From Interruption to Engagement

we have produced a whitepaper on Pop Idol. Here some excerpts, if you would like a pdf of the full document please contact alanm (AT) smlxtralarge (DOT) com

Introduction
Calvin and his tiger friend Hobbes are sledding down a hill when Calvin says that he wishes their venture were being televised: “In my opinion, television validates existence.”

There is no doubt that we live in a heavily mediated culture, and as a consequence "the television" and celebrity, do play a central role in our society. Pop Idol, Survivor Island, the Big Brother house, the Apprentice are all good examples of mass consciousness, celebrity and the addictive nature of reality TV, as we like to call it. But in this paper SMLXL explores the possibility that Pop Idol is representative of something more profound than the fake plastic trees of reality TV.

SMLXL suggests that how we create culture is changing to something more social, and participatory. It is a glimpse into the possibilities of a new socio-economic model.

Today’s world is a world of experience of content, of culture and of content-rich brands a world where knowledge is profit and interconnectivity is power where enabling and personal empowerment are keys to future success. The implications for business are clear. People will want more ‘experiences’ and to be able to define themselves by those experiences.

In no TV show worldwide has this been more obvious, than in Pop Idol. Generating over 3.2 Billion viewers over the past six years, the various national editions of Pop Idol are regularly the most watched TV show in their respective countries when they air, and the final episode to Pop Idol has broken viewing records from Norway to Singapore.

SMLXL’s fascination with Pop Idol began when investigating the key social, economic and technological trends that have been recently reshaping our societies and economies. The more SMLXL thought about Pop Idol, in relation to this research, the more we could see these other key trends all contributing to Pop Idol’s remarkable success.

15 Minutes of fame?
Pop Idol was a British television series shown on ITV-1 in 2001; the show was a talent contest to find the best new young singer or ‘pop idol’ in the United Kingdom. The owners of Pop Idol, Fremantle Media and 19 Management, turned the show into a format and have since spun off Idols in dozens of successes such as American Idol, Canadian Idol, Indian Idol, Australian Idol, Indonesian Idol, Malaysian Idol, NZ Idol in New Zealand, Philippine Idol, France’s Nouvelle Star, Brazil’s Ídolos and Germany’s Deutschland Sucht den SuperStar. Regionally there has been Latin American Idol and Pan-Arabic Idol. There even was an international version among national winners from 11 countries as the
World Idol.

The Pan-Arabic Idol, produced by the Lebanese satellite channel Future TV, is one of the world’s most popular broadcasts in Arabic, sometimes pulling in more than 30 million viewers for the two-hour show. In many parts of Northern Africa where most households do not own TV sets, viewers collect at bars that have TV sets, such as the family of Medina Mohammed, a 17 year old student contestant who entered from the Afar region.

Pop Idol can be critiqued as Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame, wrapped up in the shallow – indeed hollow nature of contemporary celebrity (in Britain the Celebrity Big Brother winner, Chantelle, was famous for not being famous).

SMLXL joined with TomiAhonen Consulting to analyze the Pop Idol viewing and voting of the 22 countries which had completed at least one full run of Pop Idol, and for which the viewing and voting data was available. These 22 countries cover a total of 560 million TV households. Out of the worldwide household count with TV sets of about 1.2 billion, it means that Pop Idols TV shows have been broadcast to 45% of households with a TV set.

In some of the countries Pop Idol has been run several times over the past five years. To eliminate double-counting of the same viewers from year to year, we took only the latest run of Pop Idol in any given country. Then by using the established rule of thumb for the Pop Idols TV format, that about 20% of the total series audience tunes in during the final, we arrived at a discrete audience of 215 million unique viewers. This is out of a total potential of 560 million households in the countries where Pop Idol has run. In other words the finals of Pop Idol have attracted viewers corresponding to 38% of all possible households.

Nobody can doubt the enormous appeal of this TV format. And just by its audience numbers and the resulting advertising sales to the show it is a global phenomenon. In America for example, for the latest finale they were selling ad spots at 1.3 million dollars per slot. But why is Pop Idol the success it is?

An engaged audience
Where Pop Idol trumps any other global media phenomenon such as the Olympics, the World Cup of Football or the top rated sitcoms, soap operas and drama series, is how intensely Pop Idol has attracted viewer participation. During the past five years Pop Idol viewers have generated 1.9 billion votes.

The statistic that is the most significant above all others, concerns the fourth run of American Idol. The fourth American Idol was at the time the biggest texting event in the world with 41 million SMS text message based votes cast. What is more remarkable is, that 30% of those texters had never sent a text message before. This is worth noting, as getting people to change their behaviour towards new technologies, is difficult. America at that time had an emergent mobile culture and texting was not a central part of that culture.

Furthermore, American Idol keeps breaking voting records. Now at the latest run in the Spring of 2006, American Idol attracted 64.5 million SMS votes. The show has innovated with Cingular the American mobile telecoms operator by adding trivia, sweepstakes entries, TXT chats, a fan club and a vote number reminder. Mobile phone users could engage with American Idol contestants via mobile phone based chat. Fans could also download „American Idol‰-related ringtones such as the show‚s theme song, or songs from former Idol winners and contestants.

From Mass Media to Social Media
Yochai Benkler in his recent book The Wealth of Networks believes that information technology, the economics of networked information production and the social practices of networked conversations, qualitatively change the role that individuals can play in cultural and knowledge production and dissemination.

And indeed they do, but it is worth considering for a moment what drives this explosion of networked conversations and participation. The reality is that humans are a "WE SPECIES." That means that humans have an innate and fundamental need to connect and communicate.

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Fascinatiing blog by Nedra Weinreich

Spare change

Nedra says

Okay, I'll admit it. I spent much of the night exploring Second Life, a virtual world that combines 3-D graphics, social interaction, events, commerce and entertainment. After reading a post from Marc Sirkin at npMarketing Blog about how the American Cancer Society had done a virtual walk in Second Life, I was intrigued by the social marketing possibilities of using SL and other games for health and social change. I also read about an SL area called Camp Darfur, which is a virtual model of an abandoned refugee camp that you can "walk" around and learn more about the situation, pictured here.

Nedra points us towards some very exciting educational possibilites within virtual worlds.

She aslo references the The serious games initiative Briefly they say The Serious Games Initiative is focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. Part of its overall charter is to help forge productive links between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy.

Below is how they explain themeselves in more detail

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Demise of a Darling: iPod market share crashes to 14% amid management denials

Stampeded by Mac fanatics, replying to 32 comments on iPod 14% Actually 4000+ people stopped by Communities Dominate Brands to have a pop.

Comments now stand at 60.

And...

Picture tells it better - iPod share is 14%

And Robert Scoble also bears the brunt of the podster mob

Land Rover seeks out adventurous web users

Land Rover is tapping into the trend for the user-generated content with the launch of a global community site that encourages people to tell tales of adventure.

Internet users share their experiences, which can involve music, food, travel and art, by posting images and text on the website.

A promontion to the site is here

Landrover community site

I have been thinking about this topic for some time and it really bothers me.

Because of my particular experiences as CEO at SMLXL, one can see that the greatest challenges is how organisations structure themselves to embrace and take advantage of the future today.

Different skill sets, combining and blending with eachother, and also a completely different set of motivations.

I was in discussion with a think tank recently, where I stated that I fervently beliive successful copmpanies of the future will be built around a very distinct set of values and passions. It was an interesting exchnage of views.

To give you an example of this is a company called Howies that Tomi and I write about in our book.

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Stormhoek: The Podcast

Is a fascinating glimpse into some marketing innovation Jason Korman of stormhoek is in conversation with Johnnie Moore and James Cherkoff

These are some points that Jason makes in the interview.

The challenge with wine is to break through the clutter in an industry with lots of products from all over the world. To have an impact we have to have A) great product and B) sometinbg interesting to say. Blogging helps to do that... an enormous opportunity.. and it's very cost-efficient. It's hard to think of a way of marketing that would be less expensive.

We've had a lot of trade press recently. It tends to focus on the free samples to bloggers but they misunderstand what we're trying to do. It's like going into a bar and buying someone a drink. You do it not to give them a free drink, but to start a conversation. All we've done is use our product as a way to start conversations with people. That's what marketing today is about: conversations with people. We're lucky to have a product that is a social lubricant.

Tyres make better movies

We blogged about brands invading traditional media, such as the story about the 24 hour Audi TV channel launched here in the UK - see [ Audi channel launched ] and we also wrote about innovative use of the web by Hollywood [ launch movie by blog ]

But now we see again something new. Pirelli the tyre manufacturer is releasing a movie. Ok, it is a short-film, but yes, this movie named "The Call" is by a real hollywood director, Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day", "King Arthur") and starring legitimate Hollywood star John Malkovich and supermodel Naomi Campbell. The story has Malkovich as a priest, Campbell as the devil, and is about good and evil, obviously. I read about it in Monday's issue of the International Herald Tribune (30 Jan 2006)

Love this a piece of engagement marketing

W. Virginia uses dance video game to fight obesity

Children in West Virginia's public schools will be required to play Konami Digital Entertainment Inc.'s popular " Dance Dance Revolution " video game under a deal to help the state battle rising childhood obesity rates, the company said on Wednesday.

In the game, arrows appear on a video screen according to the beat of a song. Players score points by stepping on matching arrows on a mat. Units with a special workout mode allows players to track the calories they burn.

As part of the partnership, which includes all 765 of the state's schools, West Virginia will develop a curriculum based around the video game and track its progress.

All of the state's schools will have "Dance Dance Revolution" equipment within two years, said Konami spokeswoman Clara Gilbert.

The total cost of the program is $500,000. Konami is giving the state $75,000 in cash for product and research related to the program, which the company said is the first of its kind.

wicked

also have a look at

Front page of the Media Guardian today Christian's mission

Christian O'Connell, Virgin Radio's high-profile breakfast show signing who made his debut this morning, has been enjoying a spell of gardening leave and lie-ins since leaving his previous berth at London indie rock station Xfm.

His success is based upon

The listeners are a big part of what I do. Umpteen breakfast show DJs say the listeners are really important but they never get out and do anything with the audience apart from a lame phone-in."

It was this sense of community that attracted listeners to his Xfm show and enabled it to reach out beyond its indie kid demographic. From Rock School, a competition to find the capital's best teenage rock band, to a collaborative knockabout effort to record a football song for the European Championships, he had the rare knack of making listeners feel part of his gang and a talent for on-air improvisation.

And the man does not just like to be stuck behind the control panel

Likewise, he hopes to get out and meet his audience. He knows that outside London and industry circles he is less well known, so plans to take the show on the road and is developing a bigger, better version of Rock School in conjunction with Channel 4

Rock on Christian

"don't underestimate fun - engagement has a demonstrable ROI"

via Plastic bag

The knives are out

Coca Cola and Creative Artists Agency's complex, glamorous, relationship could be coming to a close--if reports are to be believed. Seems that Coke doesn't think it's getting much for its money these days. Not for the $3 million a year in fees (down from $5 million two years ago) it pays to CAA.

Summary

Welcome to the unsung, cloudy world of branded entertainment

Via TV Watch

hmmm .... some focus is needed.

After promising to launch a digital music service for several years, MTV said Tuesday that it is close to releasing an online music mart that will throw it into competition with iTunes and Napster. Although offering few details, the company said it has worked closely with Microsoft to build a service called Urge that will let listeners experiment with new music, as well as offer "original, hand-crafted content" from MTV and its other cable channels.

Via ZD net

FOR WHATEVER REASON, PROBABLY BECAUSE there have been so many recent advances in what we call "publishing," opportunities to cite the First Amendment have abounded of late. I know that I'm in a very small minority here, as a former U.S, History teacher who's now in digital media. So, pardon the geeky nerd stuff. Having a working knowledge of the First Amendment is, at least to me, pretty vital stuff for anyone in our business. Why? It's because the First Amendment protects digital media professionals so much more than you might guess. It protects freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly and petition. From the First Amendment Center's Web site: Without the First Amendment, religious minorities could be persecuted, the government might well establish a national religion, protesters could be silenced, the press could not criticize government, and citizens could not mobilize for social change.

Now we can debate the actual veracity of the first amendment in practice with the introduction of the Patriot Act.

But this is also interesting

So, how do we grow? 2005 will be remembered as the year of user-generated content--the year that something called MySpace sold to the folks at Fox for $580 million because user-generated content is not only limitless, it enables even more precise targeting than anything we'd thought of previously. So, that user-generated content had better be protected, and whoever targets the ads and manages those ads' operations had better trust that the content against which the ads are targeted is copasetic . See, this isn't about the model of user-generated content per se. It's about the entire construct of interactive media, when not just the behavior of users is part of the model, but the ever-dynamic, ever-opinionated, ever-protected content too.

This model of interactive media had better be well-received by advertisers because, while consumers have been moving online in well-documented droves, ad revenues are about to hit their collective heads on the ceiling without more inventory or new, higher-margin products. For those of you wondering why Google's valuation is so much higher than that of Time Warner's, when Time Warner's revenue is 10 times that of Google's--well, think about that ceiling as you ponder Google Base and more limitless inventory.

Its not more ads we want - actually its more "value" - its about who pays for what where? At what point in the business deal narrative, does the money flow? And creating an experience that is based not upon, "I want you to listen to me now", or "just in case you might be in the market for," but something for more contexual, more relevant, more sticky.

Alan Mitchell once said "if Marketing was a thing in its own right would anyone want to buy it?" The answer of course is NO - 99% of the time.

Again, Rupes purchase of myspace.com crops up. And if that does not indicate our world has turned upside down and inside out nothing will.

So would Jefferson have been a blogger? Still an interesting notion. Should poilitics be well... mor participatory and more democratic in the true sense of the word?

Via Media Post

See Quote of the day

Anyone that knows me well, knows that I am a lifelong devotee and worshipper of the Apple brand. Indeed I have expoused the virtues of Apple many times at the SMLXL blog

Which is why it pains me to the core to write this blog.

But I am mad, I am pissed, incensed.

Why? Because I feel Apple has truly let me down.

So, I buy my daughter an Apple iPod - She is very happy. Until it crashes - Pooooph.

Then my daughter, my wife and I get into a real conversation with the Apple "ahhem" customer support service.

After this I feel I have been in a 7 set tennis match. Anyway Apple agree our iPod is fucked and agree to replace it. Do we want the ipod engraved with my daughters name? Oh yes please. So when the ipod comes back Emma has now become Nemma I mean Nemma, does anyone out there know a Nemma? Because I don't.

There was some serious eyeball rolling in the Moore household. Of course the discussion is do we dare send it back to wait another 6 weeks for it to come back as Moon station unit, Slemma, Gemma, Phemma - oh the list is endless.

So we decide to bite the bullet and tease our daughter that she now needs to change her name by deed pole to Nemma. Oh how we all laughed, ironically.

Anyway, so we have had the NEW ipod 3 months. And guesss what? It crashes yup thats right - you know the unhappy lookiing ipod icon.

So I go online - navigate my way through the byzantine Apple help site only to discover that the warranty has expired. WHAT, WHAT the F@$K.

I mean, if you had a brand new car, dishwasher, bed, shower oh come on you name it and it was faulty well inside its warranty period you would want it replaced with a brand new whatever and a full years warranty.

So wassup Apple? You guys are going to get a broadside and remember we won at Trafalger!

Coincidentally - Simon Caulkin wrote a very relevant piece in the Observer on Sunday entitled Customers are not just for Christmas

Caulkin writes

Can it be 'bah, humbug' time again already? Every Christmas the appeal to our better nature serves to throw into ever more grating relief the mendacity, or at least deliberate ambiguity, at the heart of so many companies' business practice - and this one is no exception. Thus the boss of GNER admitted last week that it was hard to find cheap fares on the company's website, adding coolly that it would take a year to make them more accessible. The next day British Gas was taken to task by the Advertising Standards Authority for a misleading ad campaign - for the seventh time in a year. Happy Christmas, suckers.

Listed is a litany of cyncial bad busness practice - just what I need a bit of a pep before I really get going.

Loyal customers are often worst treated, paying more for services than 'rate tarts' who switch every few months. Loyalty, in effect, is a mugs' game.

The cynical may shrug, but that's showbiz. Caveat emptor. As Groucho Marx put it: 'The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. Fake that, and you've got it made.'

But today, you only have to look at what happened to Kryptonite here too and Dell to observe what happens when the community bites back.

Ironic then that Caulkin cites Apple as a good example

Good profits are self-sustaining because customers not only come back again for repeat purchases, they become advocates for the company - a virtual marketing department. Apple customers are a good example. Bad profits are the reverse. Instead of creating value for customers, behaviour like that above appropriates value from them.

But it's a mistake to think that ripped-off customers are passive. They find ways of getting even that exert a huge toll on offenders. In a mirror image they become an anti-marketing department: an invisible army of detractors, each of whose negative comments typically cancels out several recommendations. Detractors complain more, make more calls on customer service and are a hidden drag on growth. They cost more and spend less. Angry customers depress employees, compounding the effect. And to neutralise their influence requires ever greater effort by the companies.

Says Andy Taylor, CEO, Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

The only way to grow a business is to (do stuff so good that you can) get customers to come back for more and tell their friends.

Well, I am telling my friends not to buy an Apple and there are enough stories to really make you wonder what Apple are up to.

Guys - YOU reinvented the music industry, you were almost the pied piper leading us to the promised land. So why does your technology and service SUCK and BLOW?

Why do you make it so hard? Why do you insult me by mispelling my daughters name. Surely you can see I run a small buisness and that we run a few Apples and lots of other Apple stuff. Surely a helping hand would not be so hard.

Don't make your marketing so adversial - otherwise we are off to buy N-series phones and computers from eleswhere.

And think on this...

The best companies intuitively understand that good service is not about loyalty programmes, satisfaction surveys or CRM, it's about allowing customers to pull the value they need with the minimum of fuss and effort. If you provide that kind of customer service, you won't need 'customer service' at all. And the NPS will, deservedly, go through the roof.

Perhaps someone from Apple might like to get in touch. But I doubt you will - besides its the festive season and there are far too many christmas parties to go to - As Louis the XVI wife said of the growing restlessness of the French population who were starving in the streets

Let them eat cake

And we know how that ended don't we!

Also read

· · ·

From the Latitude blog

Jackie Danicki says

After reading last week’s news that the web is the main research tool for car buyers, I found the new Yahoo Autos Custom very interesting. This is a US feature that is still in beta, but it capitalises on the results of Yahoo’s research on car buyers’ use of search , which revealed that nearly 70% of automotive researchers who bought a vehicle first went to a search engine to investigate their purchase. As explained on the Yahoo Search Blog ,

Yahoo Autos Custom offers the following features:
Installer Search - We partnered with the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) to help you find local installers that can do modification work on your car. Find the top rated shops in your area, see pictures of their work, read user ratings and reviews, and get driving directions with embedded maps. This is the first time the SEMA database of installers has ever been available online.

Car Enthusiast Search - We built a specialized search engine by crawling virtually all of the top car enthusiast sites to produce the most relevant search results for enthusiasts. Go right to the source of enthusiast sites. Try a search for “blazer” on our car search and compare that with web search and you’ll see much more relevant results for one than the other.

As well as integrating local search, Yahoo Autos Custom only solidifies Yahoo’s determined move into the area of social search. Yahoo understands that helping vertical enthusiasts - be it travel buffs or petrolheads - to connect with one another only expands the network of potential customers that their products can reach.

Ask yourself this: When it comes to your company’s marketing, which networks should you be tapping into? Does your marketing strategy reflect this, or is it the equivalent of standing on a street corner and passing out leaflets to people who may or may not be interested in your products?

EFF sues Sony BMG
ConsumerAffairs.com : The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against Sony BMG, demanding that the company repair the damage done by the First4Internet XCP and SunnComm MediaMax software it included on over 24 million music CDs.

Via Darknet

We posted about this recently over at communities dominate brands blog.

and if you want to get deep here is the EFF account

Here is Ben Hammersley view on 8 Ideas That Will Revolutionize the 21st Century (and blogging isn't one of them). Via Gaping Void

1. Information wants to be free (vs. copyright).
2. Zero distance (vs. borders).
3. Mass amateurisation (vs.censorship).
4. More is much more. (vs. network blocking).
5. True names (vs. idendity cards & databases ).
6. Viral behaviour (vs. more network blocking).
7. Everything is personal (vs. everything is trackable).
8. Ubiquitous computing (no privacy).

a review of Ben Hammersley speech at Les Blogs read here

A sharply written post from the boys at Red Couch

Preacher Ben McConnell over at Church of the Customer points to statistics that indicate word of mouth marketing is the third largest budget item in a traditional marketing budget. Just like the Jeffersons in the old sitcom, it looks like this efficient, effective and credible category is movin' on up.

I imagine this is not good news for traditional advertisers. But don't worry, I will refrain from making and references to the restaurant service industry.

Those poor ad boys are getting a bit of a pasting at the moment. As Tomi and I like to say connectivity makes broadcast obsolescent.

Its the death of one to one marketing
Its the death of broadcast as we know it

"We’re tired of the 20th-century model of being passive consumers of mass content," says J.D. Lasica, author of Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation . "We’re transitioning to a new kind of culture. More participatory, more open, more interactive where the locus of control passes to the people."

People talking to people, points of view being shared, a transfer of authority from institutions to communities, this is why word of mouth is increasing in importance.

So what is the one number you need to grow? Read here and here

Over at the Communities blog an interesting post on how broadcast can truly harness advocacy and utilse technology applied to engagement marketing for a TV show.

Google local for mobile

Google says Take the power of Google local with you on your mobile phone

Combining directions, maps, and satellite imagery, Google Local for mobile is a free download that lets you find local hangouts and businesses across town or across the country — right from your phone.

Detailed directions: Whether you plan to walk or drive, your route is displayed on the map itself, together with step-by-step directions.

Integrated search results: Local business locations and contact information appear all in one place, integrated on your map.

Easily movable maps: Interactive, draggable maps let you zoom in or out, and move in all directions so you can orient yourself visually.

Satellite imagery: Get a bird's eye view of your desired location.

Does Google challenge mobile operators

Google Dips Toe In Pay-Per-Call

GOOGLE THIS WEEK BEGAN TESTING pay-per-call ads, in which users can click to be connected to a merchant or service provider via telephone. In Google's model, users click on an icon of a phone, and then enter their own phone numbers, after which Google calls the users and then connects them with marketers.

Its what SMLXL might describe as connectivity and flowability combining with 'search'. Where, 'just in time' replaces 'just in case'. Where, richness and reach come together in a very poerful combination. So, where does yellow pages figure in all of this?

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This little ditty caught my eye this week

Video of Blunt single gets mobile premiere

the subtext: Wide range of artists to offer downloads first and Music trend is big driver in attracting 3G customers

The video for the new single from James Blunt will today receive its global premiere on mobile phones, part of a trend that the industry predicts will next year see them becoming as important as radio and television in promoting artists.

The Guardian article goes onto say, quoting Danny Van Emden from EMI,

Danny van Emden, digital media director at EMI, said that the opportunities were greater than those afforded by music players such as the iPod because nearly everyone, not just internet savvy early adopters, has a mobile phone. "I can't see a single campaign going forward that doesn't have a mobile element to it, from the lowliest act to the biggest global superstar."

And

John Reid, executive vice president of marketing at Warner Music International, whose artists include Madonna and Green Day, said that the mobile aspect could become as important in revenue and marketing terms as traditional formats.

Tomi and I know that music is one of the critical element in the development of mobile 3G services which is why we have devoted some time looking at developments on a global basis.

The inevitability of such developments is obvious to us and the mobile will become the channel whereby bands of the future will have no choice but take the mobile and mobile internet seriously.

As we pointed out the Artic Monkeys got to Number 1 in the UK pop charts off the back of their digital platform and allowing their fans to download and share content. Rapidly building a loyal fan base.

No more epic stories of driving around in beaten up old transit vans up and down the country, well not quite anyway. LIVE music will always be live - but today their is a very different way to reach your audience.

We like to think about this as "flowability"

Or, that we’re tired of the 20th-century model of being passive consumers of mass content. We’re transitioning to a new kind of culture. More participatory, more open, more interactive where the locus of control passes to the people.

The language od post modern culture is based upon - Flexibility - fluidity - portability - permeability - transparency - interactivity - immediacy - facilitation - engagement.

I think that companies are still in their infancy in understanding what the new digital world can bring them. I think it is life affirming, and optimistic. And, enabling or facilitating peer-to-peer flows of information and communication will transform business models.

The mobile and the internet are central to that.

Out there in this big bad world is stuff that is going on which demonstrates that there are new and more exciting ways for brands and businesses to engage with their customers.

To facilitate a completely different relationship with communities, which is deeper, richer and creates value in new and exciting ways.

The thinking at SMLXL is that brands in the 21st Century have to give up control to gain control. They have to become facilitators, enablers, life-simplifiers, co-creators, they have to inspire greater C2C interaction and in that way they will get the most precious thing from their customers personal advocacy.

As Frederick Reichold says, the one number you need to grow is customer advocacy.

Companies spend lots of time and money on complex tools to assess customer satisfaction. But they're measuring the wrong thing. The best predictor of top-line growth can usually be captured in a single survey question: Would you recommend this company to a friend? This finding is based on two years of research in which a variety of survey questions were tested by linking the responses with actual customer behavior--purchasing patterns and referrals--and ultimately with company growth. Surprisingly, the most effective question wasn't about customer satisfaction or even loyalty per se. In most of the industries studied, the percentage of customers enthusiastic enough about a company to refer it to a friend or colleague directly correlated with growth rates among competitors. Willingness to talk up a company or product to friends, family, and colleagues is one of the best indicators of loyalty because of the customer's sacrifice in making the recommendation. When customers act as references, they do more than indicate they've received good economic value from a company; they put their own reputations on the line. The findings point to a new, simpler approach to customer research, one directly linked to a company's results.

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Audi has become the first car maker in the world to launch its own TV Channel.

In order to do so, it first had to gain the first ever self-promotional licence, granted by Ofcom, setting a precedent in broadcasting regulations. Evidence of OfCom being prepared to relax its regulations around advertising funded programming

The company now becomes the first car maker in the world to capitalise on the phenomenal growth of digital television.

It gives the company constant access to over 7.6m homes and nearly 21m individuals. Audi Channel certainly opens-up a new and potentially important communication platform to a wide audience.

The Audi Channel will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The channel cost Audi £2m to set up and the company is committing $£1m to £2m a year programming.

Why has Audi taken such a step?

because the decision to extend from advertiser to broadcaster was born of growing frustration with a fragmenting media marketplace and concern that British viewers were spending less time engaging with the brand's television advertising.

I am surprised that more brands have not gone down this route already. Adam Singer convinced me two years ago that the costs of becoming ones own broadcaster were now so low that it was open to all players.

I think its a better way to go than product placement. For sure traditional advertising willl not go away, but as we have demonstrated in Communities Dominate Brands a whole new set of marketing tools are required in a non-linear world. As well as a different mindset.

However, marinading advertising content with editorial is always going to be a touchy subject. Though I argue if its done well its a better model for those that are interested, lets say in this instance of buyiing a car.

Watching the Audi channel when one is actively in the market for a new car would be I suspect a more rewarding experience and certainly more informative than a 30 second spot.

And as John Grant said in his book after Image

Image advertising is the junk mail of the 21st Century

Alan Mitchell argues that for a great deal of marketing if it were a thing in its own right would anyone want to buy it? And we all know the answer to that.

So Audi investing in its own collateral makes so much common sense.

Now the challenge is, how does Audi completely move from a "push" model of advertising to one of "pull"?

The Financial Times reported

The extension from advertiser to broadcaster is a big step but one that a growing number of brands are assessing as attention turns from conventional advertising to so-called brand content - entertainment funded by a brand owner that can be exploited across a variety of media platforms: television, radio, live events, mobile phones and the internet.

Carling, for example, is a leading music sponsor and has examined the viability of launching its own music entertainment channel. Sony Europe, meanwhile, is positioning its new PlayStation Portable (PSP) as an entertainment channel in its own right in the UK, where it has recently moved into advertiser-funded television and is now producing television content exclusively for PSP.

Some industry observers see Audi's logical extension of this trend as an indication of things to come

While marketers are pushing for print’s answer to product placement, it turns out that most magazine readers already consider it rampant.

A study released yesterday by Starcom USA found that 65% of the consumers believe that advertisers pay for editorial mentions.

Warning for editors “This study is not a permission slip,” said Brenda White, director-print investment at Starcom Worldwide. “It’s a warning.” If readers already believe editorial content is for sale, she said, publishers who push the needle further could jeopardize what reader trust they have.

Via Adage

We got another positive review of our book over at mediainfluencer.

Adrian Cronin-Lukas writes

This book is not just an essay about understanding how the convergence of many technologies has changed everything, it is nothing less than a survival guide which I would urge people in businesses of all sizes to read from cover to cover if they want prosper in a world in which the balance of power on so many levels has shifted in favour of the digitally empowered individual and the affinity groups they form. These communities really do dominate brands. Get used to it.

Thanks Adriana ;-)

From Professor Jenkins report on integrated marketing communications

Winning with Customers

There are many studies of management performance and numerous systems of quality, including EFQM, Malcolm Baldridge and the ISO 9000 series. The integrated Marketing methodology draws on the best from these bodies of knowledge but blends them in a new and important formulation based on the brand.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s product quality was enough to create significant differentiation in many categories. Thus Japanese cars ate the market share of western brands because their cars worked better at a lower price.

But ‘quality’ is not enough in an age where everything works. In such a world this can mean creating ‘high tech commodoties’ – me-too products on wafer thin margins, such as the 1-2% operating margin across the world’s small car market. Efforts to beat this by cost reduction simply increases the cycle of stress as everyone reduces fat and no-one increases profit.

Real excellence and success arises when uniqueness is designed deeply, creatively and harmoniously into the practices, products and service of the brand. This requires a special kind of precision leadership to fulfil the genius of the firm or organisation and is the key task for marketing in the 21st Century.

John Naughton writing in the Observer , has an interesting piece on podcasting.

Of course, there are plenty ofarticles on podcasting, what I really liked was Naughtons observation on Apple and how they have constantly innovated whilst always keeping the end consumer clearly in mind.

This is why Apple has been successful – because they have always made their end consumers more successful. They've enabled many people to do things which they would not have been able to do before and have on the whole made it progressively easy, for the likes of you and me. Perhaps one might use the term 'incremental innovation.'

Naughton opens his piece

The process by which a technology goes from being an arcane technicality to a consumer product is always fascinating. The recent appearance of 'podcasting' on the radar of mainstream media is a delicious case in point.

He then turns his attention to Apple:

Apple is continuing its tradition of taking sophisticated computing technologies and turning them into consumer products. Its already done this with WiFi (Airport), digital music (iTunes), digital photography (iPhoto), home movie editing (iMovie) and DVD authoring (iDVD).

Harnessing all these technologies once required serious technical skills together with a heavy dose of masochism. What Apple’s engineers and designers did was to turn them into tools anyone – even newspaper columnists – could use.

Apple’s mantra is simple

1). Create an experience not an artefact
2). Honour context
3). Design for change
4). Don’t forget the human element

Beautifully simple.

Fortune ran a piece about advertisings increasingly bleak future

From the moment consumer-products companies started placing ads in mid-19th-century newspapers, mass-media advertising has been about making connections. But while the modern world knits itself ever more closely together, advertising is becoming increasingly disconnected—from its historical base, its business models, and its audiences. Thanks to the Internet, advertising is going through its first true paradigm shift since the advent of television half a century ago. As a result, your average executive in the ad or media business is feeling as lonely and unstable as a 30-foot sailboat with a broken keel foundering in the swells of a Category 2 hurricane. Pass the Dramamine

Fortune goes onto say

Give it ten years, say the tech gurus, and everything you watch will be high-definition, interactive, and brought to you via the Internet—you’ll love it! But today’s big ad agencies might not. As descendants of the firms that invented modern advertising, they face the buggy-whip-manufacturer problem: the fact that full-on paradigm shifts are rarely kind to incumbents.

If I were a marketer, I would be working pretty hard to work out what this future looks like.

Additional comment over at mediainfluencer
And The scramble on Madison Avenue

An interesting little ditty from mediapost . I had to laugh when I read this because, on the one hand you have the word 'engagement', then you then have the word 'impact' next to it.

Engagement impact - sounds......hmmm

I thought that the whole notion of engagement was based upon a paradigm shift in how companies interact with their audiences. I wonder what metric Jonathan Schwartz at Sun uses for his blog? Or Bob Lutz for that matter?

How do you measure open flows of communication?

After years of mulling concepts like attentiveness, involvement, and engagement as a means of measuring the impact media buys have on advertising effectiveness, Madison Avenue is officially embracing "engagement," as its new media planning metric - one that could replace the vaunted concept of "frequency" as the multiplier in most media plans. But a panel of advertisers and agency executives discussing the move Wednesday during a closing panel session at the Association of National Advertisers' 2005 Marketing Accountability Forum in New York had a difficult time defining exactly what the new metric would be, how it would be applied, or whether it would be done so consistently across all media.

It seems everyone likes the idea of engagement, but they struggle to define what it is. Again, how one company engages with its audience and stakeholders will be different to another. That means bespoke or a flexible metric or it means that engagement is the mechanic, but actually what you need to measure is the final outcome that all brands want which is advocacy .

I read about Jeff Jarvis's Dell Hell the other day...

Adriana has blogged about it over at Media influencer

Adriana says

Yesterday, I waded through Jeff Jarvis's record of his experiences with a new Dell laptop that is on the way of becoming another case study in 'customers-bite-back-online' trend. The last post is:

And Jeff gets stuck in

One of the great lessons of the cluetrain era is that your customers are your best customer support agents and marketers if only you allow them ... and respect them enough to listen to them. Dell does't. As we reported the other day, Dell shut its general customer forums... which should be the place for customers to help each other.

Adriana mentions CNETnews.com that writes about the the closure of the forums as Dell struggles with complaints. CNETnews says:

Considering its customer-friendly track record, Dell's recent decision to shut down its Customer Care message boards is getting pilloried as an act of monumental stupidity, if not monumental arrogance. The company says the closure is necessary because authorized Dell representatives--and not customers--need to handle the oh-so-complicated issues that were being handled on the message board.

Am I missing something here?

Jeff muses:

Considering its customer-friendly track record, Dell's recent decision to shut down its Customer Care message boards is getting pilloried as an act of monumental stupidity, if not monumental arrogance.... Dell chose to shut down the forum rather than engage with its customers.

Neville Hobson leaves a post that refers to another ongoing debate with Landrover and one unfortunate blogger Adrian Melrose

Landrover haveyoursay

Neville also posts on the issue here

JUMP

Via the wonderful Neville Hobsons blog

From Nevilles post

Writing in Information Week , Lutz says a blog provides no better opportunity to engage in an open dialogue and exchange of ideas with customers and potential customers, illustrating his experiences with the GM FastLane Blog:

Since January, I've been participating, along with other members of General Motors' senior management, in the GM Fastlane blog (fastlane.gmblogs.com). We've found the blog to be a hugely effective communications tool and a terrific way to conduct a grassroots, largely unfiltered conversation with GM fans and nonfans alike.

The key is to leave the corporate-speak behind and keep the tone conversational, open, and honest. Anyone who has read our blog sees the real deal, as produced by us and not polished by several layers of trained communications pros.

Another aspect that helps keep things real is the wealth of comments posted by readers and other bloggers. We don't filter out negative comments, complaints, or hate mail. All we do is screen for spam and posts from crackpots using language that most people would find offensive.

It's important that we run the bad with the good. We'd take a credibility hit if we posted only rosy compliments, and credibility is the most important attribute a corporate blog can have. Once it's gone, your blog is meaningless.

Neville also suggest reading up on

New York Times interview with Bob Lutz

And from the NevOn Vaults

GM Blog continues to push the envelope
Why every company should blog
GM stays on track

The mobile phone appears to be making headway as an advertising delivery system as growing numbers of major marketers launch summer campaigns designed for the "third screen."

Ad spending on mobile phone campaigns is getting serious for some major marketers.

Along with McDonald’s, marketers including Masterfoods, Timex, Coca-Cola Co., Heineken and Johnson & Johnson are readying promotions that encompass everything from mobile games to ring-tone giveaways and text-in trivia contests and sweepstakes.
Mobile elements have already become an integral part of the mix for movie marketers, with most film sites now including a “mobile” link. Fans of Batman Begins can fight evil in Gotham in a mobile game, enter a text-messaging sweepstakes or buy ring tones or wallpaper; the Bewitched site offers 12 ring tones, including Samantha’s signature sound.

Via Adage

I am feeling very chuffed this afternoon, as I went to the Amazon site to check up on our book to see that a chap called Aaron had reviewed our book .

Aaron says

This book impresses on every page with statistics, quotes, evidence and logic. The book proceeds logically from one concept to another. It forces the reader to re-examine assumptions, and constantly presents impressive examples from all around the world. The concepts are real, the trends sustainable and therefore their conclusions are indisputable.

The book is loaded with insightful examples and revealing case studies. The brand names and companies are all household names but the reader will be surprised how many unrelated industries are now involved with communities, from Adidas to Red Bull. Many times you have to put the book down to fully grasp the extent of their meaning.

There are chapters on blogging, on virtual worlds/videogaming and on cellphone based Generation-C. These are used as the three primary areas where digital communities already exist. The book then shows how just about every industry from TV and the internet to locksmiths and aerospace are feeling the impacts of communities.

The early part of the book discusses familiar themes of disruptive technologies, convergence and fragmentation. These are amplified with alarming facts, stats and examples. The second half of the book takes the reader deep into the near future, showing what changes are already happening to society. The book makes a compelling case as it so broadly provides examples from countries such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, England, Finland, Holland etc, in addition to USA and Canada.

The book concludes with the earth-shattering impacts to all of business, that brand dominance is now being superceded by community power. But where most books might end at introducing a revolutionary new problem or issue, this book goes on with another chapter to explain how that problem can be solved.

A remarkable book, thoroughly captivating, immensely insightful. I recommend it to anyone in business or technology.

I think I am going to have myself a cold beer.

Sony BMG inks deal with P2P firm Mashbox

LONDON (Reuters) - Music giant Sony BMG has finalized its deal with the legal file-sharing network Mashboxx, two days after a U.S. court dealt a blow to Mashboxx's unauthorized rivals such as Grokster.

Mashboxx, headed by former Grokster president Wayne Rosso, is a peer-to-peer file-sharing network that requires users to pay for copyrighted songs.

via Reuters

Grokster May Haunt Podcasting

Apple's new podcasting service could be in a sticky situation if podcasters post copyrighted material, thanks to Monday's Grokster decision by the Supreme Court, some experts say.

But others suggested Apple's new podcast hub could prove to be an ideal one-stop-shop for securing music licenses for homebrew radio shows.

Via Wired

The Real Lesson of Grokster

It's tempting to see the U.S. Supreme Court's Grokster decision as technology's loss and copyright's gain, but that analysis misses the mark. In fact, despite having just been handed a powerful new tool to prop up a tottering business model, the entertainment industry could well wind up the biggest loser.

The high court on Monday threw out a summary judgment ruling in favor of Grokster and StreamCast Networks, ordering the companies back to trial on charges of so-called secondary copyright infringement.

That seems like a big win for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and other plaintiffs, which now stand a good chance of shutting down both contested services and bringing new lawsuits against other peer-to-peer companies. But, by helping maintain the status quo, the ruling could further delay the death of the old way of doing things and postpone the birth of new strategies that successfully build on unstoppable peer-to-peer technologies.

Via Wired

T-Mobile teams up with Google for mobile Internet

Deutsche Telekom's mobile arm T-Mobile will use Web search leader Google as the starting point for surfing the Internet on its mobile phones to promote Internet usage, T-Mobile said on Wednesday.

T-Mobile, Europe's second-largest mobile operator, is moving to provide full Internet access on its phones, abandoning the unpopular "walled garden" concept in which operators give access to their own choice of Web sites.

Via Reuters

AOL Grows Video Content With Virtual Film Festival

In hopes of increasing online video content, AOL's Moviefone on Thursday announced plans to launch a virtual short film festival next week.

In addition to spotlighting the featured shorts, most of which have already made the rounds at established film flings like Sundance and Tribeca, Moviefone is beginning the festival with an open call for film submissions--an invitation not unlike the one rival Google extended to users in April in an effort to grow its own video database.

Brand New World Strikes Brand New Deal, Will Create Ads For VOD, Wireless, In-Store

VIDEO PRODUCER BELIEVE MEDIA AND agency Brand New World have entered into a joint partnership to create and produce long-form content for marketers that want to advertise their brands over broadband, VOD, wireless, and in-store retail networks.

Believe Media has produced branded films for Mercedes, GMC, Cadillac, Nike, and their agencies, and was a co-creator of the original BMW films series. Meanwhile, Brand New World has been working on cross-platform advertising projects Johnson & Johnson, Verizon, AOL Time Warner, and others. The company also recently signed a deal with Interpublic Group's Magna Global Entertainment.

And while long-form ads have generally been adopted by high-end marketers like those in the automotive category, Alan Schulman, chief creative officer of Brand New World, said that next month, the combined effort with Believe Media will unveil their first consumer goods client.

"If you're an advertiser and you're used to spending $300,000 to $1 million on a 30-second commercial, the fact that you could spend $300,000 to $500,000 on a 30-minute commercial or 60-minute commercial--why wouldn't you do that?" Schulman said. "As an 'advanced media' creative agency, our clients are leveraging new technologies like 'telescoping' that 'throw' the viewer from a tagged 30-second spot to a longer-form film if the viewer opts-in for more information."

Google Unveils Video Player

GOOGLE MONDAY RELEASED ITS OWN video playback feature, "Google Video Player," an open-source-based application for use with their video search. The player allows users to stream video clips uploaded to the search giant's video search application by their creators. The move is "probably the most significant play in the online-on-demand video market," said Jupiter Research analyst Gary Stein. "It cuts the distance between producer and consumer," he said, adding "that whole content distribution has been disintermediated."

Via Mediapost

Researchers find an advertising upside to DVR's

Evidence is mounting that digital video recorders aren't necessarily the negative for TV advertising that many people have believed them to be. While research continues to mount that a high percentage of DVR users do skip through commercials, new information suggests there is a DVR advertising upside -- including the fact that people actually use the devices to replay interesting commercials and they appear to be restoring the kind of family viewing that marketers and agencies relish.

Via Media Daily News

Google Releases Free Satellite Mapping

A MONTH AFTER ANNOUNCING PLANS for a three-dimensional mapping utility, Google Tuesday released the product into beta, allowing users to download the satellite mapping program for free from the Google home page.

The feature, "Google Earth," which accesses a vast database compiled by Keyhole--the mapping company Google purchased in October--provides high-resolution satellite maps of addresses throughout the world. Users also can obtain driving directions overlayed onto the images; in addition, the program allows users to collect locations into a personalized search folder, and access them again in the future with one click.

In addition to the free Google Earth download, Google also offers related premium programs, including Google Earth Plus, which for $20 adds GPS connectivity, a data importer, annotation tools, and higher-resolution printing. Another upgrade--Google Earth Pro--for $400 incorporates more of Keyhole's database, including layers showing parks, schools, airports, retail, and hospital zones; Earth Pro also allows users to import site plans, design sketches, and scan blueprints. Google also offers a variable-cost enterprise version of the software, which allows companies to purchase the program in a server box, integrate their own data into the program, and other customizable features.

Via Online Media Daily

Jupiter is a manufacturer of brass and woodwind instruments.

This is what Jupiters website says

Since 1930 the JUPITER company has been dedicated to helping schools and culture. This simple definition still represents the primary goal of the JUPITER brand today.

To that end Jupiter have been involved in a project called SoundStart

SoundStart began in September 2001, when 30 young pupils from Elmwood Primary School in Croydon became the first to try this unique musical experiment. Unlike most music tuition that takes place outside the classroom, Soundstart takes a whole class from beginner to concert in one term. Jupiter brass and woodwind and their UK distributor Korg UK, working with Croydon Music Services, gave each child an instrument of their choice – a wide range from flutes to saxophones, some of which the children had never seen or heard before.

And the benefits.... well, as one child explained “Do you realize if we weren't doing this music project we could be out nicking cars?".

Or how aboout this

All this is translating into better results for the school overall. Poor attendance and lateness have been virtually eradicated. Homework completion has gone up from 67 % to 97%. There has been a significant decline in children involved in "disruptive behaviour" in and, especially out of class, with three/four incidents a week down to less than one a week.

From the Jupiter website is a list of benefits:

Great enthusiasm from pupils, teachers and parents

Supports the school's music curriculum

Enhances music's status in the school

Provides development for teachers

Proved to be fully replicable in other authorities

Comprehensive resource material and support provided

Publicity opportunity for schools

Benefits for schools in the community and with parents

Leads to increased take up of Music Service tuition

Help to create "life-long enthusiasm“ for music.

Having just read the article - I am reminded that as we always argued at SMLXL finding innovative ways to support and engage individuals and their wider community is the future of brands that want to be successful.

As we say in our little book of engagement marketing

Engagement Marketing could help sell a product, an industry, a region, combat a social issue. Engagement Marketing is about connecting large or small communities with engaging content to a commercial or social agenda

It creates a better more rewarding context for people to want to be involved. The brand or institution becomes dynamic rather than static - it plays a more relevant role in peoples lives.

Korg UK and Jupiter who have put a great deal of effort into this project have equally benefitted. It is a self assured and mature approach to marketing. Aligning several key objectives through one inititiative.

I think you should read this article below because it demonstrates what can be achieved if one moves from push based marketing strategies to trust and engagement based initiatives. The benefits for all are obvious.

As Glen Urban said:

Evidence is building that the paradigm of marketing is changing from the push strategies so well suuited to the past 50 years of mass media to trust based strategies that are essential in a time of information empowerment

Brendan Le Page who initated the scheme in Croydon says

There's no doubt in my mind that a good musical experience should be given as a right to every schoolchild. They shouldn't even have to want it. We don't offer reading to pupils who want it. It would cost something like £200 per child for a one-year project of sufficient depth to be worthwhile. Compared with the cost of other ways of dealing with poor behaviour, low self-esteem, barriers to learning, and anti-social behaviour, this is truly a drop in the ocean, but it would release a tidal wave of positive energy.

So the schools win, the kids win, the parents win, government ministers win, and the company that supplies the instruments win, by now having the permission to talk to heads of music and government about their initiatives. And to sell more products.

This initiative has changed lives, and changed schools for the better. Jamie Oliver would be proud.

Jupiter and Korg have gone from just selling instruments to saying and delivering on the position "we care about music education." The results are there for all to see.

Or you could carry on spending large amounts of money interrupting people with messages that are out of context, that do not engage in media which is proven to be increasingly inefficient.

Read More »

Brian Jacobs originally wrote a whitepaper for SMLXL on metrics and I am glad to say we are still discussing and working on this thorny topic.

You can read the first part here

and in conversations I have been having with some companies recently, metrics just keep coming up to bite you in the proverbial.

In an article in the Harvard Business Review June 2005, Kevin Clancy and Randy Stone get stuck into metrics.

They say:

... a recent CMO Council survey of senior marketing executives found that more than 80% were dissatisfied with their ability to measure marketing ROI, and fewer than 20% of the respondents said their companies employed meaningful metrics. Just as marketing measurement becomes more exact and accessible, marketing executives are becoming less and less happy. This doesn't make sense unless something else is going on.

Here's the real reason marketers are so gloomy: The effectivness of marketing is disappointing and getting worse.

The authors also outline the uphill struggle that comapnies face...

Marketing Management Analytics found that in the short term, consumer packaged goods advertising returns only 54 cents in every dollar invested.

A recent ACNielsen BASES and Ernst & Young study put the failure rate of new US consumer products at 95%.

A 2004 Deutsche Bank study of packaged goods brands found that just 18% of television advertising campaigns generated ROI in the short term.

Dominique Hanssen of UCLA Anderson school of Management, beleives that doubling advertising expenditures for established products increases sales just 1% to 2%.

That's hardly cause for celebration is it. And a good friend of mine a veteran of the advertising industry believes 95% of the films he sees at Cannes every year are very poor. Having been to that particular event a few times yself I would agree.

Summing up the authors say

Marketers aren't unhappy because they can't measure marketing performance. They're unhappy because they now can - and they don't like what they see. They need to go beyond metrics and take a hard look at why the numbers are so bad: Their marketing strategies are often flawed and their spending is inefficient, with increasing precision, they're measuring the impact of ill-defined targetting, weak positioning, mediocre advertising, pedestrian products and services, give away promotions and poorly allocated spending.

A great deal of marketing is still living in a linear world, which was fine when we also lived in a linear world. But today that is no longer true.

we live in a world of PVR's. TiVo - we become self schedulers, we live in a world of wikipedia and citizen jounalists, we live in a world of the mobile device, and we live in a world of peer-to-peer sharing. We live in a world