Archive for the ‘Experience Management’ Category
September 7, 2009
As local newspaper publishers play a dangerous game of brinkmanship to see who blinks first and introduces a premium-paid news service, there are some elegant parallels to the music industry and the plethora of streaming music services emerging both here in Australia and overseas.
All news groups have long toyed with the idea of charging for content, but it never became a priority (or even a necessity) until advertising forecasts in the last 12 months fell under the knife for some major reconstructive surgery. Advertising cycles are inevitable – peaks and troughs – but few have matched the severity of the most recent example. In Australia, like most industrial markets, what has spooked the majors, like News Limited, Fairfax Media and others, is the rapid decline in the value of online display advertising. Very few properties have held a premium.
In the specific case of News Corp, the company’s about-face on the pay-per-view model almost certainly started with the acquisition of the Wall Street Journal. The Journal’s general success in charging for content is seen as a proof-point, providing the content leviathan with some Dutch courage to publicly castigate Google and its “parasitic ways”.
In music land, the latest music whiz kid, Spotify, with its elegant user interface and unfaltering streaming technology, makes the simple point to customers: mediocrity is free (160Kbps), while quality (320 Kbps) will cost. This is exactly the point being made right across the media landscape. Yet, while quality is one unique selling proposition (USP), the other is exclusiveness, and this is far more challenging as a USP.
The sheer enormity of interest developing around Spotify, and as a consequence several other ‘alternative’ offerings (depending on jurisdiction), including Grooveshark, Pandora, Slacker, Last.fm, and locally, Bandit.fm, Guvera and the recently collapsed Stripe service, gives the impression that music streaming is an inevitable successor to downloads and CD sales, or at the very least, of becoming the pre-eminent channel for music consumption.
Apply a reality check to that assumption, and streaming as a mass-market channel for music consumption is about a practical as flying cars. Technically possible, and a few early adopters won’t necessarily throw up much evidence of a poor experience, but as penetration grows, and more than a few try the option, the experience of a subscription-based music stream will increasingly fail any cost-benefit analysis.
Putting aside for the moment the vagaries of mobile network coverage, with congestion and reception issues likely to affect a mobile-based streaming service, this leaves broadband as the alternative mass-market channel.
The issue here is that the bulk of computer time for the majority of people ticks over in the workplace. This is neither conducive to listener attention (for the purpose of valuing ad spots) or company bandwidth. As the number of listeners rises, even by small increments, the vast bulk of workplaces will block access to all music streaming sites. Alternatively, streaming at home might be a pleasurable and entertaining option for some, but these audience numbers, let alone subscribers, will be relatively small.
This quantum shift from the current per-per-unit model, where albums and singles carry a unit price, to a ‘music as water’ argument, where content is treated like a utility, is going to depend on a zero-sum game between advertising and subscriptions. If advertisers don’t follow, then expect subscription prices to compensate. But if advertising does propagate the stream, and dissect every third or forth track, how much is enough?
The research is conclusive – both here and more recently in the UK. For the vast majority, streaming is only one option, and a free one at that. In fact, for younger listeners, streams are increasingly just another source of downloads. As with YouTube clips, particularly the remixes unavailable elsewhere, the proliferation of stream ripping conversion tools that convert material into MP3s, will simply make streams another source of material rather than an end in themselves.
So here’s a prediction: paid subscriptions for online news won’t pay the bills, and neither will music streaming.
August 12, 2009
In the context of marketing and sales, the concept of ‘engagement’ carries increasing gravitas, and yet is still difficult to conceptualise through a single definition. Quantifying the blighter is harder still. The fascination with engagement stems from its potential to make-up for any shortfall in customer contact a brand may have in the areas of reach and frequency. What a brand fails to achieve in market share or regularity of contact (or feedback), the brand might compensate through share-of-mind. In the case of mobile phones, market share (unit sales) is dominated by the likes of Nokia and Samsung, with Blackberry and iPhone well behind. The put the quantity of sales into perspective, Samsung Australia sells approximately 3m units a year (second only to Nokia), compared with the 400,000 iPhones currently in operation in Australia (just under 4% of the market). Yet, in terms of digital chatter, comprising opinion, advice, questions and general consumer feedback, there is a massive discrepancy between brands, this time favouring Apple and Blackberry handsets. In short, what these brands lack in market share, they more than compensate for in terms of communities openly engaging in a dialogue, sometimes quiet passionately, about a mass-produced consumer item. The Sentiment Index graph below illustrates the scale of digital chatter between brands, with the iPhone alone having a 10-to-1 advantage against most competiting brands. By quantifying engagement in this manner, does this incentivise brand managers to do the cost-benefit of investing in an engagement strategy ahead of traditional reach and frequency filters? 
Source: Victrix Media
May 4, 2009
Ok, so Victrix is a little late jumping onto the Twitter bandwagon, but given the hysteria surrounding Swine Flu - with little justification as to why the WHO went to DefCon 5 - maybe a little ‘late to market’ isn’t such a bad policy after all?
This is a case study of how Twitter Intelligence (TI) can sometimes having a profound impact on our (the brand’s) understanding of the consumer’s perspective as well as the questions and concerns which are typically raised in a word-of-mouth scenario.
And this is a major point: I’m not aware of anyone yet describing Twitter technology as a method to measure and monitor word-of-mouth, especially in metric terms such as ‘rate of diffusion’, ‘positive/negative’ sentiment, brand and competitor awareness.
In this example, we have comments, opinions and chats associated with one of Samsung’s most recent mobile phone releases, the Omnia touchscreen. Using PeerIn’s Sentiment Metrics platform we have tracked and quantified these references online - across typical websites, but more interestingly across social media and user-generated content. Included in this catch-all is Twitter communications.
This analysis captures references to “Samsung” and “Omnia” and identifies more than more 20,000 items across blogs (including micro-blogging), forums, websites and news services. In percentage terms, the split is 51%, 26%, 15% and 8% respectively. Micro-blogging, or Twitter, accounts for just over 1% of all comments, which is relatively high for a product-related ‘event’.
However, what it lacks in scale, the Twitter channel more than makes up for in sheer chutzpah. In others words, when you’re limited to 140 characters, your opinions, questions and answers are going to be couched in a very concise, direct and forthright manner. There’s simply no room or patience to waffle, procrastinate or pontificate. Though there’s plenty of opportunity to market, or dare I say it, spam.
In the context of understanding a mindset, the Samsung-related Twitters are pure gold.
“Phones I have my eye on Samsung Omnia and HTC Touch Pro2″
“got lots of games and most importantly a GPS for my Samsung Omnia that is free…holla!!”
“Does anyone want to swap a Samsung Omnia for an iphone?? It would make my day and I would actually think you are crazier than me”
“I returned the samsung omnia and got an htc touch pro…spent all day yesterday unlocking and flashing it…sweet as betch now”
“Goddamn Samsung Omnia. You’ve broken my heart and I’m thinking about leaving you for a Blackberry Curve. It’s not me, its you.”
“Nokia N97 comes with disappointing hardware. Samsung Omnia HD looks better and better every day.”
In these few examples, you have cases of competitor positioning (and awareness) as well as consumer insights into hardware and software configurations.
There are many other examples, but one thing Victrix has learnt very quickly about Twitter: don’t take everything on face value. While no doubt a flexible, responsive and convenient communications channel, Twitter is also increasingly susceptible to astro-turfing techniques, where product placements clumsily infiltrate innocuous Twitter comments. Case in point:
“What a beautiful sunset. I’m sitting by a blue lake and listening to Michael Buble from my Samsung Omnia.”
And you thought the close-up of the Ford badge in Casino Royale was gratuitous!
August 31, 2008
Curiously, the innovation investments made in the spaces of search and social media seem to be paralleling one another. Both areas are increasingly recognising need to emphasis quality over scale.
In other words, both platforms have matured in recent years to a point where their diffusion and ubiquity has reached a scale where their value, in terms of search results and the quality of personal networks, is arguably diminishing.
In other words, a tipping point has been reached where diminshing returns are setting in. A response to this system failure (in relative terms), is an increasing range of innovations to do with vertical search systems (or databases) and subject or audience-specific social networks have emerged. Interestingly, the one subject area which is straddling both is health - witness the beta of Google Health and Health 2.0 social networks like Patients Like Me and Organised Wisdom.
In the case of social networks, current set-ups simply do not offer the prerequisite integrity to give members confidence in crowd ‘wisdom’. Every network has ‘influencers’, but in a large scale operation like Facebook or MySpace, their influence diminishes over time for two key reasons: fewer people have confidence in their opinion (diminshing credibility), and they are seen to be less likely to resemble the average member as the network grows.
Further, as the number of nodes in the network increases, the search to confirm an individual’s expertise in a particular subject area becomes more laborious, presenting a real barrier to the ongoing efficiency of the network as a conduit for reliable information. Enter the emergence of specialist social networks.
In the case of health, the trend is being spearheaded by primarily by patients, or at the very least, individuals affected by a particular illness, either directly or via friends and family. This commonality of experience, told through stories, opinion and advice, represents a powerful influence on individuals who feel isolated through a lack of support, or overwhelmed by a plethora of professional advice.
To breach the gap comes social media technologies and platforms operating within a far more specialist environment. As the following graph illustrates, the sources most preferred by people seeking answers on matters of health include the Internet and doctors, followed at a distance by relatives/friends/co-workers.
In this research (iCrossing, January 2008), the Internet was most nominated because it had the ability to put people in contact with individuals and/or their personal stories telling of their own experiences. It is this desire for first-hand knowledge which so completely overwhelms every other potential source of news, and for that matter, comfort.
The Health 2.0 phenomenon represents social media’s ‘higher calling’, far removed from the banalities of current systems.
August 13, 2008
There is something very elegant about seeing the juxtaposition of a bad news story and a product promotion unintentionally triggered by key words in the story; the assumption being that every story carrying the key words will always have positive connotations, reflecting well on the promotion.
Enter the amazing, world changing iPhone. Zealots would have you believe the handset has, well…cred worthy of zealots. Others are more pragmatic in their attitude and consider the handset (no, its not a portal to the universe or a window to the soul) to be overpriced and now oversold on connectivity speed.
Well, that’s not the real story. The more interesting angle is how the market assumes iPhone will always be in the ‘good books’ with nothin to fear in a reputational sense, unlike Microsoft and its Vista/Yahoo debacles.
With that sort of assumption gaining ground, compounded by the cred of having something innovative to package around the iPhone, i.e. being first to market with an iPhone application, the scene is set for some diabolical encounters between product reviews and promotions, aided by another much hyped technology - ad targeting.
Cutting to the chase. Exhibit 1. is a story in the SMH about the issue of iPhone technology being incompatiable with 3G networks, both in Australia and worldwide. Telcos are putting the blame squarely in Apple’s court, and Apple in response, is deadly quiet. As an aside, if Apple doesn’t deal with this issue head-on, the likes of Nokia will eat their lunch when the next generation of handsets are released.
Exhibit 2. Thanks to the magic of word-association (without any consideration of the context in which these words are used) CommSec ads are splashed across the entire story - banners, boxes, the works. Ironically, this is when display advertising gets noticed really well.
CommSec seem to be very chaffed about their new iPhone trading application, and they wear the badge of ‘innovators’ all over their sleeves. Trouble is, the accompanying story goes to great length to point out the service outages currently being experienced by iPhone users; not the sort of thing you want to happen when you’re trading the last of your superannuation on a Chinese-hedged managed fund!
One question: shouldn’t the publisher or agency alert the advertiser of the issue, or even better, be proactive enough and pull the campaign’s word-association parameters when there’s a whiff of bad press? Just a suggestion.
July 24, 2008
Putting aside practical issues such as fact checking and the legal necessities required to avoid contempt of court, the winds of change within the professional media circuit clearly flag that publishers and other outlets can no longer afford to sustain products which are produced exclusively by professional journalists, writers and film crews.
Instead, the mix is increasingly being diluted by social or community contributions. These ‘contributions’ are, more often than not, appearing as direct content pieces, but emerging is another type of contribution - that of personal data, including editorial preferences.
In effect, the media’s expertise in news gathering and analysis is now being de-constructed to follow several agendas at once, each serving key customer segments, rather than the one agenda which has previously been set by the outlet’s editorial team.
A very recent example of this trend is the association now developing between the New York Times and LinkedIn. Aggregated data on occupations, geographic spread and other details are being used by the paper to make its editorial coverage more relevant to readers, or in this case, members of LinkedIn.
There is nothing unusual in media outlets market researching their audience to determine profiles and story preferences, but linking part of its editorial coverage to a dynamic membership base like LinkedIn, where profile characteristics are changing every day, if not every hour, is a new proposition in audience engagement. And this time, the information is incredibly granular, as opposed to the handful of traditional psychographic segments so loved by market researchers.
A sudden surge in membership from a certain industry vertical, for example, (the above image highlights energy professionals) would flag a requirement to re-evaluate existing reporting around energy issues, and perhaps force the paper to re-focus its efforts in this area. Hypothetically, several such insights or changes could emerge during the day, placing considerable pressure on resource allocation to capitalise on new members and secure their loyalty by demonstrating an immediate insight into issues relevant to their profile through editorial coverage.
In dealing with an influx of new readers who are engaged in energy production, for example, the paper could produce a special feature on carbon trading systems around the world, canvassing a range of professional opinions (including some from LinkedIn members!).
In broader terms, this dynamic transfer of audience details (in aggregated form) provides the media outlet with two positive outcomes. Firstly, it secures a more engaged audience, improving retention and acquisition metrics. Secondly, advertisers now have fantastically improved methods of validating audiences, which in turn creates greater value for sponsors and brands.
But before any of this can happen, media of all persuasions must recognise that data strategies, particularly those around audience profiling, including the identification of behavioural characteristics and preferences, are needed to not only negate the risks and general loss of control associated with UGC, but to go some way towards repairing an arguably broken revenue model.
July 6, 2008
Digital advertising is a peculiarly asymmetrical place. When the effectiveness of one piece in the strategy begins to wain, another piece is devised or conceptualised. The coincidence of a decline in the online display market currently (or at least its confirmed slow-down) with the emergence of social media (and associated applications), as a panecea for this increasing budgetry void, should not be lost on anyone.
Yet in the haste to create a new poster child (mobile is next), a healthy dose of scepticism has gone MIA. This is not to say social media technologies are a convenient but ineffectual fade - far from it. This maturing of the Internet to include peer networking, open sourcing and meta-data architecture is clearly the genesis of a transformation in communications which will impact every facet of human endeavour in the long-term.
Like Grandpa Jo said about Wonka Vision: “It will change the world.”
Yet, what has been the overwhelming response of the commercial world to this obvious inflection point in world history? In short, to give itself a choice between either a CPM or CPC deal! Is this as good as it gets?
As previously discussed on these pages, the context of most social media platforms experiencing high levels of activity and recency is one of High Context, where networks of individuals discuss, debate and share information of a personal and private nature. There is simply no room for advertising and its ROI considerations, no matter how sophisticated the targeting.
This is not to say there is no allowance for commercial entities to engage a market via social media architecture. In fact, if done with consideration of its High Context pedigree, a commercial social media channel can have some extraordinarily positive implications for the brand.
Faced with an option to design and build a customer-centric social network, or at the very least, pay good money to participate in a more broadly designed social paltform (like Facebook), the organisation must recognise the very investment in technology which empowers customers to ‘collaborate’ is already an implicit act of brand reinforcement.
In other words, the organisation is now in the game but should play in the backroom, mindful that being subtle in a High Context environment will be always be recognised by participants; there is simply no need to force the issue.
The challenge, however, is to avoid building short-term ROI templates around these social media investments, where next quarter’s sales figures have a higher priority than longer-term customer retention issues. If this can’t be avoided, then the advice is simple: avoid social media altogether as a marketing mechanism.
If, however, the organisation is prepared to commit to social media architecture as part of a broader CRM and Customer Experience Management (CEM) strategy, then consider the following points as a guide to building the required dynamic:
- Can the platform be designed around the particular needs of customers as opposed to a list of wants?
- Recognise that a customer base fragmented by geography, socio-demographics, technology and even psychology will enrich the platform, and hence provide greater value back to customers. Fragmentation/segmentation like this is a strength;
- Always provide the option of anonymity without penalising the user through a lesser experience. The architecture’s priority is to encourage collaboration between customers, not to probe into a customer’s identity;
- Insist on transparency with regards to issues and opinions expressed by constituents. The more diversity of opinion, the higher the incidence of collaboration;
- Encourage storytelling around experiences before encouraging customers to open their wallets;
- Be prepared to intervene in issues by way of professional advice; never let matters go unresolved.
If these points suggest the organisation is expected to make a commitment to understand a customer’s lifestyle and their own networks, then that is indeed the right conclusion. If, however, the resident CMO is scared of the ‘C’ word, then for the sake of not wasting everyone’s time, the CMO should also drop “social media” from their lexicon as well.
July 1, 2008
The virtue of simplex thinking is to explain or interpret complex and disparate data through the use of simple, elegant metaphors and models. Hence the development of the Engagement Scale, or En-Scale for short.
The purpose is to define and compare web sites and services using a single number which reflects the site engagement of a typical user. The scale is based on a simple algorithm which weights session times, frequency as well as pages per session. The source for this analysis is Nielsen’s Netview data, which has been denegrated in the past for its lack of representativeness.
The En-Scale doesn’t rely on audience figures, instead it focuses on site engagement metrics recorded by the sample. In effect, En-Scale recognises the panelists as a type of useability group, though in the case of NetView the sample is significantly larger than any other comparable resource.
Further, the sample is genuinely ‘objective’ in terms of how they navigate and engage with the site. That is, the panelists are not conscious of themselves as research ’subjects’ and adjusting their behaviour accordingly.
This is the first time (to VM’s knowledge) that Australian digital publishers have been compared to each other based on a an objective performance ratio. In the case of En-Scale, the higher the number, the higher the engagement or visitor association.
As the above example illustrates, over a 12-month period (from May 07 to May 08) some publishers have improved their position, including Fairfax, Google and YouTube, while others have experienced a signficant decline in their En-Scale, most notiably Yahoo!7, eBay and Fox Interactive. It’s clear from the above data cut that applications (search, IM, bidding engines etc.) have an immediate impact on a site’s En-Scale.
For this reason, it is preferable to compare scores within a particular subject vertical, like news and information, than it is to compare a set of very disparate sites.
Moving forward, En-Scale will be deployed each month, enabling a month-by-month account of changing scores, following a remit to better understand the relationship between the changes in a site’s En-Scale and its audience share. For example, could En-Scale act as an early warning mechanism of comparable changes in audience numbers? VM will explore the issue further.
En-Scale should also be applied to specific demographics as well. Case in point: eBay.
The online auction site has an En-Scale of 10.98 (May 08) which is very high. However, breaking that down into age segments reveals that for the 12 to 7 age group the En-Scale is 3.6, while for people older than 35, the score is 14.1 which is close to a market high.
For the record, the site with the highest En-Score in May 08 was Facebook on 14.7, followed by Electronic Arts on 12.3 and Stardoll on 11.18. eBay was fourth on 10.98.
June 30, 2008
This is why mobile marketing is going to struggle to generate a return, much less goodwill amongst consumers…
This rubbish was served up in the form of a banner ad running on the Techcrunch blog. High marks for audience targeting but the promotion and execution was straight out of the Dodgy Bros. operating manual.
With the incentive of a $500 gift card, the promotion is simply designed to capture mobile phone numbers. It’s not certain if Woolworths itself is behind the promotion, but the brand is prominent enough to give the impression that the company’s marketing department has had some involvement in the sign-off.
Now the rub. Read the following text which appears on-screen after the individual submits their mobile number:
If you enter the received pin you will join the Wixawin subscription service. Stop service? Text ’stop’ to 19993500 | Subscription: 8 msg per month, $2.50/msg each way and $2.50 joining fee. Competition ends 31-12-’08 | Age: 14+ only - ask bill payer’s permission.
In short, for the privilege of entering the competition and submitting your personal details, you’re slugged with a $2.50 joining fee and $20 worth of spam each month! And if you respond to each of those messages, that’s another $20 in fees. Further, to ensure the gift voucher pays for itself 100 times over, the competition runs until the end of year.
That means if you fail to copy down the number to stop this abuse, you’re in for $120 worth of mobile spam when the year’s up, or $240 if you respond to each spam with an abusive text message of your own.
In many ways the mobile industry has no-one but itself to blame for its poor development as a legitimate and valued marketing service. Examples like this put real, constructive mobile CRM initiatives back another 12 months or more.
June 25, 2008
What is the news if its not a barometer of the day’s zeitgeist? But do online news service bother to understand the emotions or feelings of readers and report that back as a measure of community happiness, dissatisfaction, alienation or anger? No.
In fact how do most news portals demonstrate the priorities and preference of readers? By weighting the top stories by clicks or views. Unfortunately, this type of content optimisation is a rather superficial representation of actual engagement with the news of the day, failing to adequately respond, for example, to the emotion of one story amongst a small but passionate audience sub-set.
While the best news organisations maintain a degree of objectivity, wedded to the notion of ‘just the facts’, giving all competing sides an opportunity to vent an opinion in the context of those facts, there is a very real opportunity for these organisations to tap into the associated emotion stirred up amongst readers.
In short, digital news groups need to keep playing it straight, but give audience feedback and commentary a much higher level of exposure, dare I say it visualisation. In other words, to go beyond the boring threads and give real insight into the audience’s passion, anger, delight and shock.
Above is a representation of ‘feelings’ which dominate Australian blogs this past year. The scraping and applet technology developed by the We Feel Fine group, is an example of what digital news groups should be doing to give their online channels real dynamism in the pursuit of mixing fact with audience response.
To date, audience feedback is a neglected resource, crying out for a data analysis and mining strategy that will contribute real value to online news services by way of audience recognition. This in turn will have a significant impact on frequency, retention, engagement, and for the first mover, a very positive brand impact.
Importantly for a news service, there is real value is developing a longitudinal position on these type of data sets, giving the organisation an ability to ‘map’ changing moods across economic, political or social events or cycles. In the following example, the top five most used emotional terms during 2007 (first box) are compared to similar terms for 2008 (second box).
These broad, sweeping aggregates of what online commentators are feeling have their place, but using the same technology to evaluate reponses on particular issues, events or even personalities over a 24-hour news cycle would have a measurable impact on an online news service and its ability to capture the essence of community sentiment.
The identification and utilisation of such crowd-psychology should a cornerstone of a modern news gathering organisation.
