I Want FREE for Free

I read the Long Tail a few years ago (which, to my surprise, I never reviewed here–must have been previous to me starting a blog).  It was a really good book and helped me to understand the dynamics of a system where choice is unlimited and shelf space is no longer an issue.  Ladies and gents, meet teh interwebbery tubes.  The importance of the web on traditional consumption of products and services is yet to be completely determined (and may well never actually reach that indictment) but it’s obvious that a lot has changed over the last ten years.

Newspapers are failing.  Music is now sold more online (via iTunes and Amazon) through digital downloads than at traditional retail stores.  Traditional retail is now carried on through the tubes pretty regularly.  I bought my 42″ HD LCD online for a significant amount less than I would have had to pay at Best Buy at the time.  Banking online is really easy and normal.  So is paying bills.  Everyone has mobile email (in business at least) and texting now.  The mobile web is prerequisite to smart phones today.  It’s just gotten a lot more tech affluent in the last five years, with a collective shrug and nonchalant raising of expectations from the masses.  The stuff that blew our minds five years ago is now table stakes.

The Long Tail (and a few other books) really started to shape my fragile little mind around the complexities of online business models some time ago.  I found (and still find) it incredibly intriguing as a business person.  Everything is changing and will continue to do so.

Along comes Chris Anderson’s next book, FREE.  It’s all about how businesses operate by giving away their products or services.  Google is a prime example, but there are MANY companies attempting similar strategies online (and many companies in the past did so as well, free magazines based on ad revenues come to mind).  There are many ways to get this book free, apparently, and I’m planning on using one of them.  Evidently there will be a ad sponsored rendition.  I’d be all too happy to give some attention to whomever (Adobe?) the primary sponsor is, in order to get the book for free.  Gimmie, gimmie gum drops.  I’ll be reviewing it here as soon as I’ve gotten a handle on the content.

Small Biz Building

Small businesses have been on my mind a lot lately.   Part of the reason is what a down economy can do to them and the furvor upstarted over the last year.  Part of it is that someday I’d like to start a business, though I’ll keep the details on my ideas low key until they actually make inroads toward tangible form.  Small businesses really are the heart of our economy.  I often wonder how many make enough to stay in the black.  More and more it seems like small business owners are getting better at marketing.  It’s still a really small amount of businesses that treat customers as their priority, but they are out there and they keep my business.

It’s really difficult to do today, customers are fickle and easy to turn off.  One wrong move and someone will scream holy hell on their blog or wherever else; they should do this.  Businesses need to be accountable for their actions and word of mouth does that well.  A few weeks ago my boss asked me if they should try out El Paraiso in Uptown.  I told them no.  I got food poisoning there a few years ago and consistently advise against going.  Is that wrong?  Maybe it was a bad shipment of meat or whatever, maybe they’ve cleaned up?  I could care less.  You can’t make amends for that, unfortunately.  That’s the nature of the beast, and companies of all kinds must pay heed.

So today, I actually got an update on Facebook that was worthwhile.  Atmosphere, a local and quite amazing hip hop duo, is giving away ANOTHER free EP.  These guys produce a lot of music and have given away an LP online (last year) as well as done a huge amount for the local community.

Here’s the thing.  They get it.  They are opening an online version of the 5th Element and want to get traffic there.  So they are giving something away to the people that have shown them interest and appreciation.  This is permission marketing done well.  The store gets traffic and a valid data grab to start, the fans get a free EP, the band continues to build an already good relationship and likely a good amount of free press and new fanfare.  So go check it out.  All you have to do is click on the EP and give some information (no CC needed!) and download it.  Tubular brah.

Time for a bike ride.  Stay up.

Ford and The Eventual Upturn

I’ve maintained over the course of this “economic crisis” and the difficulties for automakers that Ford was doing the right things.  NOT taking government cash will win people over in these times and they are already paying off a lot of long term IBD to get a stronger balance sheet less exposed to interest payments and business risk, which is off the charts for their industry now.

Marketing wise, this is the second time I’ve seen Ford’s CEO, Alan Mulally use Twitter to answer questions.  Even if only for a half hour, this is a VERY good thing for their company.  Many social media marketers cheer on this stuff for selfish reasons, which is ridiculous; the market accepts what it wants when it wants.  But Ford is obviously aware of what’s happening and moving early on.  It’s a good thing, but not necessarily because the CEO seems like a nice guy and takes the time to speak with all us serfs.

What’s important is that they are staying afloat and doing it their way.  Ford is my pick to continue on as a staple of American auto manufacturing, and has been for the last six months.  Time will tell if I’m right or wrong, but as of now I like their moves.

The Marketing Zephyrs

People online often refer to corporate marketers in a bad light.  They say, “those corporate marketing departments,” though they will seldom actually point out people within an organization.  It’s easy when you’re the small guy, you have very little to lose.  A lot of this is attention seeking, a lot a genuine disenchantment with what corporate marketers are doing.  Still they will not put a name to a face or vice versa, they’ll just critique the company.  These marketing zephyrs (this means that they are invisible, intangible and gone quickly) and are horrible, incorrigible, preposterous!

Yet these people running the organizations are generally incredibly intelligent people.  They’ve been formally trained and spend a great deal (more than writers) of time analyzing and planning out marketing campaigns and ideas.  It’s not an easy job either.  Did you know the average tenure of a CMO is 22 months or so?  Not a long time.  Cynics will argue that it’s because they do a poor job.  That’s probably a valid argument, but the fact is that pulling together such an egregious amount of resources and coordinating tactics while often reorganizing company strategy is ridiculously difficult.  The average person just isn’t informed or trained in a manner that would allow them to do it.  Yet the pundits keep on churning out the vitriole.  I have no specifics I’m referring to, it’s just something that happens every day with marketers (hell, I did this often enough) on the interwebs.  And it’s probably a good thing, it stirs up conversation and gets people thinking.

Last night I saw a great presentation from a marketing manager from Kimberly Clark on Scott Paper Towels and their strategy/tactical implementations over the last two years within the Spanish segment (the Dicho-Nario!).  It was a very well done campaign and made a big splash.  But what caught my attention was that he pointed out at the end of the day, what did it do for sales revenues?  It did very well, but that’s beyond the point.  The point is that many people who actively write about advertising and promotions aren’t really thinking about the cash register, they are thinking about branding.  Which is all well and good, but it isn’t how most organizations actually operate.  They operate on dollars and sense.

C.R.E.A.M.

It’s been some time since I’ve followed the marketing talk online.  About a year and a half ago, or sometime around then, it all got really boring.  It became obvious that following what many marketers ran to in droves (fairly recent example, even for teh interwebs) was actually just the herd moving.  Sure it makes a lot of noise, but it’s pretty obvious where it is going and how it will get there:  slowly.  These cats all think themselves ahead of the curve marketing wise, but we can’t all be in the top 20% of drivers, you know?  I don’t consider myself a great driver.  A decent one, sure.  But probably not in the top 20%.  Good thing I don’t do it for a living, eh?

Keeping tabs on what major companies are doing to leverage “new media” is important, I’m not trying to say otherwise.  But all the takes on the most recent blip in the social media strategerati simply isn’t all that interesting.  Sorry.  I know I’m guilty of this in the past as well and I’ll try to temper my writing to avoid it in the future.  Here’s why, it’s easy.  It’s too easy to be valuable for anyone with a pulse.  Tell me when you’ve investigated applying a disruptive idea to an old channel effectively.  Or better yet tell me  when you failed and I can really learn something.

There is no doubt that many of these people are very intelligent and watch closely what is happening.  The problem is that so many opine simultaneously, without any real worry about what actual marketers have to live and breathe day in and day out.  P&L, Sales Revenue & Projections, I/S and actual dollars for a company.  Far too few social media pundits talk about real dollars and increased cash flows due to their marketing efforts.  Much of that information is confidential and for good reason, but there are ways around it.  ROI and EVA are far more interesting to me than RSS or SMS…this coming from a semi-geek.

You may not like it.  You might think me something horrible, but in the world of business, C.R.E.A.M.  Move.

Twitter is Different…For Everyone

Read a quick excerpt (as the post itself was WAY too long, brevity today is necessary) of this Brandbuilder post a couple days ago and found a comment from someone named Spike at Brains On Fire. The most prescient quote is this:

Your Twitter is not my Twitter: Ask 25 people what they use Twitter for and you’ll get 25 different answers. Some use it to keep up with friends. Some use it to find inspiration. Some to find knowledge. Some for mindless thoughts. Some just for fun. And some for none of the above.

This came into play for me just the other day.  We had a speaker in our marketing research class from Iconoculture.  She seemed nice and quite intelligent, I spoke with her about Twitter, which she had mentioned and then assumed I’d follow her to learn more about the company.  The company is actually very interesting as they are a secondary research firm that aggregates, sorts and tags information from many disparate areas including media and communication conduits, then pulls together many pieces of that information to build a story for context around what is happening with social trends.  I had heard of them, but didn’t know them and wanted more information.  Following the gal from there seemed like a great start without getting too rigorous.

So I emailed her but she let me know that her Twitter account is essentially a personal use thing; she meant no harm but it didn’t make sense to follow her.  It surprised me, because I think of it as a hybrid for all my relationships (using Tweetdeck to sort everything is very helpful.)  This is my vocation, I make it a point to learn about and hear from marketers in all areas of business (and outside it) every day.

The big point here is that Spike is completely correct.  Twitter is different for everyone.  And many more online mediums in their infancy may evolve into different utilities for everyone as well.  There is selective utility in the interactive space.  Facebook could be used as a picture storage device or an IM client or a email system or…the list goes on.  That’s just one example.  Traditional communication tools weren’t nearly so robust, it’s up to marketers to understand that how THEY use these things isn’t necessarily how others do.

Look for the concentric circles.

I Love This Stuff

This is why I love marketing.  Did you hear about Starbuck’s not brewing decaf coffee after noon?  Silly, as most consumers are MORE likely to drink it later in the day.

Well check out Caribou and their response.  Well played, in my opinion.  This is why marketing is so fun to me.  It really is a fast paced chess game with opponents of all kinds.  Some bigger, some smaller.  Some with a great deal of assets and some without.  Some fast moving some slow.  Yet it’s all a chess game and it’s easy to lose the game when focusing on defense.

I should also take this moment to point out that the St. Paul/Minneapolis Business Journal is quickly becoming my publication of choice, right up there with the NY Times.  It’s a must read for any business person in the area.

Immortal Game:

Social ME-dia and Where It’s Going

I don’t write as much about new technologies and the whole “Web 2.0” thing like I used to.  There are a few good reasons.  The first is that the terminology seems to have shifted from Web 2.0 to social media.  Terminology does mean something, but as of now the pulse of social media seems to be slowing.  There was a lot more excitement about the space some years ago.  Everyone was jazzed about utilizing these new technologies into their businesses.

So what happened?  What was missing?

Results.

I’m yet to see the kind of results that the hype dictated.  My guess is that the people who control budgets for larger companies have been waiting as well.  It’s funny, this is a game of dominoes and until one big player makes a splurge and gets results, the others will wait.   I know people who work in social media and I read about it all the time, even today.  But I don’t think it’s creating the groundswell in larger corporations yet; it will be some time before it does.  The problem is that social media is still self centered.  Companies are trying to be social…about themselves!  It won’t work.

One serious issue we are seeing now is that social media may not necessarily be a conducive way to promote your business.  Crazy, I know.  There are some very good examples of business models that have thrived, but primarily E-tail distributors.  The truth is that we don’t know yet how this will all play out.  My personal thoughts on the matter are that social media will continue to proliferate but businesses aren’t going to make money as they’d expect by applying old ideas.  It will transform into something else altogether before it’s easy enough for any company to take advantage of it.  Some big things can happen for the first movers, but I believe as it stands, those companies that happen to make use of social media correctly and gain substantially are the exception and will be until the model alters significantly and the spoils are half gone.

What’s really worth thinking about?  Disruption. The tools to produce truly disruptive services and products utilizing the technology are already in our grasps today.   We are all still thinking in analog terms.  We advertise with banners on websites that key demographics visit.  We scrape email addresses from anyone and send them a message because it’s free.  We are applying the old ideas to the technologies, and blanching when grandma doesn’t look good in a miniskirt.

So here’s my advice to marketers:  stop thinking advertising via new technologies and start thinking of how to harness those same technologies to improve your products, services and business with your current customers.

A Cognizant Failure (Marketing via Facebook)

I write this in lieu of actually studying managerial finance, which excites me to no start.

Recently, I started a grassroots marketing campaign for the MA Fund (you’ll notice you can now donate via Paypal online) in order to attempt to garner seed money for our initial loan.  As with many non profits, our budget was essentially nonexistent in terms of monetary assets.  Human resources were the big resource.  Still are.  Time was not.

In terms of marketing, I generally live by a few themes.  I believe in building communities.  There are multiple names for these kinds of communities, but they are essentially groups of people who share common beliefs or yearn for similar outcomes.  Building a community around microfinance (micro-lending) locally is the best thing that our organization can do.   Finding the people who have passion about the subject and building communication lines and events where they can get involved is by far superior to any type of paid advertising (interruptions) you can do.

This is why flyers are a waste of time.  Success rates for flyers have to be less than 1% or so.  Success rates for spammers (email) are the same.  But because of that miniscule ROI, they keep on.  They squeeze whatever little credibility they have to get every last nickel.  Sad.

So I’m opposed to spam.  Spam is random interruption based advertisement/messages that go to the wrong crowd with the wrong message.  It’s just a waste.  Waste of dollars (I don’t care how cheap it is), waste of time (which is ever more expensive), waste of credibility (you can only put your name behind so many BS messages before people stop listening) and most importantly a waste of the opportunity to make something better.   Spamming does nothing to build a community.  And a community is the answer.  A hundred people who care are worth exponentially more than a million who don’t.

Regardless, part of the small marketing initiative proposed was to make a Facebook group/page.  Now, I’m active on this site and understand what marketers have tried to do over the last few years of it hitting critical mass.  It hasn’t worked.  Facebook has extremely low CTR’s and it seems pretty obvious that they haven’t made the site a commercially viable place to advertise as of yet.  Yet anyone with a small business or cause attempts to leverage it.  And now I’ve jumped in head first to a 3 foot pool.  We have a group page (requires sign in). Yet what does this really do for the members?  The only thing it is right now is an integrated campaign piece.  And being that our goal is to raise funds, that doesn’t mean a lot.  It raises awareness slightly, but most of the people there already knew.  So what are they getting?  Not a lot.  Therein lies the problem with building fan pages, it’s trying to build community but it fails because there isn’t anything to offer afterward.  What’s the answer?  Whatever it is, I don’t have it, which is completely my fault.  So I’m still trying to figure out how to leverage social networking sites, just like every other marketer.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of time to build something that actually adds value.  The clock is ticking.  This is how we as marketers must reflect on what we do.  There is a huge opportunity cost to making a fan page and then never updating it or offering something of tangible value.

Throw Money At It

Doesn’t work any more.  Not really sure if it ever did.

Sure there are some situations that can be solved with cash.  Those are usually the small term, tactical issues.  The really big problems are impervious to wealth.  They take big thinking and intricate, sustained effort to be solved.  Far too many people get in the habit of attacking all problems as though they are derived from the same formula.  They succeed in solving a small problem with cash and expect the big ones to fall in line.

Most companies have a solid portfolio of assets, most likely comprised of both human and cash (or close to cash) assets.  Managers often know how to leverage the latter, but fail to understand the importance of the former.  Care to take a guess which actually works?