Tag Archives: Digital marketing

August 6, 2013 · 8:41 am

Soundboards

This TunesDay, let’s talk about recordings. Specifically, concert recordings.

English: A shot of the control surfaces of the...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now, we’ve all heard live albums – your favorite band recorded in concert. What you might not realize is that many “live”albums are as carefully mixed and “sweetened” as a studio album.  They can often capture the energy of a band live but they can also hide some fundamental flaws – a flat vocal tuned up, a missed solo punched in and the bad one removed.  It’s sort of audio Photoshop.

I prefer soundboard recordings, the black coffee of music.  These are recordings right off the mixer used at the show.  Many have circulated as bootleg tapes or discs for years.  They are generally of high quality and they can be thrilling.  Yes, there are some “audience tapes (recordings made with good equipment by a member of the audience) that can capture the raw performance but I think soundboards have a leg up since every mike is accounted for in the mixer.  I have an Eagles soundboard of a live show that shows how brilliant they were as a vocal band (oh, and Joe Walsh can flat-out play…).   I have many others – some of which unmasked  the bands as studio creatures; others of which (pick any good Dead show!) put anything the band ever did in a studio to shame.  Soundboards are the ultimate test of a band to me.

I was listening to a soundboard yesterday (a Talking Heads show from the mid-1980’s – boy they were good live!) and a business thought hit me.  While marketing used to be studio music – sweetened, totally controlled – it’s become soundboards.  Customer comments, social media, review sites – they’re raw messaging about your company or brand.  That’s why we need to get it right as we play it live – there won’t be any chance to fix it later.  A Tweet to a customer that sets the wrong tone, a questionable Instagram photo, or just heavy-handed censorship of comment boards will all be heard as those actions get played back over and over through the digital echo chamber.

If you can’t play live, don’t try to fake it.  Inevitably someone will make the soundboard public and you’ll look foolish.  It’s why The Beatles felt they should stop touring (even thought the soundboards of the rooftop concerts filmed for Let It Be are spectacular) – their sound had become so complex that they didn’t think they could do it justice live.  Be at least that smart and err on the side of caution.   The soundboards won’t go away if you’re wrong.

What’s your thinking?

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August 1, 2013 · 8:26 am

Horns

Business took me away for a hotel stay last evening. As you might know, Rancho Deluxe, better known as the home office, is located in a pretty quiet suburban town. Some random deer sneezing is about as loud as it gets in terms of external noise.  Living in a city is different and last night’s stay reminded me of when we lived in Manhattan. It’s rarely quiet.

Car horn symbol

(Photo credit: net_efekt)

The sound that seems to dominate is that of horns. Car horns, truck horns, construction horns. All day and most of the night, their incessant sound can drive you nuts until you learn to ignore it. Which is, of course, the business point.

Too many brands use their marketing messages much as a driver uses a horn. Think about how you use your car’s horn.  There are the friendly little taps to let someone know you’re there and to come out to the car.  There are the intense, lean-on-that-sucker blasts to tell the moron texting that the light has changed and to get moving.   Despite its simplicity, the horn can send a lot of different messages, all of which are intrusive and attention-getting.

Marketing is like that too.  Some brands are still treating their audiences like the line of traffic in front of them.  They blast away even when it’s obvious that the horn will do no good.  How do you react when a driver does that to you?  I don’t react well.  Than again, you learn to ignore it.

Consumers have learned to ignore car horn marketing.  The harder you slam away, the less chance you have to get them to pay attention.  Using car horn tactics in channels such as social media can do way more harm than just the apathy caused by ignoring your messages.  Your inept marketing can be held up for ridicule, much like the dope that’s too busy reading his email to drive.

Horns can be lifesavers – alerting another driver you’re behind them as they back up or making sure a pedestrian is aware you’re coming, for example.  If they’re abused, however, they’re just so much noise and serve no purpose.  We need to make sure that our marketing doesn’t fall into that trap.

You with me?

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July 25, 2013 · 10:22 am

A Peek Over The Native Horizon

Sometimes you can get a glimpse of what’s coming over the horizon and I think I got one of those this morning.  I was catching up on some reading and came across a letter that the FTC sent out.  It was directed to search engines but I think it’s a harbinger of things to come as the digital ad business gets more deeply into content marketing and so-called “native” advertising.  You can read the letter here but in summary it says that ads in search results must be clearly identified as such:

Advertising

Advertising (Photo credit: Wrote)

Search engines provide invaluable benefits to consumers. By using search engines, consumers can find relevant and useful information, typically at no charge. At the same time, consumers should be able to easily distinguish natural search results from advertising that search engines deliver. Accordingly, we encourage you to review your websites or other methods of displaying search results, including your use of specialized search, and make any necessary adjustments to ensure you clearly and prominently disclose any advertising. In addition, as your business may change in response to consumers’ search demands, the disclosure techniques you use for advertising should keep pace with innovations in how and where you deliver information to consumers.

That’s why you see the yellow background, for example, on Google search results along with it saying “ads related to (whatever the search term is)”.  The point is for consumers to be able to distinguish results that someone paid to make prominent vs those that would otherwise rise to the top.  Makes sense.  The tail end of the letter begins to talk about this same principle as it manifests itself in social and mobile (and voice search as well!).   Which got me thinking.

Content marketing done well is a beautiful thing.  Hopefully you all consider this blog a good example of someone putting our content that’s informative and engaging.  My hope is that this will lead you to email or call me about working with you, so I think in part that makes this an ad.  If I ever write anything that I’m paid to put in here, I’ll disclose it (although I probably won’t do that in the first place).  That’s content marketing – using content to sell.

Native ads are a bit more insidious.  It’s about the creation of content that’s supposed to be useful and interactive like content marketing.  Someone defined it as any type of advertising where the placement appeared to be appropriate except it’s much harder to identify as an ad.  When an article is about cats and is really an ad for a retailer, that’s a problem.

I think it won’t be long before rules are put in place to crack down on this.  How will the FTC stop fake reviews, articles such as the one above, and other forms that don’t disclose they’re really ads (which might call into question the validity of what’s in the article)?  I’m not sure but I know it won’t be as thoughtful as if marketers figure it out for themselves.

What do you think?

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