Famine City

Content's desire to be free: pay-per-view

Content is meant to be free. Content will find ways to be free. Every technology that enables mass communication will be used to drive down the cost of content to free. I never thought this was more true than last night where I was watching a streamed version of the UFC fights on one screen, following the Mayweather/Marquez fight via Twitter on my iPhone and seeing literally hundreds of links that allowed you to link up to watch either of the fight cards for free on the internet. It is my estimation that there were millions of dollars lost to boxing and the UFC last night. While I won't go into the legality, nor ethics of this practice, it just stands out that content will finds ways to be free. 

Based on my previous description, you probably think that I was sitting at home on my computer watching the events. This was not the case. I was at a bar that was streaming the fight. I could not believe that a bar was streaming the event (don't know why I was so surprised). Occasionally, one of the my friends or I will host a fight, but at $50 per fight, plus beer at home, it can get to a $100 evening easily. It's cheaper/easier to venture out to local bars and in exchange for their showing the fights, we buy slightly overpriced beers. As soon as I sat down last night, I noticed this was streaming event. I mentioned it to my friend and he said that he had noticed it here during the last fights (which I was not at). A bar, making money AND advertising the fights for a point of difference in the market was streaming these gratis from the web. Amazing. 

While I was watching the UFC on one screen, I was keeping up with the Mayweather/Marquez fight via Twitter. As I was watching the tweets come through, there were literally hundreds that were providing links to begin watching the content for free. While I have known this occurs, the mass of availability and ease of locating it has never been easier. With Twitter, there is now a quick to market, mass media, immediately searchable method to provide illegal content to scale audiences. I was thinking this must be costing these promoters/sponsors millions of dollars and it does.

Let's do some back of the envelope math. First, these pay-per-view type events are charged on a premium bases to public places. They can advertise that they are showing the events and draw larger number of crowds, even charge cover for admission. In exchange, the bar pays more for the PPV event. I don't know the exact formula or cost, but my understanding is that price is based on capacity. One forum response that I found said that for a 120 capacity venue, it would cost $850 to show a UFC event. I'll stick with that number. For simple math said, let's say that 100 bars nationally (US only), decided to illicitly stream this. Loss to UFC, 85k. Let's say that 10k individuals streamed it at home, another 500k lost at $50 per household (US only). The fighter's contracts, especially the big names, compensation packages are based on the number of pay-per-view sales. Even with a conservative number, as I used above, you can see how this could possibly escalate to the millions quickly, pick pocketing fighters, promoters, sponsors and sanctioning bodies. 

The quality of the content did not matter. The quality of the streaming content wasn't great. It was slightly pixelated, a bit grainy and choppy at times. However, it was free. We see this all the time with heisted movies on the interwebs, clips on YouTube and so forth. The quality of the content can be less than perfect if it's the perfect price, free. We want content and expect it to be free. Lucky for us, there has never been easier access to free content, nor easier ways to distribute that content over high speed networks than there is today. Networks, distribution and sharing options have never been more ubiquitous than they are today. The bad news is that this behavior will be easier to reproduce as technology matures. As much as content providers try to continue to charge for programming, content will find a way to be free.

I wasn't surprised by the activity of programming actually being heisted. However, I was surprised by was the sheer volume of people sharing the content through Twitter. Twitter is the perfect medium to share out access to this content, achieving search-ability, immediacy and scale. The lesson is that content will be free. It will find new ways to be free. We expect it to be free.  It wants to be free. The technology is just delivering on our expectations.

follow me on twitter @marty_b

Top ten reasons your brand should not be on twitter

It is almost a defacto standard that just about every brand in the world thinks, or perhaps their agency is recommending, that they should be on Twitter. Generally this means that the company or brand is being told they should interact with their consumers via the channel. I'm going to go out on a limb and share the top ten reasons you should not be a brand on Twitter.

1. You are not committed. Like any endeavor where you expect a reward, you must put forth effort. This comes in the form of dollars and time to discover its value to your brand. You must also be comfortable with discomfort. You must also be ready to change your approach quickly. At the very least, you must be willing to commit to a year of time to produce results (in my opinion). If you are wondering, creating a Twitter ID does not mean you are on Twitter.
2. You think of Twitter as a push medium. It's not a banner ad channel (yet). It's a two-way medium. It requires pushing out content and responding to it. You have to appreciate the community and respect the medium. 
3. You're going to create a personality on Twitter. If there isn't someone that personifies your brand within your organization, I think you'll be hard pressed to create an authentic personality for your brand.
4. Your legal department will ding you if you say H2O vs water. Why would that come up? Two extra characters, it's 140 character response mechanism. Be ready for your branded expression in that length. Be ready for misspelling, abbreviations, etc.
5. You have not found out what people are saying today on about your brand. If you aren't listening to what people are saying about your brand on Twitter, start today. Check out Twitter's Search and TwitScoop, create RSS feeds and follow what the community is saying about your brand. Start there and monitor for a couple months. If you can then see a clear way to add value to your consumer's lives, consider it an option.  
6. You don't have a strategy. Seriously, you probably don't. Are you going to use it to communicate stuff that people want to hear? Are you going to use it to handle consumer complaints? As research? Better have a clear idea about what you want to achieve with the channel.  
7. You are unwilling to cross-promote your other endeavors with your Twitter ID. This is is the "let's keep it in the closet" and just see how it turns out approach. I don't think this works so well. Be ready to pepper your existing communication(s) with follow me @yourbrandname.
8. People in your organization are not using Twitter. If your organization isn't using the medium, you probably shouldn't be either.  
9. You are not willing to allow consumers to co-create your brand. Your responses, retorts and consumer interactions are all subject of the user community. Get used to it.  
10. You don't have a sense of humor. If you can't find a sense of humor lodged in your corporate ethos, it's just not going to work. Don't try.   

The genesis of this blog post is simple: people/agencies try to shoehorn Twitter into something it isn't. If you monitor, you can find out if your demographic is present and detail out the next steps. Before you get there, realize Twitter is not a solution for every brand. If you can get past that, you're one step closer to finding a medium you can exploit to your (brand) benefit. 

~marty follow me on twitter @marty_b

#dominos Dear Dominos: Get ready for some defensive branding

We're about to have another Twitter-storm or serious upheaval through social media on our hands and this time it's at the hands of a couple rogue Domino's Pizza employees. Two Domino's employees, or ex-employees as it has been rumored, decided to film themselves doing stupid, disgusting things to food that was about to be delivered. It's a sad thing that a 50-year old company will lose sales in my opinion because of two terrible employees. My first thought is if they filmed this, what else might they be doing? Second, what should Domino's be doing to manage this situation? Some have suggested that it's a hoax, bad hoax if that's the case.

Let's take a look at the transgression:

My first recommendation for Dominos is that the window for opportunity has seemingly been about 2-days in the Twitterverse. I first head this story from Dave Knox today. My prediction is that it will "tip" in the next 24-48 hours. We saw this same pattern a couple days ago with the Amazon issue. I've come up with what I consider the Ten Commandments on action. You can view my entire slideshow or download it at Slideshare. I purposefully omitted the background and formatting for Slideshare. I had some issues importing an Open Office document from Google Docs. Will reformat at a later time.

Ten Commandments of Defensive Branding

• Act promptly
• Monitor and measure
• You are the brand authority
• Respond to consumers in the same channel
• Don’t remove your content
• Be global
• Think long term
• Consumers are not attorneys
• Be personal, please
• Search is your friend

Defensive Branding

 

Key takeaways

• Until I see another pattern, organizations have about 48-hours of calm before the storm like this.
• To the moment, 9:30PM EST-4/14, there has been no response.
• Be prepared, just in case this happens to you. At least know the cases where it has happened to other organizations and pray it does not happen to you or your organization. 

Be sure to share your ideas or feedback on the presentation. This is my first Slideshare deck and welcome any ideas or input to improve it.

Here's to all of your takeout being safe and non-gross.

~marty follow me on twitter @marty_b

Cisco Fatty: Story shows power of Twitter

I've posted about it on this blog: The interwebs have a way of showing the "authentic you". When you live in an interconnected world, even a flippant comment has it's price. Read this story posted from CiscoFatty.com:

It's about a giirl who just got hired by Cisco.... 

---- Begin Post ----

A potential Cisco applicant ‘theconnor’ tweeted this earlier today:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

Tim Levad at Cisco saw the Tweet, and he Tweeted back:

Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

The CF quickly set their account private,  but the Tweets are all still public for the world to enjoy.

---- End Post ----

On occasion I can understand the conflict between public and private you, but I'm not feeling too bad for Ms. Connor. I'm actually happy for Cisco they look immensely savvy.  This should be a good PR boon for them. They get to prevent a hire that may not want to do the work as well. That alone could be thousands of dollars in savings. 

While I'm somewhat empathetic to Ms. Connor that she probably made a comment that she really didn't mean, but we're all accountable. Whatever we say. Whenever we say it. However we say it. What channel we use to say it. If you choose to participate in the medium, you are accountable. It's no different than getting wasted at the office party and saying something stupid. Only in this case, the legacy isn't just folklore, it's indexed, reposted, retweeted and shared. 

I wonder what UC Berkeley is thinking about this? By this standard, they are going to catch a bit of shrapnel in the mix. Sad. One tweet, so much power. 

If there's a takeway for me. Be real certain about my tweets, posts and so forth. Be me. Be ready to be accountable for anything I post. If you tweet this up, make sure you #cisco it. 

So what's your take? Do you think that Cisco should hire this girl? 

Pandora Meetup in Cincinnati

A couple weeks ago I went to the Pandora meetup in Cincinnati. It was a very good experience. I took bunches of notes and shared them with some folks at work, so I'll do the same here. I'll add a couple things before the raw notes start. I've been in communication with the Pandora team since for work reasons. They've been very responsive and helpful. So my expectations have been raised overall. 

I think of their model of advertising more like behavioral targeting, not like a pure CPM buy. You should too, read on. 

Setup

Tim Westergren, one of the Pandora founders was in Cinti, OH. He had a meetup at an independent theatre and it was largely informal. Throw questions and he responds. He was down to earth, super-smart and had some great stories for us. He handed out some t-shirts too. Nothing makes a geek go ape-sh&* like a t-shirt. He wasn’t in a hurry and we went for about 2-hours. My cliff notes:

-   Tim was in town speaking at UC and P&G. He also hit the Cincinnati Social Media scene that morning. 
-   Biggest growth has been in iPhones in the last year. People are moving from primary listening device being on PC to iPhone. Really interesting, it’s net effect has changed listening hours. People are taking the iPhone and plugging it into the home stereo system.
-   Best story of the night, story of Will. Will was a triple major--CS, math and physics. He sort of just got it. The Pandora genome has about 400 characteristics in it, you like arpeggios, viola, minor notes, 7ths, and so forth. So they approached will one night with this problem for the Pandora genome. The next day he returns with the algorithm that they use today. Let’s all hate Will right about now. Smart guy. Sometimes hate and jealousy are separated by minutia. 
-  Every time that you click thumbs up/down, they reapply the algorithm and give you a new advertisement and song choice. Zero waste is the concept towards advertisement. 
-  They have about 23 million listeners and are signing about 45k per day.
-  They are trying out audio ads on the iPhone, but if you want to opt out, you can pay a service fee. iPhone app is very, well awesome. 
-  They get kick backs if you buy/link to Amazon or iTunes. They get a cut on the total transaction.
-  They have about 600k tracks.
-  iPhone traffic is not between 10-15% of traffic on any given day. Average length of listen is 1.33 hours.
-  70% of the tracks are from unsigned artists
-  They add about 10k tracks per month. People personally listen to them and choose the characteristics before they are added. Amazing. 
-  They do not have licensing agreements with any specific label. They operate under the Digital Millenium Copyright License. They caused a raucous on Capital Hill two years ago by having folks reach out to their congress folk. There were over 400k faxes sent to local congress reps. It took the fax machines in DC down for two days. Funny.
-  Interesting idea about unicasting versus broadcasting which is the future of radio/tv whatever. That was the most important addition to my personal lexicon.
- Lastly, all ads are targeted. Not one ad is broadcasted to anyone. 

If I got something grossly incorrect or my notes are wrong, please do add a comment and I'll revise accordingly. Certainly more of a utilitarian post, but really interesting. 

~marty

So Marty, what's the playbook for the Motrin thing?

 by Marty
Let me first say that I am in not an advertising creative. I'm a technical guy that works at an advertising agency. I am not going to evaluate the creative issue that was referenced in the Motrin commercial from my previous post.You know the one causing all the stuff out there.

If I were calling the shots on handling this issue, I would probably have taken the following steps.

1) Replaced the content on www.motrin.com with the apology message from the VP of Marketing at McNeil Consumer Healthcare. However, I would have left the spot on my website. I want to own the problem and the proposed solution (read on).

2) Don't take your legalese advice and put your buns in your hand. I would not have taken down the site, this only magnifies the issue that you do not understand the space. This isn't a legal matter or a safety matter, it's a perception issue.  Do something special with the energy, which is my next step.

3) I would have quickly called Bazaarvoice or got my tech group on the phone or started writing some feedback mechanism, like stat. I thought of three separate solutions I could institute on any website within a matter of hours. I would then ask consumers share their feedback directly on my site. Publish it immediately and thank them profusely for their time. Ask for recommendations for fixing the spot or offering them to preview/react to the next spot.

4) Now these things are in place, tell everyone you can about the gaffe and press release it to the public. Ask people to come to the site, see for themselves the snafu and place their comments there.

5) Do the biggest keyword buy of your life, on both Google and Yahoo. People are going to see all the other content out there, let them come to your site, see the issue and share their opinion. Do a search for Motrin + Headache on Google. Get out the checkbook.

Your consumers own the space now anyway. Use the (unfortunate) opportunity to own the conversation on your site. Right now, inaction means you are losing credibility and the search engine problem that you are going to run into long term is going to be an issue. People when searching for motrin or ibuprofen will end up at the CGM posts and not organizational content.

Obviously there are things there may be some creative solves that I cannot speak to, but thinking through this problem, this is my playbook. What's yours?

Watch the Motrin mess unfold...

Not sure if everyone has seen the Motrin debacle ocurring, but the brand is getting crushed in the social media circle.

Want to see for yourself, the commercial can be found: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmykFKjNpdY  

Response videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A13uh7XPih4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhR-y1N6R8Q&feature=related  

Here's a good summary
http://www.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/11/16/twitter-swarm-motrin-v-moms/  

It's probably worth sharing with a response from the company that seems authentic, but this is going to be tough, tough and tough.
http://crunchydomesticgoddess.com/2008/11/16/motrins-response-to-the-onslaught-of-complaints/

Summary: Your consumers are in control. I'm not judging here, but wow. It's a firestorm and I haven't seen information fly this fast in quite some time.

Making A Traditional Product Free

by Marty

I was talking to my friend, Steve, the other day about an article written by Chris Anderson in February. In the article, Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business, Chris examines how to monetize products and services that are free, largely by up sell tactics or marketing subsidization. I'm very intrigued by this idea. I've challenged myself to come up with a few ideas to build on this idea. While my goal was to come up with a bunch of examples, I'll share a single idea here for brevity.

Before we start looking at my example, we have to accept augment our traditional consumer model of buyers/sellers. There is a seller, buyer (consumer) and a third party that is paying to be part of that free transaction. It's more of an ecosystem than just buyer/seller market. I decided to explore the idea with notion of local coffee shop.

The local coffee shop: Is there a business model that could support a free coffee shop? Perhaps.

1. We're starting off with a cheap product (coffee). The cost of brewing and serving coffee isn't greatly prohibitive. 
2. Nail your audience. The potential value of a localized audience is huge. This could be offered up as a local marketers dream during your rush periods. In the off time, 10-3 hours, offer it up to local mom groups that need other moms to connect with outside of the home. The "mom" audience could be worth more than the business rush. You could charge Fortune 100 companies a premium to come in for the impromptu focus groups and offer swag to the moms-for a fee no less. Moms always want the opportunity to get free stuff, meanwhile, companies get great market research. 
3. There could be constant cameras in and charge companies a small fee (say $50-$100 per hour) to listen into the conversations.
4. Offer up community conversations exclusively to Parents Blogger Network or Blogher. Have exclusive topics? Even better, sponsor the event for an hour.
5. Upcharge for the cup. Make it something that declares a value, like a quarter or something, but otherwise you are green freindly. Bring your own mug. Sponsor the green day from the local green group.
6. You're going to have people that loiter with their laptops. Charge something for the internet access.
7. Lastly, on weekends, allow bands to play in the shop for a small fee either to the band or attendees. Or distribute their content via Bluecasting on premise for a small fee or burn their set right there on site (of course for a fee).

 

Obviously, there are a ton of things you could poke holes in this model. The main selling point is obviously the audience that you create and the little charges you rack up over time. If you could provide the audience to Fortune 100 companies in a on demand/need model that's omnipresent, I think you could offer a ton of value just giving away a cup of joe.

 

The wonderful thing about this model is how this model could come to life. The interweb facilitates a model like this actually being viable because it opens up the value of your audience to a much larger consumer base, like Fortune 100 companies. What businesses could be turned on their head with a free model?

Opportunity Outside of the Desktop PC

by Marty

Opportunity is outside of the desktop computer, especially outside of the US.

The desktop is becoming a more complicated than the 800 channels on television, especially in the US. There are competing technologies, sites and sounds that are tough to breakthrough. As my recent trip out of the country helped me realize, the US is much further ahead of the rest of the world in desktop reliance/adoption--notably where we live and spend. If we decide to move outside of the television and desktop, where do you attract the eyeballs in interactive marketing? I think the future is in interactive marketing services in our public space that provide better consumer benefits.

The public space/service is simply ripe with opportunity. Think about all of the billboards that we drive by everyday. Think how many of them are effective, yet still static? How many people get off at a particular exit because of a hotel or restaurant they may be interested in pursuing?

Let's approach this model and apply some technical wizardry. Here are a few easy brainstormed examples:
- Restaurant billboard: Text some code to this number and see our menu? Sponsored by the tourism board of {insert state}
- Hotel: Interested in our hotel review, visit review.motel.com on your mobile phone.
- Airport coffee: In the airport and need power? Visit our shop and use our Wifi and plug in your phone charger and laptop for free for 30 minutes free with every item purchased? Yes, this might require a service offering, but it would be better and cheaper model than the old Laptop Lane. Hell, provide the standard ten cell phone chargers. How many people would LOVE you and buy your coffee?
- Mall restaurant: Tell people about your service in the airport with a projection billboard. Why make it static? Let people interact with your menu and see your prices. You're there for a reason.
- Coffee shops: Hook up a pay account that allows people to text in their soy latte so they do not have to get in line? Their payment is directly debited and they get faster service, right? Less interaction with more expensive counter help.
- Coffee houses--just create cash lines for black coffee only. No technology here, just practicality.

There are hundreds of approaches I can imagine without much thought. Each of the above really came to me in 5 minutes and I could argue their viability very easily. They all make sense. They all have a business benefit, but more importantly, they all have consumer benefit. I help out with a local neighborhood organization and this year we tested tickets to an event online. Approximately 25% adopted the first time around! The point is that you have to drive the clear benefit to the consumer and they will take the desired action.

I think too often as marketers or advertisers we spend too much time trying to recreate the "secret sauce" and less on practicality of our consumers. Where are people vulnerable? Where are they busy, but we can make it better?

Now to tie this back in to nations outside of the US, the desktop is not the answer because there are less of the desktops there. In Mexico for example, the average household isn't worried about the Internet. So hit the kids in the marketplace, they still have mobile technology, they are still consumers, right? Indoctrinate them early with your brand. It could be mobile, it could be a public interaction, but there is opportunity. The secret sauce is consumer benefit. Realize this and we'll all be happier.