Monthly Archives: October 2012

October 18, 2012 · 10:16 am

Gamifying The News

Here is an interesting item that made its way to my email box.  A researcher put together an online game to expose college students to news via a virtual social gaming environment.  Here is the premise:

More than 65 percent of Americans younger than 30 utilize the Internet as their main source for national and international news, according to the Pew Research Center. However, most young adults do not consciously seek out news online, but rather are exposed to it incidentally while searching for other information or doing non-news-related activities, such as visiting social networking sites or checking their email. Now, interdisciplinary researchers at the University of Missouri have created an Internet game that promotes school athletic spirit while engaging young people with the news.

In her previous research, Borchuluun Yadamsuren, a researcher in the MU School of Information Science and Learning Technologies, found that Internet users often are exposed to news through “serendipitous discovery” rather than deliberate consumption. Young people are especially likely to be “news encounterers” who find news incidentally while surfing the Internet for different reasons, she says.  “If we can develop a strategy to post stories or links from credible sources in locations young adults normally use, such as on Facebook or gaming sites, we can hopefully attract them to news media.”

So enquiring minds may want to know but they’re not very proactive in finding out, I guess.  The results were encouraging enough that the project is continuing on and I’m thinking we’ll see it as a full-fledged platform of some sort down the road.  What is really going on is a very basic principle of marketing – speak with (not at)  people in a meaningful way.  Rewarding them either psychically or financially for accomplishing a task can further engagement.  Think about what went on after the presidential debate.  While a lot of people watched, I suspect a lot more found out about the key moments through posts their friends put up on social media (the “binders full of women” meme took hold within hours).  Gamification techniques reinforce the discovery process.

Makes sense to me.  How about to you?  How can you use this idea in your brand’s business?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under digital media, What's Going On

Tagged as , , , , , ,

October 17, 2012 · 11:07 am

The P.O.D.

When I go chat with prospective clients, one of the things they often ask about is my point of differentiation.  What makes me different from any of the other consultants with whom they’re speaking?  That’s a great question each of us needs to be able to answer whether we’re trying to sell consulting services, to get a new job, or to sell a product or service in our current jobs.  If you can’t answer the question, you might want to spend a few minutes and think about it.

In any event, among the things I believe make me different are the business experiences I’ve had over the years in both traditional and digital media.  There aren’t a lot of us who were senior management in the “old” world and transitioned into the “new” one.  We usually end up talking about a few other areas – intelligence  vision, style – but the one thing I like to emphasize is keeping a focus on the business and not on the tools.

I’ve written about it before as have others.  It’s still a surprise when that prospective clients asks “how do we get good at  (pick one – the web, Twitter, social media, SEO)?  The answer is always the same – you don’t, because that’s not what you’re trying to do in the first place.  Using those tools is just a means to an end.  What you’re trying to get good at is your business and to use those things to do so.  I guess that’s a real point of differentiation because many of them hadn’t really thought about it before and the other folks with whom they’re talking seem to have spent an awful lot of time on tactics and very little on goals and strategy.  Ready, Fire, Aim.

We need to stop confusing the end with the means.  “Likes” don’t equate to sales unless you’re structured to make them do so.  Does this make sense?

Enhanced by Zemanta

1 Comment

Filed under Consulting

Tagged as , , , , , ,

October 16, 2012 · 10:02 am

Are Brands As Bad As Politicians?

There’s another presidential debate this evening so I’ve got politics on my mind.  While the debates are focal points, the entire campaign season (a way too long season IMHO) has been filled with charges of factual distortion or outright lying by one candidate or another.  There are numerous non-partisan fact-checking sites so getting at the truth (or nearer to it anyway) isn’t as hard as one might think.  What the entire process does call into question, however, is how willing most of the participants are to stretch the truth, to use selective data points while ignoring others that don’t help them, or to fabricate allegedly factual statements out of whole cloth.

The unfortunate reality is that politicians aren’t alone in this.  In fact, one could say that they’re no worse than many marketers.  There is an interesting column this morning in a marketing blog that asks if CMO’s know when they’re lying:

As consumers’ ability and interest in monitoring corporate behavior intensifies, major brands like McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson, and Coca-Cola are clearly injecting corporate-social-responsibility messages into marketing platforms as never before.  Trouble is, telling the truth has never been a marketer’s strong suit. In fact, we are still shaking our heads at how distorted some of these hybridized half-pitches, half-aren’t-we-a-good-company messages are.

No one over the age of 10 thinks french fries or sugary drinks are good for you so selling them with a nutrition message is just wrong.  If you saw a message like that you’d scoff.  But  how many marketers knowingly tell half-truths that are less apparent to the consumer?  No, I don’t expect that any brand will state “this is an OK product that will probably fall apart in a year but what do you want for a third of what you’d pay for the best?”.  However, how many food products add “natural” to the label to imply that an otherwise non-nutritious box of cereal is wholesome?  How many bad home loans were written on terms the lender knew the buyer was unable to afford by making it seem as if they could?  I’m sure you could add a few examples here.

We’re quick to criticize politicians (you can tell he’s lying because his lips are moving).  It might not be a bad thing to think about glass houses while we do so.

Thoughts?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under Reality checks

Tagged as , , , , , ,