can we stop the “blog chatter” around some bad news (this is usually involving a blog with millions of readers).  Or how do we generate some early “buzz” around an announcement that no one really cares about.

Ben McConnell tackled the issue of word-of-mouth vs buzz quite adeptly in a recent blog post.  He defined “word-of-mouth” as follows:

Word of mouth is a byproduct of a remarkable culture. It’s how companies like 37 Signals, Discovery Education, and The Container Store grow and flourish. Their companies are organized around a well-defined purpose and strong values, which may not be for everyone, but they’re important enough to a significant group of people.

Subsequently, he describes “buzz” quite differently:

Buzz is the result of word-of-mouth marketing. Its results are typically short-term. Gimmicks are common, and examples abound.

I would take it one step further.

Word-of-mouth is an actual marketing behavior, like executing a call to action.  It’s a marketing conversion that can be measured.

Buzz is the perception of word-of-mouth activity.  You can manufacture buzz, much like McConnell shows in his post, but it doesn’t have to be real.  While buzz can be the result of widespread word-of-mouth activity, it can also be created in a void by PR and advertising.  How often does a film having “Oscar buzz” actually result in an Oscar?  There’s often no delivering on the buzz promise, which is a pretty good sign that it’s been manufactured.

It will be a good day for all marketers when terms like “viral” and “buzz” are put to bed and we can finally focus on measurable behaviors that actually support quality brand values.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

So…is Blogging Becoming Marginalized or Mainstream?

A year or two ago, there was so much irrational exuberance around blogging that it was a foregone conclusion that within a few years there would be five blogs for every person on the planet, no one would get information from any other source and we would have robots in our cars to make us breakfast on the way to work.  Ok, maybe it didn’t go that far but there was certainly no shortage of numbers from the likes of Technorati to make you think that blogs wouldn’t become so prevalent that they would essentially be inescapable.  Sure, blogging was swimming against the current created by traditional media but at the rate it was growing it would certainly take over at some point.

Well…not so fast.

Blogging, like many other infallible social technologies (I’m looking at you MySpace), appears to be slowing down and possibly even in decline.  Technorati has just issued their fifth annual State of the Blogosphere and the numbers aren’t all pointing to the sky.

Sure, many facets of blogging are thriving.  By almost any measurement, blogs now dominate entertainment media, with TMZ and Yahoo’s OMG leaving traditional outlets like People and Entertainment Weekly in the dust.  You see it in technology as well.  It’s hard for me to think back to the time when the WSJ’s Walt Mossberg could be considered one of the most influential people in consumer tech.  Now he’s lucky if he has as many readers in a month as Engadget has in a day.

As with most statistics, the real truth is one or two layers deep.  Are there really 133 million blogs?  Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb was quick to point out that only 1.1% of them had been posted to in the last 7 days.  As he outlines, that’s slightly less than amount of people that have defaulted on their mortgages in the US over the past year or the amount of people that went to the Minnesota State Fair last year.  If only 1.5 million blogs are active on a weekly basis, is it really such a juggernaut?

What about SOV or traffic?  Here’s what Kirkpatrick says about that:

The average number of monthly unique visitors reported by these bloggers? In the US it’s only 18,000. That means 600 people per day. 600 people reading your thoughts each day is pretty fabulous for the vast majority of people on the planet, but as media goes it’s not very mainstream. Especially if there are only a million and a half people doing it.

It’s starting to sound pretty fringe again, isn’t it?  There were about 35% less blog posts this year than there were last year.  That’s a significant decline.

By the raw numbers, yes, blogging is becoming an increasingly marginalized media channel.  The top 1% may be dominating but I think you can make a case that those blogs are becoming indistinguishable to their mainstream counterparts once they begin relying on advertising revenue.

What I found interesting though was some of the demographic information.  About half the bloggers Technorati surveyed made more than $75,000 a year in household income.  While this isn’t impressive to a lot of the people that will cover this story, it’s still well above the median household income in the United States (the last census in 2006 had the median at $48,201/year).  Maybe this can’t be classified at affluent, per se, but these are certainly people with some purchasing power.

But what about the 600 people who read each of these blogs everyday?  Yes, it’s not a huge number but who are those people?  They are most likely peers, meaning that they are probably in roughly the same demographic.  I’d say a blogger that speaks to 600 people everyday with a median household income of greater than $75,000/year is someone significant, especially to marketers.  Does it really matter how many people Fox News reaches if they are predominantly undereducated low-income individuals?  I’m not saying that they are but we now have a pretty good idea of who is reading these blogs everyday.

So I would agree that blogging has become more marginalized but I think that is also where the value lies.  To go back to my old anti-reach marketing credo, it’s not how many people you’re reaching but who you are reaching.  It’s kind of like the picture above in that the fight against the river isn’t as important when you’re mainly interested in the fish.

If You Can Guarantee WOM Success, You’re Probably Measuring it Wrong

Maybe it’s just me but I’ve always been wary of money back guarantees.  With very few exceptions, returning products or getting refunds is generally a hassle.  By the time you’ve been through the whole process you generally regret the whole experience and that attempt at a “clean slate” with the brand is rarely achieved.

BzzAgent disagrees with me.  In a move Ad Rants is calling “desperate,” BzzAgent is guaranteeing that their word-of-mouth campaigns will perform 20% better than other media or you can have your money back (if you’re spending more than $300,000).

So what is 20% better?  Is it 20% more conversions?  WOM is about more than just selling products and services in a one time hit, isn’t it?  Or maybe it’s our beloved Net Promoter score rearing it’s ugly head again.  If you can prove that your banner ads make more people likely to recommend your product then you can have your money back.  Nope, that doesn’t sound right.

The problem in the money back guarantee for me is that it undermines what I consider is the true value of what BzzAgent does.  Over the years the company has built a network of “agents” who are basically people that like getting free stuff to try.  The company is criticized by those who say that these people aren’t influencers but, if we’re talking about candy bars and laundry detergent, one-to-one recommendations from average consumers are just as valuable as one from the hyper-connected.  Is Seth Godin really blogging about how soft his toilet paper is?

BzzAgent is in a unique position as a word-of-mouth marketer.  If you’re interested in seeding a packaged goods product, there is probably no better company to get it out to most major demographics.  They’re ethical marketers who keep their agents informed of the WOMMA rules and have more experience than just about anyone else.

The only problem I have with this is that it once again shrinks WOM down to the campaign level.  Sadly, there are no great metrics of WOM except trying to find out the number of recommendations or somehow being able to track conversions, neither of which are usually an option.  The level of WOM that a brand attains is more akin to brand awareness than it is to most of the common marketing metrics that advertising and PR are based on.  This is a discipline that can only be measured by trend data and I don’t think you can compare that to other media that delivers short term reach.

I side with Contagious on this one.  The guarantee is a stunt that gets BzzAgent some added visibility but it raises more questions about measurement than it attests to the true value of WOM.

Measuring the Awesomeness of Jimmy Page’s Stairway to Heaven Guitar Solo

One of the greatest guitar solos of all time is Jimmy Page’s masterpiece on Stairway to Heaven. Right after Robert Plant sings “your stairway lies on the whispering wind,” Page launches into an epic solo that, at the time, extended the song well beyond the limit of any airtime that radio stations could give it (this would later be amended). Yes, the solo is awesome but how do we measure how awesome it is?

For starters, let’s look at engagement. The average guitar solo is about 15-20 seconds so, if you count the 12-string strumming part, the Stairway solo is easily over a minute, making the solo 3-4 times more awesome than your average guitar solo.

Let’s not forget about impressions either. Stairway has been a AOR staple since November 1971 and often appears near the top of the list on Classic Rock Greatest Hits of All-Time countdowns. According to Wikipedia, it is the most requested song of all time on FM radio despite never being released as a single. Don’t forget about all the amateur guitarists playing this song in Guitar Centers all around the country at this very moment either. Yeah, they may be annoying people but those are impressions too.

Then, of course, there’s Page’s use of the double-neck guitar. Sure he probably didn’t use the double-neck in the studio but it’s still implied in the overall awesomeness quotient due to the live performances. Using the ad equivilency model, I think that makes all these numbers worth 1.75 more than other guitar solos by the same measurement. Keep in mind that this formula doesn’t apply to the five-neck guitar that the guy from Cheap Trick uses. After three, each additional neck begins to count against you.

Ok, this is obviously stupid, right?

The parallel hit me while reading the excellent Brains on Fire post in response to an Ad Week interview with Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Bogusky was quoted as saying:

We are so lucky to be in a creative field at a time when the economy is running on creativity. Yet we are still inculcated to mistrust the concept of creativity. We may be perfectly positioned, but we spend our time trying to add scientific processes to our strategies and scientific testing to our work. Why do we distrust something that is so easy for us all to identify and identify with?

It still amazes me when I hear clients that are really drawn to a creative idea, have the budget to do it but can’t justify it unless they can measure quantifiable results. If this approach was taken to any other creative discipline I would be amazed if any creativity survived. Not to mention, it’s probably at the root of many consumers’ disdain for marketing.

In a world where singles had to be under five minutes long (it would’ve been shorter if not for Dylan, btw), how would Jimmy Page have made a case for his epic guitar solo in Stairway to Heaven? More importantly, if it was omitted, how would it have affected the legacy of Led Zeppelin?

The fact is that attaching your brand to a creative idea makes you look more intelligent, inventive and creates an actual connection with another human being that goes one level deeper than an overused emotional trigger. Good design, writing (you know sometimes words have two meanings) and compelling interactivity can only be measured on the most basic levels but the real value is far more obvious. Not all that glitters is gold, but some of it is.

So when will this new day dawn for those who stand long? Hard to tell. Interactive platforms are certainly expanding the canvass for creativity, as I learned when I visited the Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley this week, but there is still a ways to go before everyone can climb the stairway over quantifiability. Perhaps only then will our shadows be taller than our souls.

(ed note: forgive me for this self indulgence…at least I didn’t use every line from the song, as I originally intended)

Why Ad Equivalency Needs to Die

Dead AdSome recent talk on the blogs about developing an ad equivalence model for social media has really been rubbing me the wrong way. While on a fundamental level I believe PR and advertising have almost nothing to do with each other, the thing that really bothers me about ad equivalency is that it suggests that advertising value is the industry standard for marketing when, in reality, it is inflated and based on flawed metrics. While this belief may be held by some CMOs, this is really the root of why PR agencies have always been less successful than other marketing disciplines at showing the value of what they do and getting paid fairly for it. If you look at how SEO is sold by the few reputable companies that do it, the brand awareness value of organic search is proven through an excess of data and then the results are simply reported on.

John Bell at Ogilvy PR got the ball rolling with his post “The Next Evolution of Social Media” and, to his credit, he prefaced his case for ad equivalence with the following:

What we do is different than advertising. It is different than traditional, narrowly-defined PR. It is different than direct. But what we do – word of mouth marketing using social media methods – must be comparable to the more established disciplines or our programs won’t grow beyond enthusiast clients and “try-and-learn” scenarios.

He goes on to say that the key differences between social media marketing/WOM and advertising that need to measured more effectively are third party WOM activation, engagement and levels of trust.  In many ways, this really isn’t much different than showing the value of PR as whole, which also benefits from delivering messages through more trusted channels in more engaging ways (if you agree that editorial is more engaging than advertising).  I don’t think many will disagree with the need for better measurement in these areas but I don’t think this is necessarily a case for ad equivalency.

The problem lies in how advertising is valued.  In almost every sector but online we are seeing a leveling off or decrease in ad spending.  What’s happening is that marketers are finding out that not only is traditional advertising outdated but it’s downright ineffective for the budgets that are demanded.  Ad agencies are bloated beasts that have been adjusting to this trend by paying junior employees less to do more work and farming out as much as they can to the lowest bidders.  The result is poor advertising being placed in declining disposable media formats.  Oh, and no one is paying attention to them either.  The last thing that social media marketers need to do is get aboard that sinking ship.

Katie Paine, who writes the best blog in the world on PR measurement, was a little more direct than me in her assessment of the idea.  She says that ad equivalence is catering to “backward looking CMOs who don’t get it” and takes us a step in reverse to “screaming more loudly at more eyeballs” instead of focusing on the real value of what we do.

So what is the solution?

As I said a while back, the key to measuring online media and engagement is having a desired interaction and knowing how much that is worth to you.  With advertising it’s easy to let the market dictate pricing but, since this is a relatively new discipline and the media is extremely fractured, it’s up to the individual marketer to prove the value of their interaction.

Yes, this is more difficult and harder to sell to a 60-year-old CMO but reverting back to a flawed methodology doesn’t address the real problem and that is that PR agencies and small boutique shops aren’t doing a very good job of promoting the real value of this media.  There is a lot of preaching to the choir through blogging and twittering but people need to climb the marketing food chain and be vocal about all the aspects of this media that have tangible value instead of looking for a quick fix.

Edelman on Trust

Trust

So maybe a couple botched campaigns over the past couple years keeps you from shouting out “Edelman!” in a word association game when the word “trust” comes up but that doesn’t stop the largest PR firm in the US from releasing their annual Trust Barometer. The latest report was released to mild fanfare at WEF in Davos with the key finding being as follows:

Young opinion elites show higher general levels of trust than their older counterparts; rely on multiple sources of information to form opinions of companies.

Ok, not exactly groundbreaking. Luckily, Richard Edelman broke it down a little further in one of his standard length blog opuses (I kid, I wish all PR CEOs would be as vocal as Richard).

The most important finding to Richard was that people tend to trust businesses more than they trust their government. Somewhat surprisingly, this gap was the largest in the United States and China (out of 18 countries surveyed). This has big implications in public affairs, where many groups will often tout their connection to government to gain credibility. Obviously, that is no longer a wise decision.

In another win for the word-of-mouth people, the survey found that employees are trusted about twice as much as CEOs, which Richard states as a case for focusing on peer-to-peer relationships. It always struck me as unnecessary when CEOs made all the major announcements for their companies when there were more passionate and knowledgeable people behind the scenes that could do a much better job at being persuasive.

Although somewhat buried, the report also found that the 25-34 age group found Wikipedia to be the #2 most reliable source for information about companies in the US behind business magazines. While I doubt few people realizes that exponentially more people visit Wikipedia than every domestic business magazine in print, I’m sure the traditional PR people will be loving this statistic.

Be sure to check out Richard’s post for more details. All kidding aside, it’s probably the most thorough survey on trust done in recent memory.

The Influencers are Everywhere

Forrester - WOMAccording to a new Forrester report, roughly 6 of 10 consumers surveyed say that they share product advice with family and friends. This runs contrary to other research by Burson-Marsteller that has identified only 15% of consumers to be “e-fluentials.” With more and more data pointing to the WOM being the key driver of purchasing decisions, the studies are probably the first of many aimed at finding out who really is the target for WOM marketing.

While I find the Forrester numbers to be interesting, I think Burson’s methodology for identifying influencers is much more useful to marketers than simply finding out how many people are making recommendations. According to the AdWeek article:

(Burson) found several distinct traits that mark consumers as e-fluentials: they speak to 50 percent more people per day and are more likely to share opinions and experiences with others.

The trick to really identifying influencers isn’t just as simple as seeing who’s talking – not all of the consumer generated noise online is influential – as much as it is a matter of seeing how they’re talking and who they’re talking to.

Viral Marketing with a Side of Spam

SpamYou know online marketing ethics have a long way to go when someone from a viral marketing company will all but endorse spamming on one of the top five blogs in the world.

Unfortunately, that’s what happened on TechCrunch this week. Dan Ackerman Greenberg from The Commotion Group guest blogged on TechCrunch about various methodologies that can be employed to push up viral content onto YouTube’s “most viewed” list and ultimately receive as many hits as possible.

Greenberg has since issued a clarification on his original post, which has already attracted about 450 comments, but his commentary doesn’t go very far to combat the idea that many online marketers still consider spamming, albeit of different degrees, to be a valuable part of marketing content online.

These kinds of ethical breaches are all driven by the old reach marketing myths that have been pushing bad marketers for decades. Yes, well in excess of 20 million people have viewed the Mentos videos on YouTube but what is the real brand awareness measurement that relates to selling more candy for the company? I find it hard to believe that millions of people watching Diet Coke fountains have really helped move the needle for Mentos. However, at least it was low cost and organic though and they never had to compromise their brand by spamming.

Greenberg is driven by this same kind of measurement.

So far, we’ve worked on 80-90 videos and we’ve seen overwhelming success. In the past 3 months, we’ve achieved over 20 million views for our clients, with videos ranging from 100,000 views to upwards of 1.5 million views each. In other words, not all videos go viral organically – there is a method to the madness.

Note that he’s not citing brand awareness surveys or product sales numbers. He’s justifying spamming message boards and creating fake “conspiracies” in his own YouTube comments by giving us the total number of views. How can you debate the tactics when you see “successes” like 100,000 or 1.5 million views per viral video? To support his “Content is NOT King” theory, Greenberg listed a few of his helpful hints for reaching wide audiences, like “make it shocking,” “use fake headlines” and “appeal to sex.”

It’s easy to point the finger at Greenberg and blame him for these kinds of practices but the real culprit are the advertisers that are fueling these kinds of behaviors with outdated metrics that aren’t suited for interactive media. Far too few companies are using legitimate key performance indicators (KPIs) in their online marketing strategies and, in turn, the majority are creating a market for unscrupulous marketers who will do anything to replicate the kind of numbers that impress them.

Greenberg concludes by saying “These days, achieving true virality takes serious creativity, some luck, and a lot of hard work. So, my advice: fire your PR firm and do it yourself.” If you’re looking for someone to buy blog posts, spam message boards and dilute social networks, then I really hope you do have to look beyond your PR firm.

Rubel: Skip Reach, Go Niche

ReachI found myself agreeing with Steve Rubel this morning. In what seems like a long overdue comparison, Rubel cited Billy Beane’s “Moneyball” as an example of how marketers need to change their key metrics to better serve their objectives. The premise of “Moneyball” is that the Oakland A’s built a competitive team on a much smaller budget than their competitors by changing the key statistics they looked at for their players and prospects.

This works particularly well in PR, where the metrics have been traditionally skewed by bad sources. Circulation inflation has been rampant in print media for a long time but for some reason, with only a few exceptions, it hasn’t fazed the marketers that continually dump millions of dollars into the channel. Instead of finding a better system, PR’s prevailing answer to measurement has been advertising value equivilent (AVE), which relies on these same flawed numbers.

Rubel suggests that a cost per action (CPA) model would be a step in the right direction. I mentioned in a previous post that measuring interactive media must take the interactive element very literally and any measurement must ask “what is the desired interaction?”

I’m also a big proponent of partnering with niche media as opposed to just being a blip on the radar of an outlet with a bigger reach. When you partner with a smaller outlet, like a niche blog or social network, they will probably work with you to give you all the data you need to show ROI. Getting custom data from bigger players like Gawker Media and MySpace/Facebook is probably a bit more of a stretch. Dealing with numbers doesn’t mean you can’t get creative.

Cross Media Measurement: Sometimes Both Sides are Wrong

MagazineToday Ad Age ran a story on how print publications want advertisers to look at all their readers, as opposed to just the ones that buy their publications. It makes sense considering how many people are now opting for the online versions of their favorite newspapers and magazines. Sometimes the content is more fresh or there is accompanying reader dialogue that can’t be found in print. Heck, sometimes people just don’t want another few dozen pages to add to a stack of papers that needs to be thrown away.

Naturally, the advertisers, who would be expected to foot the bill for this extra reach, would like to see a clear distinction between the people that are willing to pay for a magazine versus the Internet surfer who just finds themselves at the page after clicking an intriguing link. They’re investing a lot of money in these target publications and they want their message to reach these readers over and over again and not just exist in the periphery of a casual reader.

As a variety of factors have led to decreases in paid circulation of top newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, you could see this day coming a mile away. Publications such as these are not diminishing in value as media properties, in fact both are evolving online far more quickly than their peers in other media channels, but in order to show their growth and make themselves attractive to advertisers they must focus on total audience.

The trend brings to mind Googlezon and a future when paid subscribers are truly an elite minority. What habit speaks more to disposable income than a group of people that chose to pay for something that everyone else gets for free?

I think advertisers are right to ask that paid subscribers be treated differently than Web visitors but they also must keep in mind that paid subscribers are going to the Web for deeper engagement with the content they choose to pay for. If you really want to really want to drive your message home with these segments then you’re going to need to find innovative ways to reach them when they’re enjoying the content that others are getting for free and that may mean having to pay for the total audience.

1 2  Scroll to top