The average Asian spends more time on…?
- Brushing Their Teeth
- Having Sex
- On Yahoo!
- On MSN
I’m not an average Asian. Nor is Ken Mandel, but he sure does know a lot about the Asian market. You know, being the VP Advertising, Sales & Marketplace of Yahoo! APAC and all.
And all? Well, more than that. People keep telling me how they’d love doing what I’m doing. Look elsewhere: I’d like to be Ken when I grow up.
His Internet & Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines Summit keynote was, well, extremely cool. Turtleneck-less Jobs-cool.
When he talks about digital trends, we listen. I listen. Age is only a matter of perspective, but since he likes to call himself a veteran, I’ll hand him that title easily. He’s got chuck loads of expertise to share. And seven trends.
No standardized measurement
How right can he be about that one. I keep talking metrics and tracking with people I meet (one cannot fully close a loop without measuring). But if I’m not on the same page with you, there’s no way we’ll agree on objectives, be it for a campaign or for social conversations measurement.
Ken made it very simple. A big fat popcorn cup contains 37 grams of …fat. What does it tell you? Not a lot. Can you picturize fat? Are you able to evaluate what it is or what it does to you?
Well, Ken revealed, it’s equivalent to a full breakfast: two sunny-side up eggs, two pieces of toast & bacon. Or to a Big Mac.
Oh yeah, suddenly I understand the nightmare. Now, I’m not a popcorn guy. And I’m on a constant diet -friends can attest to that one. I still eat Big Macs though. I get it. Holy cow.
Take that same cup and say it is a campaign return on investment (ROI). And say the 37 grams are 37 Gross Rating Points (GRP).
Same story. How do you match that with CPC, CPA or engagement rate?
Wouldn’t it be easier to have standard measurement. To easily translate into leads, conversions, sales & profit?
Ken nailed it. For all the metrics we’re using, most clients don’t care. They want business objectives aligned with business goals. We all need to talk the same language.
Paid media has sisters now
I loved that one. Absolutely loved it. You know, I’m not from a pure marketing/advertising background. All I ever dealt with were business objectives, getting things done in a word. So when I hear people drowning themselves into the difference of Earned, Paid and Owned media, I -sometimes- scoff.
Come on, do you really think customers care about this division? No they don’t. Ken said it better than I ever could -I’m not as cool, ya know ;-)
No consumer is interested in the difference between earned, paid and owned media. It’s just media.
Get a grip, mix the three and see what works. I know what I’m saying doesn’t sound very scientific. Flame me. At the end though, it’s a trial-and-error industry. It’s an art surrounded by non-standardized metrics and bloody business objectives.
The advertising ROI is coming from a mix of these earned, paid and owned media. Yes, of course, Ken has an ad industry background and works for a major online portal, he wouldn’t dismiss what brings revenue, but he’s right. Think about it.
A good example? Ikea.
Consumers surf the stream
Oh boy, another guy who’s into surfing.
Ride the wave, not the board
➡ Jeremiah Owyang (quoting Duke Kahanamoku)
I suck at surfing. You might too. But it’s easy to understand: do not think social as a destination. It’s a dimension, for C’s sake! It’s everywhere around you. People are everywhere online. Know where they hang out, but don’t expect them to follow one pre-defined road.
Those who get that right will have success. The other will stay “social media ninjas” or old-farty advertisers.
You wanna lead those customers towards you? Be contextual, be a curator. Listen, they will listen back. Engage. They will engage back. They’ll know who you are.
In other words, customers might have ADD, the famous attention-deficit disorder, but if they don’t see your products through their streams, you’ve got a PDD, a profit-deficit disorder, most commonly known as the IDSD, I don’t sell sh*t disorder.
Digital flattens the funnel
This is very close to my definition of the Inception Loop -more on that in a later post.
There are no more clear steps. Awareness. Consideration. Purchase. They’re all in a cyclone. An extremely fast cyclone.
From awareness to purchase, it might take me under a minute on the web. I’ve got Twitter to hear about a new product. I’ve got reviews to judge it. I’ve got friends to vouch for it -or recommend it through Facebook Likes for instance. I’ve got information galore to learn about it. I’ve got portals to buy it.
And it’s real-time. It’s fast. The consumer purchase decision-making process becomes a hell lot faster. Be in the loop. Be in my loop. Or I’ll disregard you.
Imagine how impactful this is on brand management. The nice graphics or the funnels and all steps leading to a sale cannot be nicely schematically represented to your clients/boards/whoever-who-pays-the-bills anymore.
It’s unsettling. When surfing, you might fall. But you get up and surf again. And again. Fail fast, learn fast. No whiteboard planning will teach you that.
Mixing analog & digital
For those who stay in front of their screens, get out a bit. Not to get some Sun -well, it’s proven to do you good-, but to be analog for a while.
People keep asking me how I was able to create a network of cool people around me in such a short time. The answer is not Twitter. The answer is I went out and met them. I freaking spent hours traveling, whatever buck I could spare on paying for my own trips & full-price conference tickets. I still do that to this day. I go out. I see people.
Same for brands. Go out and play. Go meet your customers. Digital will never replace analog. Not in our lifetime anyway.
It can be with a simple gimmick, like the one Ken showed. Unilever partnered with Sapient Nitro to create a fun vending machine. One that will treat you with an ice cream if you made a great smile in front of it. And your pictures did go on Facebook, obviously (I’ll take smiles over those MySpace self-portraits any day). How would my 27″ iMac ever deliver me an ice-cream? Gotta go out
Now, I know a bit about vending machines. Well, I’ve seen plenty. Living in Japan and all, you know. Go to Shinagawa station and find those equipped 47″ OLED flat screens. Cool, heh? [1]
Now, the real feat here is the facial recognition software. The machine will actually suggest you drinks according to a database of stats (demographics mainly).
Male, 34, 6″5, bald. Will it recognize me as a Swiss and offer me some chocolate-based drink or as a Greek and recommend me some Ouzo?
It’s the internet of things. Machines do communicate data and play with you. The experience is not only behind your screen. It’s all around you.
LSC
Doubt this mixes well with LSD. Ken might know better. Location + Social + Commerce.
It’s been since SXSW that I’m hearing the first one. Location. Location. Location. Location. Location.
I might not be convinced of the road some location-based services (LBS) are taking on now, but this trend has legs.
The one who closes the purchase loop wins.
➡ Ken Mandel
Indeed! I don’t know which form it will take, but it will be:
Contextual. Fun. Simple. Real-time. Relevant. Predictive. Mobile
And you and your friends will be its fuel [2].
In terms of campaigns, if you haven’t experienced an iAd, Ken is right, wait for it. It’s quite amazing. Makes you bow to Steve Jobs on stage in front of hundreds of people type of cool! [3]
Foursquare mayorships, barcode readers applications linked to a purchase call-to-action (Japan is big on QR for instance) or Dentsu’s iButterfly.
Mobile LBS + LSC indeed.
Branded Engagement
Social media is not a world in itself. We don’t call it social for nothing. People talk everything and nothing -I do a lot of nothing and chocolate myself. And people talk about campaigns when they’re great.
I mean, just look at the noise the Old Spice campaign did! Great ads [4]. The conversation was not sparked out of thin air. There was strategy. Investment. Work. And success at the end. Viral was only a result.
Or, as Obi-Wan said on stage:
Paid media priming the viral pump
Hell yeah.
—- Well, those who just said yes are just geeks: “freaking cool, a plasma screen on my vending machine, a big leap forward for mankind“. [↩]
- That was the topic of an presentation of mine last April, if you care to take a look. [↩]
- “STEVE KNOWS BEST” reacting to his own iPhone dissing in Media Magazine early ’07 LOL [↩]
- great abs too, girls, I know…. [↩]
