Filed under: Abraham Harrison LLC, Authenticity, Brand, Brand Advocacy, Brand Promotion, Branded Entertainment, Branding, Branding Online, Conversation Marketing, Internet Strategy, New Media Marketing, Online Brand Promotion, Online Branding, Social Meda, Social Media Marketing, Social Media PR, Viral Advertising, Viral Marketing, YouTube, YouTube Marketing

I’m going to go against the orthodoxy of my fellow social media practitioners. I’m going to commit heresy. I’m going upset the apple cart of the proverbial echo chamber.

The new 2008 version of Where the Hell is Matt YouTube video isn’t going to live up to it’s intended purpose. It will be something that many of us will talk about, blog about, pontificate about. Then it will go away.

Here’s the video if you haven’t watched it:

The reason this campaign will not live up to hype is because it is a direct example as to how social media fails to act as a promotional vehicle. Viral, yes. Promotional, not so much. Sure, some aspects of it may make us feel good…but so what? The object of marketing is to enhance a brand, sustain longterm sales growth, and create profit. I doubt this will really do a great deal for much of the above.Sure, it may result in sales increases for the sponsoring company, Stride Gum. But that’s only if sales right now are very low. They’ll get some good press. But unless they piggyback on it in a couple of months, it will be a social media version of a one hint wonder.We’ll all love the concept. We’ll be inspired by it. The sense of this one guy dancing away throughout the world with citizens of all these countries. We’ll be amazed.

But that’s it.

Read more…

9 Comments » Posted on July 14th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Abraham Harrison LLC

The CEO at Abraham Harrison, Mark Harrison, brought this post to my attention over the weekend over at Irfan Kamal’s blog, Digital & Social Media Strategy. This post speaks to the ongoing and continuous debate on issues around Returns on Investment (ROI) for conversational marketing. The problem is we all know it works it is just how do you prove it to the bean counters.

Two firms that do a lot of work in this arena,  BzzzAgent and ChatThreads are quoted by Irfan in his blog. The research that these two organizations have performed shows that the cost of a converted sale driven by a conversational marketing campaign costs around$2 to $3 per sale. Depending on the product this is not a huge amount of money. I do not know off the top of my head how that looks in relation to other forms of marketing.

What this shows is that conversational marketing is a very viable alternative to search engine advertising - and Irfan points this out and I have to agree. However the two elements that he points out that could change this equation are issues of audience targeting and costs of scaling up a campaign.

Like any online campaign the audience you target is critical and where and how you find that audience is one of the harder elements - in addition the need to create conversations with many different audiences require knowledge and time. This is where the scaling up issue comes into play - scaling up means more conversations, a larger audience and more time. If one can keep labor costs down and if the conversations are managed efficiently and are long lasting then the ROI grows.

I believe that ultimately we are all going to get a little weary of regular in your face advertising and that the future will be grounded in social networks of information and recommendations. The value of the conversation will grow and grow in importance. We value our peers and their opinions and as we get bombarded with more and more information and advertising the need to turn to the conversation for value and information will grow.

3 Comments » Posted on July 7th, 2008 by Saul Wainwright

Filed under: Abraham Harrison LLC, Google, Robert Scoble, Twitter

Twitter’s become one of my favorite places to hang out when I’m online. But it’s become an increasingly frustrating place to be as there’s always something the matter with it. Part of it is down, the whole thing is down. Whatever.

This will eventually lead to a discussion as to whether Twitter will be able to maintain itself overtime or if it’s technical issues will cause enough problems for the service that it never creates the sense of critical mass that it may need to take it to the next level.

Scoble has a interesting take on Twitter’s viability. He says that the company’s lack of having a business model is unimportant at this point. In fact, he’s quite strong in his opinion.

In it he compares Twitter to Google of the late 1990’s. Google integrated itself into our lives and now is dominating the Internet.But I disagree. While I think that Twitter will be able to sustain itself, there are several differences between Google then and Twitter now.

No barrier to entry
All one has to do is head to google.com, plug in a term, and you’d get results. Click through and you were on your way. With Twitter, you have to sign up. And it can take weeks to figure out what it’s about. How to grow.

Amount of users
Googles users (or at least user sessions) went from thousands to millions to billions practically overnight. Twitter has less than 1,000,000 registered users.

User experience
In addition to the “in and out” aspect of Google, Google’s service is hardly ever down. Not so with Twitter. I’m starting to think that upside down birds and whales are my new best friends on Twitter. It’s happening to often and it may affect user loyalty.

Life integration
As much as the Internet was used by people in 1998-9, today it is that much more. The internet is no longer an essential tool, it’s part of people’s lifestyle. Twitter is one of may aspects of that and people will look to other similar services if it’s faltering, because…

Patience
may be a virtue, but its not as common as it used to be.

No Comments » Posted on July 1st, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Abraham Harrison LLC, Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Google, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Google Applications, Google Apps, Google Apps Premier, Google Gears, Google Juice, Google PageRank, Measurements, Open Kimono

So Google launched Ad Planner yesterday at an Advertising Research Foundation event in New York City. Ad Planner is an online analytical tool that gives advertisers deep information on which sites their targeted audience is visiting. Designed to make media buying more efficient, it puts Google in direct competition with comScore and Nielsen Online. A key difference here is that Ad Planner is free.

Ad Planner allows users to enter demographics of target audiences along with potential sites on which to advertise into its system.  The system then, presumably through data gleaned from web servers, will then spit out sites that an advertiser should consider for a media plan.  It would seem that it is an easy to use, inexpensive system to use.

Subscription fees from survey based services such as comScore and Nielsen can be exorbitant.  This further democratizes the web.

But free can come with a cost and that’s what others are worried about.

Google, in this capacity, may not be acting as an independently-owned third party delivering unbiased information.  There’s always a chance that the system may be tweaked to produce results that favor Google-owned property.  And, and the launch yesterday, Google product manager told a questioner that Google will get its data from a “fusion” of different data sources.  A follow up question as to whether or not Google will accept external audits was left unanswered.

That’s not a great sign.  But Google is now powerful enough that they can get away with not answering that while it brings in users.  Users like, quite frankly, me.

Thus is the nature of the web.

No Comments » Posted on June 26th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: A-List Bloggers, Abraham Harrison LLC, Public Relations, Public Relations Industry

Point #2
Brian: Pick the Right Person or Team to Lead PR
Loic: Do not pick a PR person, be the spokesperson of the company

These two points aren’t diametrically opposed, but Brian’s point is more universal -pick the right person - and therefore more applicable than Loic’s. While a lot of CEOs understand marketing or PR, many don’t. That’s especially true of startups. See point #1. Some CEOs haven’t developed the ability to have coherent marketing themed conversations, be they to the media or on blogs. That’s because many can be overtly promotional as opposed to evangelical when they’re put on the spot. Or they may be technology focused and struggle to explain things in layman’s terms.

General comments such as “The best person to represent the company is not a PR person and even less an external one. It is YOU. You, the founder, you the CEO” are way off because it’s a blanket theory that doesn’t apply to everyone. Not everyone is a longtime blogger who’s developed his (or her) own community and is starting a Web 2.0 company that produces a service that applies to social media. Some CEOs don’t want the responsibility. Some don’t have the time. Some don’t have the patience. Or the desire. Or the capability to do it effectively. It’s a simplistic statement and concept. It’s not directly wrong. But it just isn’t applicable the majority of the time. Perhaps its more common in Web 2.0 companies that produce a service that applies to social media, but for most starups - most tech startups - the label doesn’t apply.

But Loic does have a point. It should be a responsibility of a PR firm to prepare a CEO for the PR challenges they will face. That’s because while a PR rep can act as a spokesperson for a company, the CEO will become the face of the company. And faces have mouths and mouths speak. If the CEO is not willing to become a chief evangelist of the company, then that company may have a problem.

CEOs need to understand the marketplace, the types of media that covers their industry, the types of communities that can develop. Then they have to have almost an innate understanding of how to talk to them. They often have to receive some sort of PR training. And then they have to learn how to evangelize, not promote. How to balance the concepts of features and benefits. How to put the listener first. Hiring a PR firm can make that happen more easily. Not always, but more often than not.

2 Comments » Posted on June 17th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Next Page »

  • blog advertising is good for you