While I wouldn’t call U2 an “old” band, one would argue their fan demographics skew slightly older. Getting a concert on a social channel could help spread the world to younger (< 18) fans in this day and age.
U2 is a smart band. If you look at the stream (screen shot above) there are calls to action everywhere. Whether it’s monetary (buy album now), opting in for future news/transactions (joining newsletter) or spreading word of mouth (sharing on Facebook, Twitter) anything someone clicks on adds value to the broadcast and U2 in some way.
This could really be the future of broadcasting where everyone globally interacts at the same time. We already see it during soccer matches if you follow them on Twitter. But what if it were aggregated to one channel (ie YouTube) for everyone in the world? It really changes your perception of television, media and broadcasting.
Less of an observation but just a thought: how much bandwidth do they have?!?!?!
What did you think of the live concert? Just another live stream or revolutionary? Glimpse of the future or gimmick? Comment below!
[this post originally appeared as part of a group blog on Digiramblings]
I wanted to build a little on my earlier post, 5 things conference speakers can do to make their sessions better, and talk about vendors who have little exhibition stalls at the conferences in hopes of generating leads, awareness or whatever the business goal is.
1) Have a demo
I meet vendors who’re able to explain to me what they do in abstract terms, but I really want to have a feel of doing it myself without the pitching and fluff. Provide it.
2) Provide case studies
It’s nice to hear “25,000 companies are using our platform”, but when I ask “like who?” and you can’t name a brand? It sounds a little suspicious. Showcase some successes or experiments and give me a feel of how it works.
3) Give me something to take away
Sometimes it isn’t a tangible product, sometimes it’s a service. Lewis PR had this tongue-in-cheek collateral on how to comment on a blog and it was just something fun to take away.
4) Give me a trial
Knowing about your product/service in theory doesn’t do much. We all know how the marketing funnel works, get me down to the trial stage and maybe it’ll help push me towards a purchase decision if the product speaks for itself.
5) Be genuine
Too often I get vendors who squint at my nametag and try to determine if it’s worth their time to talk to me or not. I’ve mentioned this before in going for the sale vs going for the customer. Be genuine and the rest works itself out.
Those are my thoughts, what would you suggest vendors do to make their exhibitions more accessible?
Disclaimer: Any brands and products mentioned are my own personal interactions with them and do not represent endorsements by either myself or my employer, I’m simply using them for illustrative purposes.
The Singapore Writers Festival is back and the big news was that they were bringing in Neil Gaiman. After continually hearing about it and repeatedly checking their website, there was no mention of Neil until one day it was all over the social media channels that tickets had run out and were only announced on Twitter (to an audience of 170+) as opposed to their Facebook group (700+) or even their mailing list.
Understandably, this led to confusion, disappointment and outrage all over the Facebook group, Facebook event page and Twitter:
I believe the organisers made one of the biggest mistakes there is to be made in social media: focusing on the tools, platforms and technology. They probably were aware that “Facebook” and “Twitter” were the latest buzzwords in town and decided to use them exclusively instead of their website or even email communications.
And even then, I’d be hard pressed to say they used them well. There’s little to no response to the upset people above on the channels and to put it plainly, it seems like the organisers intend to ignore them.
At the end of the day, we have to realise social channels is to be used in conjunction with existing channels, not instead of. If and when they are brought into the marketing or communications plan, there should be a solid strategy or goal behind it, not just using the tools for the sake of it.
Perhaps the Singapore Writers Festival organisers should have taken a page out of the British Council’s book since they organised it brilliantly when Neil was last down a few years ago.
For a completely different case study, check out Jonathan Wong’s post on Anime Festival Asia
I just finished attending a two day conference, the Singaporean leg of the international Social Media World Forum and instead of giving a run down of the two days, here are my thoughts on what differentiates a great conference speaker from a mediocre one (and let’s face it, we all appreciate the great ones):
1) Add context
Sony Pictures showed a short clip of Sophie’s Diary which really helped solidify the concept of the programme way better than just talking about it could. We’re in a fast-paced industry where things change all the time and while your material may be familiar to you because you work with it everyday, it doesn’t necessarily mean everyone in the room has the same level of familiarity (and you shouldn’t assume that they do),so it really helps to bring things to a ground level before examining it. (tweet from John Kerr)
2) Be relevant and current
Dell Hell? Comcast technician asleep on the couch? Old news, let’s move on. Either do the homework necessary to keep current at such events, or don’t speak. (tweet from Dorothy Poon)
3) Share your own examples
Don’t be afraid to share. Intercontinental Hong Kong shared their small success of using a Facebook Fan Page for a chef with only a hundred fans to reach out to customers and directly bring in revenue. Is it a bad or small example because they only had just over a hundred fans? Certainly not. Also, when you talk about what other people are doing and not what you’re doing, it doesn’t make you sound very credible. (tweet from Claudia Lim)
4) Be specific
I know no one has all the answers for certain subjects like social media measurement measurement, but I think speaking with general vagueness like “there’s no one size fits all solution” doesn’t help anyone. Suggest one or two metrics if there isn’t the whole package (tweet from Bernard Leong)
Experiential marketing – “the art of creating an experience where the result is an emotional connection to a person, brand, product or idea” — Wikipedia
So awhile ago my girlfriend was interning at an agency doing “experiential marketing”. Through frequent updates on how work’s going it seemed to me that creating this “experience” through which to market a product to a consumer, largely manifested itself in the way of holding costly, one-off events with some snazzy technology or maybe some alcohol.
During one particular talk I asked: When was the last time such an “event” really created a connection and motivated either of us to check out or purchase the product? We both drew a blank.
Then three nights ago a few of my friends were at my place having a drink and out of nowhere, one of them asked “remember that time we almost drank 8 litres of beer?”
Erdinger
Short story: In 2007 two of my friends won a contest with Erdinger Beer and four of us got invited to dinner with free flow of said beer.
While talking three nights ago, what did we remember?
How much we drank
The brand manager who kept coming by to talk to us, making sure we felt great the whole night (and that our glasses were filled all the time)
The alternative (read: proper) way to clink glasses together after a toast (which is a ritual we now share)
Other embarrassing things I shall not reveal in public
After that night in 2007, what happened?
When Erdinger was available, more often than not it was purchased
One of my friends tells everyone he knows how that beer is his favourite (I’ve witnessed this countless times)
It’s now 2009, two years later. Clearly the experience has stuck.
So my question is: Will your projector/laser/holographic screen do the same? Would your branded liquor party be any distinguishable from the ten other parties the partygoers got sloshed at? Or will these “experiences” merely be over-expensive events that are one time only?
As Joseph Jaffe says: Marketing is a committment, not a campaign. Let’s try to remember that.
Late upload (all my fault) but here is the 6th episode of The GennY Podcast once again with Dorothy and myself talking about things that that happened at Ad:Tech 2009, and our observations.
The show notes:
00:00 – Starting off “live” from Ad:Tech
00:24 – A slight comparison of Ad:Tech 2008 and Ad:Tech 2009 and trends we’ve noticed
00:51 – First trend: The audience still seems to be semi to largely clueless!
01:51 – Is there a trend of inertia of companies not wanting to get their feet wet?
02:52 – Second trend: The idea of strategy vs tools. Shouldn’t this be common sense?
03:20 – There really needs to be a bigger strategy than “collecting followers”
03:32 – Should marketing move up from the tactical level to the strategic level?
04:52 – There should be a budget shift from expensive TVCs that no one is watching, especially when numerous presentations show data that TV isn’t as powerful as it used to be
05:45 – If your digital initiatives aren’t working for you, prove that your traditional media initiatives are
06:36 – Maybe the truth hurts? The blind faith of buying an ad makes you feel better?
07:22 – So how do you deal with intangibles? Maybe you can’t have it both ways?
07:49 – Maybe online interactions have a different angle. Maybe it’s not about sales. Maybe it can be used for feedback?
08:12 – Are advertisers just conning themselves? What does 4.5 million eyeballs even mean?
09:00 – Dorothy sighs in utter exasperation. You’re doing this to her advertisers! You!
09:08 – Maybe we’re just in a stage where we don’t know what the different numbers mean
10:50 – How is employing one person to take care of your social media presence a more expensive investment than producing and buying a TV ad?
11:08 – In the future, advertising should be come “invisible” and woven in
11:52 – There seems to be a universal Generation Y culture
13:27 – Maybe they just want to reach more people, but as Seth Godin says, the world has shifted from the “how many” to the “who”
14:32 – Hopefully we’ll have the rest of the crew back soon and we’re trying to make this regular!
Ogilvy’s Digital Influence team held another Open Room, titled “Journalism’s from Mars, Social Media’s from Venus” and after tonight, I think it’s clear that the problem they have is the problem everyone (businesses, schools, non-profits, the music industry, etc) is having. They were sitting on a model that was working for the last 50 or so years, have been blind-sided by the sudden tidal wave of social media and not only are they not scrambling to catch up, but they’re actually holding on to the old world for all that it’s worth.
As with panels, I was fully prepared for some of the audience to be un-accepting of some young (and even worse, enemployed) punk telling them what the world is like. And it was no different this time, which is fine with me, it makes life exciting! How awfully boring would it be if everyone just nodded their heads and agreed.
I think it was a really interesting discussion. There was as much uncommon ground as there was common, and it’s painfully obvious both sides have to learn from each other. Monetisation is not a dirty word, but neither is trusting a fellow blogger. I think we have to move away from our normal worldviews that content creating is done for passion (for bloggers) or that the man on the street (or the Tweeter on Tweetdeck) is less reliable and/or credible than the journalist.
Thinking about “journalism” from the point of breaking news and real good opinion pieces is one thing. But I think we need to think about where the money comes from. Thinking about subscription models and what not is fine (even though they won’t work), but as Thomas Crampton brought up, mainstream media has enjoyed the monopoly on reaching people and advertising for a very long time, and companies are just beginning to realise that they can bypass the “middleman” entirely, thus crippling the revenue model. Will it provide them the reach? Probably not. Will it provide them the influence? Barack Obama’s YouTube channel suggests yes (yes yes I know it worked in tandem with traditional media).
As a closing comment: someone said that old habits die hard, referring to the staying power of traditional media and being used to opening that Sunday edition of the paper over a slow and leisurely breakfast. Here’s a thought: my “old” habits from the old world started changing by the time I was thirteen, and many were gone by the time I was seventeen. Radio, once a nightly listen for the dedication show, is an afterthought, so are magazines. TV serves my purposes when I want it to, newspapers have flown out of the window, music exists in the form of mp3s, not cds. The only “old world” habit I maintain is the reading of books.
My point is this: as much as old habits die hard, to the new generation, new habits form at an alarming speed that the world has never seen before. When, if ever, has a generation been influenced so quickly and successively like from the transition to Friendster to Facebook? That’s not just the speed of platform change, but the speed of diffusion from half a world away. When and how fast did we take up texting to replace calling? The speed of change is crazy. Geographical boundaries barely exist anymore. And I would ask people who believe in the “old habits” to take a look at their children, their nephews, their nieces or anyone under 20 and tell me how many of their “old habits” they see replicated in them, and ask how different the world will be in five or ten years, and if now’s the time to think about that change, or cling on to “old habits”.
I can’t speak for the people who are really into the tech sphere, but for consumers like me, I’m beginning to feel more and more like a laptop is a laptop is a laptop. Sure some will be marginally faster, some will have larger hard disk space, some will have a better webcam, but generally speaking, they’re pretty identical within certain ranges.
So what helps differentiate a laptop these days? I feel like it really comes down to physical differences, given that the inner workings are more or less identical. As a result, key aspects like weight and other dimensions as well as performance measures like battery life become increasingly more important.
It seems Acer knows this with the new Acer Inspire Timeline which is less than one inch thick, weighs 1.6kg for the 13” model, and boasts a battery life of up to eight hours. Also, they managed to fit in a dvd drive despite the size and weight, which is no easy feat!
One of the things that really made this laptop stand out for me was the Thermal Comfort technology, which uses a Laminar Wall Jet Technology, which is an advanced cooling technology used in modern jet engines. I have to admit I was reasonably sceptical that this would really work, but at the event, even after being switched on and played with for a couple of hours, the bottom of the laptop (where heat usually builds up) was almost as cool as a normal laptop is while switched off. Pretty darn cool.
What do you think are important attributes of laptops these days? What would you tell laptop manufacturers if they were looking for one key takeaway on how to improve their laptops?
Happening in September, the Social Networking World Forum comes to Asia, and as conferences go, I’m pretty excited for this one as they are great speakers like Ian Stewart, Benjamin Grubbs and Paras Sharma, all of whom I have heard speak firsthand, and I’m sure they will deliver outstanding sessions at the conference.
I’m also really excited on a personal note to be one of the media partners of the conference, and I think it says a lot that a worldwide event like this is beginning to recognise blogs as “media”, and going through the effort to partner up with them.
So what I really want to do with this blog post is highlight a few things:
This is a quick overview of Day One of Youth Connect! which I had the privilege of attending and being a panelist at today, and I had a really good time.
For the first time in a long time, I could listen to people who actually knew their stuff go up there and tell us about their social media efforts, demonstrate some form of ROI, and hold up under scrutiny. I admit I was all ready to roll my eyes in cynicism when a speaker went up and said he was well-versed in digital marketing with an advertising agency, but then he actually knew what he was talking about. Very different from some speakers who just talk a lot, but don’t really say anything.
So my highlight was really speaking at the youth panel with four other people from the other universities, and I have to give Graham Perkins (@grayperks)props for really revving up the crowd even though it was the last session of the day. It was by far the most interactive session I’ve had the chance to speak at, and I think the smaller size of the conference helped people get used to one another and ask questions.
One thing that I “feel” intuitively at this conference, is that people understand more about social media than they did a year ago. The types of questions I had to answer a year ago and the types of questions I had to answer today, were quite different, and basic knowledge of what Facebook is, what Twitter is, what iPhones can do, can be pretty much be assumed, which makes a lot of difference when you’re trying to answer questions without leaving anyone behind.
As always, my favourite topic of newspapers came up again (which I will blog about soon), and I did have to answer one question about the effectiveness of advertising, and whether youth actually notice them. The room gave a slightly audible gasp when I told them Gen Y is pretty much trained to “ignore” interruptive marketing and advertising, but I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that.
When one other attendee asked if anyone of the five of us saw a physical ad (print, tv, outdoor) and went online to do research on that product or service based on the ad, the answer was a resounding no. So there you have it.
Lots of other stuff I want to talk about, a few great case studies that I really enjoyed listening to, I hope to blog them soon. It’s going to be Youth Connect! Week on the blog this week, but I think you’ll enjoy reading about it.
I will say this about the organisers: It’s not a big event, but I think they brought in great speakers. Companies who paid money to attend this (especially in this recession), should be very satisfied with the value they got out of it.
