Category Archives: digital media

January 27, 2015 · 4:07 pm

Trust These Numbers

The folks at Edelman are out with their latest Trust Barometer and the results are interesting. Of course, one can ask “why are they important?” As the study’s sponsors put it:

Trust is a forward-facing metric of stakeholder expectation. It is an asset that institutions must understand and properly build in order to be successful in today’s complex world.

I agree. So what did they find?

The study surveyed 6,000 “informed publics” aged 25-64 across 27 markets, finding that online search engines are now the most trusted source of general news. Search also widened its lead over newspapers and TV as the first source for general information and the source used by most to confirm and validate news.

In other words, what you and I might consider as traditional media sources of news and information have fallen behind search engines.  Not surprising in some ways since the “always on” version of traditional media is skewed one way or another with respect to how things are reported. The issue with search is “garbage in – garbage out“.  While algorithms tend to give more weight to “credible” sources such as the same traditional media outlets we might discount on other platforms, many of the highly read digital sources pop up on search engine result pages on an equal footing.  The obvious issue is that many of the newer outlets offer as much quality control as a blind man in a paint factory.

That said, once you become a source, you stay there:

  • Friends and family (72%) and academic experts (70%) are the most trusted sources of information consumed by informed publics on social networking sites, content sharing sites, and online-only information sources. Informed publics are almost twice as likely to trust content created by companies they use (60%) as content from brands they don’t use (32%).
  • 8 in 10 informed publics have chosen to buy products and services from a company they trust during the past year, and 68% have recommended them to a friend or colleague.

So whom do you trust?  More importantly, what are you doing to cultivate trust among your stakeholders?

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, digital media

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 13, 2015 · 11:50 am

Hitting The Bullseye

I spend a lot of my day working with clients on tech.  If it isn’t about how to implement the latest and greatest platform in other marketing efforts, it is about using the data we’ve gathered via web, social, and other business analytics to improve tactics and guide strategies.  We look at a lot of numbers and at a lot of methods with which to gather more.

One of the things I feel it’s critical for me to do is to play the role of a Cassandra of sorts – to see the future but to hope I’m believed a lot more than was the figure from mythology.  The one thing I keep “prophesying” to them is that we can stay on course and out of trouble if we keep our eyes focused on the customer.  They can’t become just aggregations of data.  They’re not just numbers.  They are the reasons why we’re in business.  They have names, faces, significant others and maybe even children.  They’re us!

Much of the ad and marketing technology today has little to do with the customer.  You might think that odd since much of it is based on getting to know the customer on a very granular level.  That’s true, except the focus is on the technology and data, not on the customer.  Thinking about social media is important but only after we’ve spent time thinking about the customer.  Are they on social platforms?  Why?  What are their expectations when they use them?  How do they want to interact with brands in that space, if at all?  Sure mobile is important but a discussion of mobile apps needs to begin with an investigation of how your consumer base behaves on that platform.  “Build it and they will come” is tech centric, not human centric.

Start with your business objectives and your consumer needs.  Move to technology and data after that.  The consumer is the bullseye, not the platform.  Thoughts?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, digital media

Tagged as , , , , ,

January 7, 2015 · 11:35 am

The Future At The Gates

Over the holidays I spent time catching up on a lot of video content I had missed.  Not unusual, I know, but what was different was how I accessed it.  Some I watched using the VOD capability of my cable provider.  Some I streamed via an Xbox and either Hulu, Amazon, or Netflix.  That video came via my internet connection which was not through my cable provider.   It got me thinking about the gatekeepers, both current and future, and why the battle over Net Neutrality is so critical.

You probably haven’t read the latest PWC study on how consumers are using video.  You can read it here – it’s an excellent study.  The term they use is “videoquake” and I think it’s apt:

This is a wake-up call not just for cinemas and film studios, but also for traditional cable and satellite players and anyone involved in video content production and distribution. The shift is here—alternative forms of video content will continue to rock not only what we watch, but how, where and with whom.

Most of us don’t have more than one high-speed internet provider from whom we can buy service.  There is very little competition and, therefore, no market pressure for many of these ISP’s to upgrade their services.  In many cases it’s the cable TV provider who is also the ISP.  Part of this has to do with the legacy of how cable came to be.  The companies were granted local monopolies in return for building out the systems.  Seemed like a fair trade at the time.  Data to the home was not on many people’s radar when this went on and today these systems are under no obligation to allow anyone else to access their poles or wires.  Building out a competitor is extremely difficult.

You might be aware of the impending FCC rule making on net neutrality.  I won’t write to 3,000 additional words it would take to explain it but in brief many are calling on the FCC to reclassify ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. The popular belief is that Title II classification would allow the FCC to protect net neutrality by regulating against paid prioritization.  You can read a longer explanation here.

While I’m not sure that’s the right answer (rules from 1934?  Seriously?), one effect this would have is to require access to those poles making build out much easier.  If you’re a business that has made money (a LOT of money) from a monopoly on bringing content into the home via coax (cable TV) or ethernet (internet service), you can hear the future at the gate and it’s banging rather loudly. Imagine what happens when not just Google Fiber but companies such as Apple or Yahoo offer internet service (everything old is new again – AOL, anyone?) via their own pipes.

With more and more content being delivered on a stand-alone basis via our internet connections, the gatekeeper (now the wireless carriers or the cable companies in most cases) will collect not just the monthly fees but the data associated with the usage.  That data might be even more valuable (hmm – a free high-speed internet provider who just sells data?  Investors?).

Are you hearing the banging at the gates too?  What are your thoughts?

Leave a comment

Filed under digital media, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , ,