Final Blog

Today, I’ll talk about the CEO of Google talk and the articles “Googlenomics” and “Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Sites.” On the Google articles I was interested because I didn’t know that it was effectively an advertising site or was working it’s own style. I honestly may be a little behind here but I hadn’t even thought of my search results as being advertisements until I was told they were. It makes a lot of sense. I was noticed when our other classes suddenly came in with game theory and the Long Tail. I do like the fact that they also effectively do quality assurance with their quality scores. I really like the fact you get a penalty if the quality is too low, it’s a smart move on Google’s side since it should cause Google itself to have higher credibility with consumers.
For the CEO talk, I was interested to hear more about the mobile market being the big future, and hadn’t thought about emerging markets. It is amazing that everybody can access a library. That is huge in the education and honestly could do a lot to move the third world closer to everybody else. England was always known for having an amazing library system because they were all combined. So from any public library you could get any book at any library shipped to you. This huge cumbersome system will soon exist on everybody’s Iphones. Crazy. I found the idea of the smart TV to be awesome. I hadn’t thought about that, but if my TV could have items available that I like, that’d be great. I do like the fact that he admitted that no we don’t have the advertising answers for social networking now, but don’t discount innovation. I also love the idea of Google ocean. Not sure what it has to do with this class, but it sounds cool and I might look at it during my next study break. Finally, I find the idea of Google Blips finding uncommon searches and using this to estimate future actions. This would be helpful for multiple sites to adopt.
And for my final blog thoughts for this class, the “Advertisers Face Hurdles” article. I agree that the banner ad is not effective, or at least I avoid them. And out of principle alone, I refuse to click on an add that floats, moves, or hides what I’m trying to read. It seems like advertisers tried to take ideas that worked in traditional ads and just throw them on a new advertising venue. Advertising needs to meet the medium, and these are almost the exact opposite of this.

Week 6- Second Post

Today I’ll talk about the Second Life speeches. First of all, the whole idea kind of freaks me out. I know that’s probably not the most accepting attitude, but its just weird to me. It makes me think of a trailer I saw recently for a movie about the Avatar taking over.
Anyway, moving on, I do think it’s interesting figuring out how to advertise in this environment. It’s similar to what we’ve heard all class of needing to engage the consumers. It seems like real advertising doesn’t work, but the idea of bringing in experts or concerts or speeches will get attention. This makes sense with a more discriminatory audience that doesn’t want ads preached at it. It also does take a lot of commitment from the company that it needs to be updated almost constantly. Honestly, I’ve almost found Twitter to be exhausting. I can’t imagine some of these people who have the largest followings who seem to update 20-30 times a day. That is more than I could handle on a regular basis and asking a company to do that will be painful.
I do feel like games are a good place for advertising. If its done correctly you would actually “use” the ads. So if you’re driving a car, it could effectively be an ad for that car.
As far as the concerns that you can make any group in a virtual world, ie people who like chocolate milk, but you can’t keep them to keep caring about each other for more than 5 minutes, it made me think of our HR classes. You need to give them a “war”, or a common reason to care, not just expect them to because they are similar.

Week 6- First Post

This week I plan to read all of the assignments except for "Now is Gone" and "The Online Advertising Playbook." This is mainly due to how much I want to print.
I also plan on posting early so that I am not competing with the MedNet assignment and assignments in other classes.
Today I'm going to talk about the Always On Chapter 3. The first thing I was amazed by is that Volvo launched a car with only online advertising. I can't really believe that. It makes sense to me to work adds for used cars but for new cars, its more surprising to pick exclusively online. This is due to the fact that I feel like alot more people shop for used cars online than new cars.
I also find that impulse buys online tend to happen while people are browsing so in someways this cuts the advertising in half. Companies do not need advertising away from and at the source since the source is the only spot.
I do wonder about fragmentation though. It seems intuitive that this will lead to more advertising money needed since there are more spots to advertise. Where does this money come from? Is it time to decide that the digital world has changed businesses enough that we should change the overall business model?
I feel that this digital advertising is such a hot topic right now that it is huge for a company to be on the forefront because somebody will write about it, and this is basically free advertising.
I also started thinking about the Dream House competition when reading about Home Depot, so laughed when it showed up a few pages later.
This did make me think of how TV in general is merging campaigns with online sites and in particular blogs. This seems to be happening in shows that focus on 20 year olds who grew up with computers. The TV shows that I can think of which have online sites that are merged with Web 2.0 engaged models are: Entourage, Lost, and the Hills. Some of these have extra characters and in others you can blog with characters. This also made me realize that its becoming very normal from TV, nightly news, radio... whatever, to hear TV or radio tell you to check their website for more or expanded information.

Week 5- Final Blog

Today I'm going to talk about two articles.
First, the chapter from Numerati. The first thing I liked was the definition of a "cookie", I honestly never knew what they were, and was kind of happy when later that night I had a website warn me that I had cookies disabled. I left it that way. I also found the concept of webmovers who move in group which are in sync was interesting in that it seems like in the end all this change may come back to demographics, just different ones. Being a Navy pilot I also found the research on p300 interesting. Like other articles have mentioned though, it seems incomplete. That we are looking for humans to not only process the data but to act on it. I also was a little disturbed at the thought that personalized data could be used to appeal to people who wanted anything, to include suicide bombers. It seems like some companies (fertilizers maybe?) would find this appealing and that regulations are lagging far behind the technological wave. I also wonder how much the shifting moves that are mentioned will make alot of this data far less useful.
The second article I will talk about is the smartphone. I did notice after reading this that I do get adds for San Diego companies through my Iphone app's. I also found it interesting that again digital innovation may be pushing the bubble with privacy invasions. I liked the fact that some apps email buyers their legalese, but it seems like legalese itself is so overdone that nobody reads it for anything. Maybe its time for a law making the small print large and to the point. I also found the apps that can locate you down to an aisle of a grocery store to be a little ambitious. My GPS on my phone is nowhere near that accurate. I also started wondering if I have a problem with getting adds that are based on my data. I like the idea of getting adds which interest me, but in the modern world it does make me nervous of identity theft and other identity based crimes. I also like the fact at the end that none of this applies yet because there aren't enough smartphone users. Maybe its just where I live, but that fact seems very outdated.

Week 5- Second Post

Here are my thoughts on chapter 4 in Always On. This was actually the chapter I found most interesting. I had thought alot about how marketing was changing as it moved away from TV but hadn't thought about how TV advertising was also changing.
I am interested in the Google Pay for Performance in that it seems more fair, but harder to predict. It also seems like too many metrics for measuring make it impossible to compare performance.
I hadn't thought about engagement in relation to TV and was curious as to where the responsibility will fall. If evidence is found that watchers aren't engaged in adds during a specific show, is the responsibility on the broadcaster to reduce the cost or on the advertiser to create an engaging add? Also, who drops who when its not working out?

Week 5- First Post

This week I plan to read all of the assignments since there are a reasonable amount of them.
For the first post, I'll concentrate on the Kimberly-Clark video. I found some of the thoughts in this video interesting. First of all the overall move away from focus groups. These were seen as the sterotypical advertising tool, but it does make sense that as we get more information on what people are actually buying, it becomes pointless to ask them what they "would" buy.
I also know that the "virtual" stores are all the craze in many different forms, stores, cars, clothing, but I'd like to see data that shows they actually work. I feel like they may be a cool new toy that sounds great, but is actually just weird to the actual customer. That is how I feel, but maybe I'm the minority. I would never buy a product based on how it looks on me without seeing it first. Its just too weird and I am not that trustworthy.
I also wonder about the retinal scan. It seems like a great invention for marketers in that it can see where the person is focusing when they might not even realize that; however, I feel like this is another area that may push into privacy issues.

Week 4- Final Blog

Today I will comment on three of the assignments:
First the Monetizing the Net video: I liked the idea that you can't afford to treat the internet as a captive audience and this was the assignment I found most interesting this week. The idea that you can find exactly what you want is very limiting compared to past models. I also really was interested in how internet can change the scale of production for companies, like in the beer distributor example. There seems to be no limit to this to include international. I have bought a swimsuit on line from China that came as quickly as mail from California and was just as simple.
I was also intrigued by the idea of Trip Adviser and Hotels.com being linked. I never knew this and it seems interesting to piggy back off of social networking sites. I'm really not sure what I think about this. I also was interested in the push towards your friends opinions. I feel like this is very prevalent recently and every website is beginning to offer options to see what your friends/people like you choose or recommended.
The idea that mobile advertising is a big mine field seems true in that I am very averse to this because one of the big initial advantages of a cell phone was avoiding people calling to sell stuff. If companies want to move here they need to wait then do so slowly. If they push it, they will turn people off, like the first attempts to advertise at movies do. To this day that idea has not succeeded because consumers did not feel that it was "right". The idea of the generational devide on mobile ads was also interesting. Companies need to work to be careful to only send to a specific and friendly audience.
In the talk between the professors, I felt it interesting that the Wall Street Journal was seen as a success. It was also mentioned in the article. I don't know how they can compete against competition who is picking their info up through the AP and giving it for free. I also felt like the recording stopped early.
Finally, I found the "Economics of Giving it Away" interesting. First the idea the minority of customers pay for the majority was interesting. The "freemium" concept seems to be everywhere on the web and is actually feasible due to the shear size of the web. I also had thought about how venture capital drying up has affected small businesses, but had not thought about how it would also affect websites. It seems amazing, but not too crazy due to the amount of digital innovation, that the marginal costs of anything digital falls by 50% per year. Companies need to always be innovating in that environment.

Week 4- Midweek Post

My Thoughts on Chapter 6:
Most of the chapter seemed like a review of the rest of the book and did not include much new info; however, the example companies were interesting.
To start with Johnson and JOhnson, I like a lot of the things they do. First the idea that you can no longer commit to advertising as far out, seems related to the idea that the consumer has control nowadays. This applies to the advertising companies too, the companies they sell to will no longer commit as heavily or long term as in the past.
I also found it interesting that they saved money when they expanded into multiple advertising venues. This seemed counter-intuitive initially. I liked the idea that they brought ad executives in to "extern" at Johnson and Johnson.
Lonely girl was interesting because it felt like barter. Johnson and Johnson supports the show and that is traded for space on Johnson and Johnson's page. This made me wonder if this could be where online advertising goes. In a way, can it go back to old times and barter?
AKQA: I found it interesting that the company helped Microsoft with developing software development and their digital advertising. As more and more advertising companies learn how to excel in the internet, this seems like a good way to gain a competitive advantage, by adding another digital service expertise.

Week 4- First Blog

I plan to read all the readings/videos this week since there are not a huge amount.
I have already read chapter six and will work on the rest.

Week 3 End of Week Blog

I'm going to comment quickly on the two video clips from this week.
First, on the James Surowiecki interview. I found this to be a far more interesting clip. First I liked how to discussed how little blogging there was post Tsunami and how people were disappointed with the bloggers. It seems funny that this could be the attitude about a slightly less industrialized area and still everybody is expected to be attached to their phones and computers. I also feel like now they would be. That the interceding few years have connected all areas.
I also like the thoughts of blogs v. news and who is reporting "real" news. There are always also arguments between the gossipy companies and big news companies. As much as I cannot believe I'm doing this, because I am so sick of the coverage, but this makes me think of Michael Jackson's death. The story was the biggest so far this year and it wasn't broken by CNN or the New York Times, instead it was broken by TMZ. This seems on par with the bloggers breaking the George Bush falsified papers. A large insult and probably embarrassing situation for the big news outlets. Also at my work when the rumors started, nobody went and turned on a TV to see the news, instead everybody got on Iphones and computers looking for into. One this shows you how powerful the digital media is and the fact people were willing to "work" to find their own news.
I was also interested in the ideas that while one blog can be totally incorrect, the large mass of them will normally be far more accurate when viewed as a whole. The ant circling concept was also scary, but seems to become harder and harder as the internet involves larger numbers of people.
On the Twitter video, I found it interesting that CEO does not feel it involves "news" per say. I have added CNN and Time to my tweets, and they are the ones I probably look at the most. I do feel that CNN could be doing a far better job getting stories tweeted as they happen.
I did find it interesting when he was asked about how to pay for Twitter. I liked the fact that he was saying that they would "find" new ways, this seems appropriate since it is a new phenomenon.
Final thought for the week: It seems ridiculous that on blogger.com the word bloggers is not recognized by the spell check.

Week 3 First Post

I have the feeling my posts will be a lot shorter and fewer this week with time restrictions with in-residence. I did all the readings and videos/podcosts since I was again traveling internationally and had time on planes.
Social Media Article- Left with the feeling that companies need to be very careful since once the ball starts rolling it can get out of control. In alot of cases it's actually better to not try to defend problems since the backlash may be huge. Transparency is also more and more important now.
Long Tail- I found it interesting to see the shear number of consumers in the "tail". Honestly, I expected more. Seeing this is the big idea and is mentioned by everybody else, I was expecting it to be one of the more engaging articles. It might be different to read the entire thing though.
Social Web- I found it interesting to look at the bottom up approach and the interactions between businesses. The shear amount of stuff that can be tracked with current technology is also interesting. I found the Ford examples interesting with the CEO blog. Basically, in addition to employee buy-in, now companies also need to work for customer buy-in.

Week 2- End of the week posting

Today I’m going to discuss my impressions from two articles. But first, I’d like to point out that I wasn’t able to post this a few days ago because I could not prove to the internet in England that I was over 18 years old and this site was blocked. Pretty crazy when you think about how much American teenagers use these sites.
First, “Web Video: The New, New Thing,” I was initially amazed to see that a higher percentage of people watched advertisement videos than news or funny videos, then I realized the time frame was different between the two statistics. The fact that 15% of Google searches are image searches did surprise me. I wouldn’t expect this percentage to be anywhere near that high. I guess the younger generations must be more visual than I am. I am surprised that so many people successfully navigate the world of web videos. Personally, I am so overwhelmed by the shear volume that I will only look at clips which are recommended by friends. I feel that Barnes and Nobel has discovered a viable solution to this. Their Iphone application allows users to view books grouped not just by genres, but by best seller lists, book club recommendations, friend’s recommendations, and so for. Adding this feature to web video sites would make them far less intimidating for me.
Second, “Why the Groundswell, and Why Now,” which I found to be a very interesting article about the care that companies need to take when dealing with negative comments on the internet, and how these complaints can snowball. The most interesting insight was that the internet was not a sandbox that can be walled off anymore. This is not a fact that I feel like most people or corporations have yet realized. The other thought I had was how the instant price comparison provided by the internet will harm traditional gimmicks. Companies, such as appliance manufactures, would offer a deal where a customer could get a refund if they found a cheaper price in the next week or so. This was based on the assumption that the amount of work to do this was excessive and a customer would do this very rarely, but would assume they got a good price. This is still offered, but no longer seems viable in a world where a consumer can compare prices quickly on their phones while in the store. Companies need to come up with new strategies to keep customers when prices are so transparent.

Week 2- Midweek Blog

First of all my digital experment is not going well in England. Suprisingly very few wireless networks to jump onto. There are far less than I saw in Greece a few months ago, which surpises me. Also, I appologize for any incorrect capitilizations and symbols, the differences between the US and UK keyboards are killing me.
Today, I'll look at the impression I had from reading the "Always On", chapter two reading. The first thought I had was that companies need to be very careful today when creating a recognizable slogan. These slogans used to be unavoidable due to advertising, but now that consumers have the ability to avoid advertising and express annoyance with slogans, these companies are treading a very thin line. If these slogans are not popular or are annoying, the back lash could be far worse than if the company had got no attention at all.
The idea of media multi=tasking is also interesting due to the fact that despite being a large proponent of trying this, I realize that my level of production decreases dramatically when I do this. Perhaps younger generations are more successful at this than I am, but even this blog is taking me awhile to do while I watch a movie at the same time. My experience shows that when I am attempting to media multi=task something has to fall aside. If the advertisements are not engaging, they will not even register.
I also found it interesting to conside the untapped markets which arise due to the focus of most advertising on youth. The fragmented nature of hte internet seems like an easier place to address this than primetime TV where more market sements are most likely watching the same shows. On the internet the increased options make it easier to specialize to reach a specific market segment.
The only thing I am questioning is the increased need for customer involvement and feedback. Consumers expect this today and companies are working to make this possible, but it feels like this will create information overload and a large increase in funding in order to process this information.

Week 2- Beginning of the week post

Due to some international travel, I went ahead and read all of the required and suggested articles and watched the podcasts and videos. A full day on day on Delta gave me the time to do this. The first thought I have this week is how in I’m going to be testing out how connected the digital world is this week. I’m expecting to be doing most of my Twitter and blog posts via wireless internet networks that I can pick up on my Iphone in England instead of on my computer like normal.

This week I am planning on looking at the articles and readings which I found most interesting and putting up my thoughts throughout the week. For this post, I’ll look at the article “The Dawn of the Human Network “ about crowdsourcing. My initial thoughts on the article were that it is interesting how this trend is taking pedigree out of the picture and moving it to talent. In the past schooling was used as the basis for hiring since it was the highest indicator of training, knowledge and, therefore, talent. Now companies can hire on actual talent instead of the prediction of it. This could have interesting affects in the future.

Crowdsourcing seems to have the potential to redesign the modern company in terms of structure and funding due to the reduced need for internal marketing and R&D. The active customer involvement is also noteworthy. The use of customer troubleshooting on websites was interesting to me since I dealt with this trend for the first time last week on Twitter. Initially I was annoyed because it seemed to be a big list of person after person saying “Yea, I have that same problem also”, but in the end I found the answer quicker than I would have expected to through a standard question tree online. It’s also important that people can do the jobs they like. This does seem to create better work and to better fit the nature of a least a significant portion of the population. These are the people who were already coaching sports for free or volunteering for jobs which they feel are meaningful.

Finally, this article made me think of three other corporations, one national and two local which I feel do a good job embodying the community concept. The first is REI. I feel that they have branded their experience to create a community both online and in the “outside” world. This leads the members who are willing to pay more for the experience and actually be happy about buying the same gear at higher prices. The other two companies are local to San Diego. VAVI is a local sports and social club that, mainly through word of mouth and the web, has gone from sponsoring a few sporting events to organizing 25 plus leagues, tailgaters, charity events, and so forth throughout the city. The second is Stay Classy. This is a company which markets exclusively to local charities. It works off the premise that once you attend one event you are on their mailing list. This works out great for the charities whose events are now being broadcast to a huge number of people who otherwise would not know about them. It also takes advantage of the fact that when an average person on their mailing list is going out to a bar they will be happier spending their money at the bar which is sponsoring a charity event than the one next door. Both of these websites/companies have done a great job of going from unknown names a year ago to being everywhere in the city today. This was accomplished mainly through word of mouth and the local Gen X community. They understood what this generation wanted and took advantage of huge holes in the local market.

Week One- Final Update

A couple final thoughts on this week.
1. I finally looked into Tremor, P&G's teen based marketing structure. The program worked by offering teens coupons, samples, and downloads for promoting their products through word of mouth advertising. The program had 225,000 kids involved in 2006. The downside of the program was that P&G's products mainly focus on adults. This led to most of the Tremor products belonging to other companies using P&G's program. This says alot about the different relationships that are developing recently between non competitive corporations. It also makes me wonder if P&G was also working on building future customers. The negative of the program is a current charge with the federal trade commission based on the fact that the teens do not identify themselves as being biased in discussions. (Businessweek 2006- www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=procter%26_gamble)
2. I was given the following link by a friend which looks at how LinkedIn users use/integrate with Twitter: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/using-linkedIn/ULI/411935-3621908?searchIdx=2&sik=1248129468628&goback=%2Easr_1_1248129468628.
3. Finally, overall I think I learned alot about how marketing has changed through community/social media/the digital move. Its also interesting to see how issues are arising such as privacy invasions and questionable practices like Tremor that have no historical basis to work off of. It should be interesting to see what comes up next as these trends grow.

Week One- Midweek Update

I finished all the readings/videos I wanted to do this week. Here is what I did:
Always On- Chap 1
Podcast- Gil and Frank on the Newspaper Industry: Part 1
Video- Conversation with Reid HOffman of LinkedIn
Article: Do you Trust This Face
Video- The Web and TV, a sibling rivalry.
Here are some initial thoughts:
Always on got me interested about Tremor. I still want to look into that more.
The Newspaper industry made me wonder how newspapers currently rate their online v paper presses, among younger generations the online forums seem to be the most popular, this seems to be where they should be trying to attract advertisers. I know traditionally studies showed that users ignored online adds more than TV and paper adds, but I feel that may be changing as more shopping is done online, and more time spent there, curiosity should lead to increases in the use of these adds. Marketers also need to recognize that different adds may work for online than did in the paper media.
The facebook article. I felt it was interesting that it failed to mention the slew of recent facebook groups that are aimed to protect this information. These groups seem to show that users are not become as lax about privacy as the article implies. Examples of groups:
We will not pay for facebook, Against the new facebook, facebook shouldnt own your pictures, facebook shouldnt own your phone numbers.
On the note of general advertising, I also wondered about how much advertising money is lost on TV now due to DVR. As DVR useage increases, more and more people fast forward through adds and never see the medium that used to be the best access to consumers.
Finally, I found the following article interesting. It shows how attitudes have changed on social networking sites so that coporations are now welcome if they add a good service/information:
http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2009/07/the_key_to_marketing_in_an_onl.html

learning goals for this week- 19 July

Honestly, this week, I'd just like to start thinking about and learning about how the digital world is changing marketing. Clearly it is a totally different "game" than it was in the past and the old ideals don't work anymore, but I've never really put any thought into it. I'm finding the whole idea actually pretty interesting.
Three specific things that I want to look into, beyond the assignments are:
1. I was intrigued by the "Tremor" idea mentioned in the book.
2. Looking at Christopher Penn's blog this morning I found two different concepts interesting: One respondent put that he feels that marketing need to provide an experience to be successful, and another put that it is necessary to engage the customers. This is very different than the traditional approach where brand awareness was the goal.
3. When I was whining about having to join Twitter for this class, (Sorry, but I was really avoiding it until this point, but am actually liking some of the news sites and so forth that you can follow.) a friend of mine in the recruiting industry told me that the social networking sites are majorly changing their field. This makes a lot of sense but he said he does have some interesting articles I can look at on the topic.