Category Archives: digital media

May 23, 2012 · 8:58 am

Bad Decks And Missing Logic

I saw something yesterday that made me laugh out loud. Unfortunately, it was something that was shown to me as part of a media proposal. It involved a social media campaign and the agency that had created the plan (which I was reviewing for another consultant) was going to use Facebook. Based on the client and their objectives, this was probably not the best place for the media placement but let’s put that aside.

Illustration of Facebook mobile interface

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What made me laugh was the projection of the number of impressions both paid and earned that the campaign would generate. It came out to such a ridiculously high number (as in reaching every person on Facebook hundreds of times each) that it called into question everything in the rest of the presentation as well as the agency’s overall competence.

As I thought about it, I became a little scared and then a lot offended.  It bothered me that an agency who has a pretty good list of clients had moved into social media and was treating it the same as broadcast media.  They should know a lot better.  It made me scared because this is the sort of irresponsible behavior we find all too often in digital.  People become digital or social media experts or SEOs overnight and sell an inferior grade of services to clients who will get lousy results.  How can they invest in this form of marketing going forward when the results weren’t there?

The point is this – whether it’s media plans or budgets or a report on manufacturing, we need to ask simple, logical questions.  Why are we using Facebook when our objective is more geared to the broader web and restrictions in Facebook’s policies will prevent us from activating properly?  Do the numbers they’re projecting make sense (and if we’re really going to reach the audience 300+ times each, maybe we’ve gone too far)?

There were a bunch of other issues in the deck and aside from the numbers my general response was “these guys just don’t get it.”  None of us should be offering off the shelf, cookie-cutter solutions to problems that get more complex every day.  The nature of media is changing – the nature of media planning need to change as well, along with the messages.  You’ve experienced it in your own media behavior – why are you thinking everyone else has remained the same?

You with me?

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May 16, 2012 · 8:45 am

Fadbook?

One of the themes we touch upon here is the repeating nature of events.  Or as Peter Allen put it, everything old is new again (so much so that Barenaked Ladieswrote a song by the same name).

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

Today’s meditation on this concerns Facebook, or rather an interesting bit of research that came out from the AP and CNBC concerning Facebook’s future.  They conducted the poll in anticipation of Facebook going public and my immediate reaction was AOL‘s trajectory morphing to MySpace‘s morphing to…???   The AP piece summed it up with this question:

Is Facebook A Fad?

You’re laughing?  46% of the poll respondents believe Facebook  will fade away as new companies come along, and it’s not just the old farts – younger adults are no more apt than their older counterparts to expect Facebook’s long-term success; 51 percent think it will fade.

For those of us who have been in digital since the start of the commercial era, it’s not a weird question.  Fifteen years ago, one would have asked the same of AOL and could not have imagined that it would pretty much be a blip.  The rise and fall of MySpace is much more recent but illustrative.  So quit your laughing and think about how the nature of the beast is changing.  Facebook is going from a company built to attract and service folks like you and me to a company that’s built to attract and service marketers.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing except that Facebook seem to be bad at it.

You might have read that General Motors is pulling its advertising from Facebook.  That’s a $10 million deal — not massive in terms of value — but very embarrassing for the social network because apparently it was too hard for GM to quantify their ROI.  The poll data supports that thinking – 57% of users say they never click on ads or sponsored content, while 26 percent “hardly ever” click on them.

Like AOL long ago, there are some other underlying factors that might portend bad things.

  • Just 13 percent say they trust Facebook completely or a lot to keep their personal information private.
  • A large majority (59 percent) say they have little or no faith in the company to protect their privacy.
  • Even among the site’s most frequent users — those who use it multiple times a day —half say they would not feel safe making purchases through the site.

There’s another great analysis from Forrester here and I’m sure more will be written as Facebook’s IPO happens later this week.  So is Facebook a fad?  I’ll let you respond via the comments, but my thinking is that while “fad” might not be the right term, it’s definitely not invulnerable.  Given the underlying concerns from users and marketers, someone ought to spend an hour reviewing the history of AOL and recall that MySpace went from “the most popular site in the US” in 2006 to losing half its traffic between 2009 and 2010.  What’s your thinking?

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May 15, 2012 · 8:27 am

4 Ways To Anger Customers

A little research today although frankly it falls into the range of that common sense thing we talk about from time to time. The good folks at American Express have published some findings on how social media raises the stakes for customer service. You can read the full release herebut I wanted to focus on one aspect of their work in particular.

YOKOSUKA, Japan (Dec. 1, 2009) Logistics Speci...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not surprisingly, Americans are growing more frustrated with customer service and businesses are hearing about it as consumers tell an increasing number of people about both their positive and poor service experiences.  How many of the folks you follow have reported on an interaction with a company?  What I found of particular note were the things Amex cited as the big four service gripes:

  • Rudeness:  An insensitive or unresponsive customer service representative – 33%
  • Passing the Buck: Being shuffled around with no resolution of the issue – 26%
  • The Waiting Game: Waiting too long to have an issue resolved – 10%
  • Being Boomeranged: Forced to continually follow-up on an issue – 10%

They’re all sort of cousins in the “we just don’t care about you as much as we do our own bottom line” family.  The key is to align the interests of the folks providing customer service of any sort with the customers themselves.  Pay them based on positive feedback, not on incremental sales.  Nearly half the respondents said that they will use social media to praise a company for a great experience (which sort of flies in the face of the widely held assumption that only complainers go public).  Nearly an equal number will vent publicly about a negative experience.  With other research telling us how most folks now do their pre-purchase research about brands and companies using social tools, none of us can afford to have anything out there that convinces consumers to do business elsewhere.

The study shows that folks who have used social media for customer service in the last year are willing to spend substantially more with companies they believe provide great service. They are also far more vocal about service experiences, both good and bad. Why aren’t we doing everything we can to be sure about the outcome?  Given the above “Big Four,” there’s still a way to go.

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