Marketing is a dirty word

I haven’t been blogging. Real life has taken over. But in the absence of a decent in-depth blog post, here’s a few little things to snack on.

Moving house - yeh, so it isn’t even remotely marketing related, but I’m living in Southbank, Melbourne now. In a small-arsed room in a big-arse apartment building. With a pool. And a steam room. And alot of young people. It’s a level of indulgence I’m really not accustomed to, so looking forward to learning how the other half live. That’s right – I’m an inner-city yuppie now.

Google and Microsoft going head to head with Twitter coverage - I have to give it to the marketing team at Microsoft (and also the Windows 7 product team) – they did pretty well in terms of stirring hype up around the Windows 7 launch (aswell as delivering by far the world’s best operating system). In Australia, #win7au was the most popular Twitter hashtag for a couple of days running, and Windows was the #1 trending topic for a day or two worldwide. However, props have gotta go to Google too, who I think have probably got a more winning formula – with the slow leak of Google Wave invites going out to ‘influencers’ (read: pretty much anyone who asked for an invite) who then tweeted about getting their invite, they were able to keep Google Wave in the top 10 trending topics on Twitter for a good few weeks (though they never took the #1 spot like Win7 did). I think this is a more effective type of ‘buzz’ that Google achieved - something that lasts longer than a few days and creates an ongoing conversation is more akin to ‘buzz’.

Also of interest in this regard was the release of Apple’s multi-touch mouse a few days before the release of Windows 7, which barely rated a mention on Twitter in comparison to Wave and Win7, and was also met with a general ‘SFW’ from many online commentators.

Google attacking Microsoft in general – Google is launching an all-out assault on Microsoft with their ‘Gone Google’ campaign, which is focused on winning adoption of Google products within the enterprise. Whilst I have seen a number of people pointing out how inaccurate Google’s claims are in the campaign, the campaign has the feel of the early Apple vs PC ads, which we all know were very effective (and similarly stretched the truth a little). Whilst that sort of marketing is not my kettle of fish, Google are doing a good job of planting  the seed of doubt with customers and leaving just enough ‘fertilizer’ (cough) to grow that seed.

Gen Y Marketing podcast – I recommended the Gen-Y marketing podcast in a previous post, but to be honest iTunes has been giving me nothing but headaches, so I haven’t been downloading episodes for a while. Which means I have a plethora of content to catch up on, so I’m going hard at listening to these guys to catch up… so many laughs, this is one of the best marketing podcasts around. Check it out at http://genymarketing.blogspot.com/ . My only suggestion is that they should stop slagging off Microsoft…

SocialMelb - social media coffees every Friday morning at Mr Tulk, State Library on Swanston St. It’s a great way to meet like-minded fellows, and everyone’s friendly enough. There’s also surprisingly little “I’m a social media maven’ dickery. Organised (I think) by Kate Kendall, you can keep up to date with the social media coffees by following the #socialmelb hashtag or @socialmelb on Twitter. I’m going to try to attend more of these, so I’ll see you there. They also do a dinner once in a while.

Kimbo Price mixtape released – there’s some really cool stuff happening in music marketing, as labels start to realise they can’t bludgeon people into submission when trying to make you buy music. The Get Busy Committee’s album ‘Uzi Does It’ was a highlight, shipping the album on an uzi-shaped USB thumb drive was genius. But my fav music industry marketing from the last few months was the video of Sean P, which is decidedly un-professional, which prehaps is the major part of it’s appeal (plus P’s one of the best in the game). The vid features Sean going grocery shopping before his Kimbo Price mixtape dropped. Because Rappers Eat… video can be found at http://www.vimeo.com/7288332

And of course, there was Melbourne’s own ‘Bangs’, with his Internet phenomenon ‘Take U 2 Da Movies’, which despite it’s amateurish execution has been in my head all weekend. It’s also clocked up a couple of hundred thousand views since I found it last Wednesday, so Bangs is killing it.

I wrote a while back about CGU’s latest crowd sourcing campaign. They challenged the general public to upload a video of themselves for the chance to be featured in the next of those awesome funny CGU Rap ads (note my sarcasm there).

Well, whilst I don’t think the competition exactly took the Internets by storm, CGU announced a winner earlier today (the site had so little inbound traffic that Google Trends doesn’t have any data on it) - the competition microsite says the winner is ‘Gary’, but the video says it’s ‘Hayden the Bricklayer’. Either way, here’s the next face of CGU… the campaign seems to have worked out OK in the end, as the below clip actually works in a way, although the polished production makes me think it may have been knocked up by someone already in the industry.

My vote still goes to Mugger, the Career Criminal (vid below). Maybe a bit too controversial for CGU, but having him as the future face of CGU would have made for a much more compelling story Good on CGU for trying though - I hope they hit their metrics with this one.

Today I caught Problogger Darren Rowse’s session at the Marketing Now conference. The session was called ‘Blogging 101 and Twitter’. The session was obviously aimed at those who are newer to Twitter / blogging (I should have picked that from the title), but it’s always good to see someone so highly regarded talk about their field of expertise. The final question at the end of Darren’s session had him a little stumped. It was actually a really good question that relates to my current area of work – Influencer Marketing.

THE QUESTION. First of all, I should explain the lead up to the question. Darren did a couple of slides during the session featuring tips on “How to Pitch to Bloggers” for companies. The discussion moved on, but then the question was asked ’What does the future hold for companies trying to engage with influential bloggers, given that more and more companies are effectively spamming bloggers to get them to blog about their products?” (I’m paraphrasing of course, the question was much more eloquent).

 THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION - Darren’s answer was “I just hope that PR people and companies start to get it” – I’m not sure if he realised it,  but the answer to the question as I see it already lay in the slides Darren delivered on how to build loyal followers – I think the same rules apply. My main role at Microsoft is to work with Influencers in our technical communities every day. In all modesty, I think we’ve gotten pretty darn good at it. The difference in the way we work with Influencers as opposed to others out there is that we engage  more deeply, and invest in ongoing relationships with select Influencers, instead of focusing on single transactions with whoever the latest / greatest blogger is. Emailing bloggers on a whim to try and hit your numbers for a single campaign is not a good way forward, as everyone is trying to do this more and more… what will help you succeed is investing in Influencer Relationship Management. After all, how many times have you seen bloggers flame a company for trying to use them for quick-fix marketing campaigns? Building strong, ongoing relationships with key, targeted Influencers will result in them publishing better informed, more in-depth posts about your product, greater inclination on the blogger’s behalf to engage with you, and will it help build loyalty in those people who others listen to the most. There’s a fine line to be trodden around how much you can work with bloggers before their integrity is questioned, but thats for another blog post.

THE FRAMEWORK TO THE ANSWER- I see the best way to achieve this depth of engagement with bloggers (or indeed any Influencers) as a 4 step process (Well, maybe 5).

1 – Identify Influencers - I reckon I could write a book on the subtleties of this topic, but I’ll keep it high level here. What you want are Influencers who have been active for a while (no flash-in-the-pan bloggers allowed), who have good reach, who are highly regarded, who are nice people and whose audience are likely to be interested in your product.

2 – Identify Influencer needs- Every blogger blogs for a reason. Lets take your average IT blogger. I’m completely generalizing here, but in my experience they typically blog for one or more of a small number of reasons – for fame, to share information, to build a professional profile for themselves, to help the world with their IT problems etc. Some might do it to get rich – good luck to them. But they all have a need, a need that you can try to meet with free product, exclusive information, product training, giveaways for their readers,advance notice of press releases etc. OK, so once you know what your Influencer’s need is….

3 - Assess Cost of Influencer Need vs Value created – Is helping the Influencer achieve their need going to be worth it? Forecasting social media outcomes is like trying to pedict what the Melbourne weather will be doing in 2 hours , but you should have some idea as to whether the additional reach you achieve will be worth your while. If not, you may wish to go back to step 1 and find more suitable Influencers. If after returning to Step 1, it’s still not going to deliver good ROI, it may be that Influencer Markting is not the appropriate vehicle for your company.

4 – Help Influencer Fulfill their Need (and hold that position) - a free t-shirt might be good enough motivation for some bloggers (hell, if anyone from a tshirt company is reading this, I’ll hook you up a free blog post in exchange for a free shirt. It doesn’t even have to be a men’s shirt). But a free t-shirt every week for a year – now thats a good way to build loyalty. If you sneak out on a blogger after having them publish a post for you, like a one-night stand sneaking out the bathroom window, feelings can get hurt. At the same time, if you show the blogger that you are impressed with their work and value what they do, you might just become friends with them. After all, bloggers are people too (well, most bloggers). So, (A) engage over a longer period of time, perhaps working with said blogger on a number of campaigns or initiatives and (B) be transparent. Being open about what you are both trying to achieve and finding that common ground is critical.

5 – Re-assess - this is an iterative process. We use a 12 month cycle before we assess if our relationships with our Influencers is working out for both parties.

This is a more resource intensive way to engage with bloggers than many companies and agencies are used to - I recognise this. However, a long-term, more organised approach will mean you are more likely to be get Influencers to act as advocates, you can work with them on multiple occasions rather than for single campaigns, and generally have a better working relationship, where the gives-and-takes are much more elastic.

What do you think? Have you worked with bloggers? Which approach did you use – the “hit-em-hard-and-get-out-approach” or did you work to build a longer term relationship? If you used the former, what sort of results did you get?

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I try to be positive when I blog. I really do. But sometimes you just have to straight up slam something. This is one of those occasions – marketers, please don’t do what I’m about to discuss. Please don’t think that making cheesy hiphop songs for your ads are cute or funny or engaging, no matter how ironic the songs are meant to be. Particularly if it’s animals or old people who are the emcees - your ad isn’t a crap Disney film, is it?

Aussie insurers are doing a good enough job of making lame ads without adding to the problem. First, there was Maude – the sweet old lady in the RACV ads (click the link to watch to ads) who tells us about how she saved enough on her insurance with RACV to afford a few little things, like this ’sick subwoofer’ – her car then starts bouncing on hydrolics. AHAHAHA, an old lady with a hoopty on hydrolics blaring hiphop, oooh thats entertaining. Let me wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes. Who saw that one coming?! (please note the sarcasm there).

The RACV ad, however, had nothing on the lameness of the CGU ads (see below), which aren’t even borderline amusing. At least the RACV ads were well acted. But to add insult to injury, CGU are trying to crowdsource content to get traffic going to the campaign’s microsite – http://cgurap.com.au. Awesome, so in addition to addition to Bill the Alpaca farmer and Susan the providores ‘phat biggedy beats’ we can upload our own. Sweet! I’m sooo gonna switch my car insurance to CGU for this (note again the sarcasm).

Susan the Providore drops it for the true hiphop heads.

Bill the Alpaca Farmer throws up his set (of sheers)

Anyway, the campaign’s pretty old by now, but what’s changed recently is that they’ve gone all web 2.0 on us and you can now win yourself a chance to be the star in the next CGU ad, aswell as a cash prize, if you submit a rap and it’s chosen as the best. And if you’re stuck for ideas, the CGU site has some great tips - for example, “it’s instantly going to be funnier the more unlikely that person is to rap”. Good to know. They also give you some tips on how to write rhymes – “Sometimes it’s easier to find the 2 words you’re going to rhyme and then work your way back”. I’ll bet thats exactly how JayZ wrote all his albums. Just find 2 words that rhyme and it’s all gravy from there.

Maybe I’m being too harsh here. Both campaigns may be aimed at a completely different target audience than I. Maybe this is funny to an older segment of the market. Or maybe alpaca farmers or providores can strongly relate to it. I dunno. I’d say 7 year old kids would love it, but how many 7 year old kids buy insurance? For me, both campaigns just spell out that these are insurance companies who are completely out of touch. And just because you’re using the tactic du jour (i.e. crowd sourcing) doesn’t change this.

UPDATE: 9/8/09 – I’m willing to concede I may have been a bit rash here – looking on youtube, these videos have both been rated by users as 4.5 / 5. There’s no accounting for taste I guess…

UPDATE #2: 28/08/09 – this guy below flipped it, wrote a rap about being a mugger and needing insurance, and in my books, we have a winner of the $20k.