Tuesday, December 7, 2010
The engaged viewer
In its five years of existence, with 3.5 years under the Google umbrella, YouTube videos are streamed 2 billion times every day and YouTube is ranked as the second largest search engine behind parent Google. According to Mintel, watching videos over a PC is the most popular way to view videos, with the majority of those under 45 years of age doing so - particularly watching TV shows. eMarketer notes that video leads in the creation of 'magnetic content' defined as content that consumers genuinely want to engage in and pass along to others. The upside for brands is that they only pay when someone actually views their ad or video on YouTube - so it is win-win for the media publisher, the audience and the brand.
So, as marketers, the need to establish a reciprocal value, served within the context of relevancy, extends beyond merely creating the video, but also in redefining the 'ads' served as well. Shifting from advertising to engagement, awareness to education, push to invite - will be key success factors a brand's ability to form and sustain a relationship with their audiences. Perhaps instead of focusing on creating a marketing plan, we need to shift to understanding what our brand's value plan is.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
New media in a constantly new world
Friday, November 5, 2010
Google Slam
The idea is eloquent in its simplicity. Upload your own video of how you use a Google product, and your idea will face off with another video to be voted on and ranked. Current champs include "The Logo Bandits" featuring Google's Change Background Theme, and "Rushmore by Slam Force One, featuring Google Goggles for mobile. This week's contenders are battling it out over Gmail Video Chat, and my pick for this week - Google Real Time Search, (which is different from next week's slam on Google Instant Search which can save 2-5 seconds per search), where two guys compose a song on the fly using real-time search results for "babe" - video below.
Friday, October 29, 2010
The Dad Demo
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Mom Stats and Segmentation
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Mom-it-Forward
Monday, October 25, 2010
Moms and Media
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
The Alpha Mom
From a marketing perspective this group's desire to self-define impacts channel planning. Word of mouth marketing certainly plays a role, but also just getting these mom's to try product and have it in their homes is key-- often Alpha Mom's do not have time to socialize product decisions - and they want to use what they see in other Alpha Mom households. For health decisions this may equate to more in-person word of mouth in addition to the Facebook's of the world.
Alpha Moms are choiceful in their product decisions, often looking for dual purpose products (e.g., hair + skin, baby + adults), and streamlining the number of products they use. This is especially true for repeat-moms or older moms, according to the Living La Vida Rapida survey by AOL and OMD. Increasingly, moms are boasting or posting about how they are streamlining or saving, as thrift is the new chic. Marketers are increasingly targeting this woman. Ninento pre-released their new Wii video game console to Tupperware-style mom parties, and timed the release of Wii Fit around Mother's Day. Kimberly Clark and P&G have created web sites and social media destinations focused on product innovation, coupons and offers.
As I was getting my haircut the other day, there was a heated conversation around childhood vaccinations next to me. Rather than being passive, I jumped right in and offered the "facts" that I knew to debunk the negative myths around immunizations. I know I influenced about 3-5 moms that day, and I felt satisfied by helping them in their decision making. So - I suppose I wear the Alpha Mom badge with honor then - so be it!
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Intelligence: Social Media Objectives
The Social Media Road Map, just out from Marketing Sherpa, shows how social media wisdom is a function of social media stage and "maturity". Brands that have been hazed through the initial trial and transition phases, are more likely in the seasoned strategic phase to map their measurement back to accurately defined objectives:
Social media can not be treated like a campaign. It is not an event-specific commodity. Social media, whether earned or owned, feeds off of reciprocal value between the company and their audience, not the advertiser and their customer. Starting with a "gut check" of what your social media objectives are and how you are going to go about them -- is worth the time investment both from an brand ROI, and an audience engagement perspective.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Nick Jonas and Diabetes
Tech Trends: Patient Compliance
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Constant Reinvention
To be a valued strategic partner, we need to not only embrace this change but stay ahead of, or at least keep up with this staggering change. This requires almost constant reinvention and continual evolution. To enable this agencies or consultancies must continue acquiring a unique collective skill set that makes thinking differently both possible and pervasive -- every day into the future, not just today at this moment in time. As the MasterCard commercial states, this is priceless.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Intelligence: Earned Media
As noted by Forrester below, earned media is different from owned media, which can include your brand or unbranded web site and partially owned entities such as Facebook and Sermo. This has intrinsic value in that you are facilitating a true dialogue by providing the tools to do so. This is also often called word of mouth marketing (WOMM)- but again, the concept of "marketing" is attached to this. Earned media is organic, also called word of mouth, absent the marketing part. Earned media is a results of brand behavior, but as Forrester notes - it stems from the old PR notion of enabling free media or buzz. With today's social media "constant context" however, this term has morphed to include true transparency, relevant value or even participatory value, and instant feedback. This holds true whether the earned media is positive or negative. The 411 is as follows:
So how can we apply this to pharma and wellness marketing? It involves a shift in embracing the potential negatives along with the hopeful positives. This then requires well thought out approaches, processes and not only monitoring, but being able to react in real-time. Heidi Youngkin from Johnson and Johnson stressed in her webinar on how J&J has tackled and actually deployed a fully integrated social media strategy (successfully), that it starts with corporate governance and a well laid out business plan, plus having a welcomed value proposition to your target audience to begin with. Well said, and carpe diem!
Behavioral Targeting Backlash?
Backlash or confusion? A recent eMarketer article cites the rise in consumer backlash toward behavioral targeting employed by advertisers. As marketers increasingly fight the tide of diminishing advertising reach and effectiveness, behavioral targeting continues to increase as a way to increase relevancy and engagement. This then fuels consumer backlash.
Some context:
Facebook privacy concerns or "buzz" continue grow - especially in light of the new concern over Facebook's new privacy policy and the "everyone setting" that enables Facebook posts to be searchable by Google or anywhere on the Internet and not just those logged into Facebook. This has been very recently amplified by Google's new competition to Facebook - Google Buzz, and privacy concerns around this.
So what is a marketer to do? And how about the pharma marketer who is even more constrained by FDA regulations and consumer negativity? Stay calm, stay focused, and stay relevant. eMarketer's article goes on to say that some of the consumer "hostility" may be driven by confusion. When people are ill informed or misinformed about the implications and use of data collection, then it's reasonable if not expected for people to be confused or resentful. Perception is reality - as eMarketer goes on to state. I couldn't agree more. As marketers our obligation is around providing not only greater transparency and education around data collection - but on crafting and communicating a welcomed value proposition. If we illuminate the reciprocal value to our target audiences - e.g., increased content or tools that help them in their quest, then the value exchange is defined.
As I stated in a prior post on targeting, it's all in the context and execution. Behavioral targeting makes sense given the right relevancy, context and value exchange - and planning that out in advance is key. But we still can't expect everyone to welcome this, but at lease those who may be more open to this value exchange will not feel alienated.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Cake or Fruit Salad?
The conclusion? When the brain is not overloaded, it is more likely to select the rational or "better for you" choice - fruit salad. When our brains are over tasked, our emotional side dominates, and we select what we're really prefer - cake! The ratio was 7:1 in this study, emotion vs. rational.
So what? Good marketers talk about marrying the rational and the emotional, but often times once (especially with the much regulated pharmaceutical industry) rational wins out. But emotion is not just a "soft" factor - it is hardwired in our brains, which this study helps underscore. Granted, our challenges and opportunities are far more complex than a snack choice, but so are the drivers we must factor into our marketing in engaging our audiences.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
B2B Social Media IQ
Facebook and Twitter top the list, but LinkedIn is right up there. As you can imagine, Consumer tracks higher (slightly) than B2B on Facebook (83% vs. 77%) and MySpace (23% vs. 14%), but B2B is outpacing Consumer on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube (28%, 23% and 13% higher respectively). B2B marketers tend to often have smaller budgets, so social media is appealing as a low-cost tactic, lower-audience waste scores.
In pharmaceutical marketing, social media seems daunting and risky. Aside from the obvious B2B retailer potential (eg, promotions alerts), there are some less obvious ones. For example, clinical trial recruitment is essentially a B2B initiative, in that pharma co's recruit from referring physicians into trials. Patients generally get referred via physicians, although some are direct. Novartis' Twitter presence, while less active now, still provides a link to their web site for recruitment information and pull-through. A more straight forward example is Performics (Search specialist) and Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness, sister companies to Saatchi & Saatchi Healthcare Innovations. Performics uses their Twitter feed to push out Search trend updates and thought leadership promos for their white papers, etc.
For B2B, relevancy and purposeful, timeley updates are key, no fluff please!
Email + Social
Thursday, January 14, 2010
To target or not to target, is it even a question?
Targeting is one of the most efficient, measurable and high impact forms of digital marketing, yet it is often underutilized, misunderstood or bluntly not on marketers' radar. The digital savvy embrace and worship this as a first line tactic.
Simply put, targeting is the ability to not only precisely target (WHO) who you wish, but in the relevant content (WHAT) at the most appropriate time (WHEN) to deliver the highest form or level of engagement (WHY). Targeting is easy to do, it's a matter of having the right partner to enable this. As marketers today, we have the ability to literally imagine how we would ideally reach our audience, and there is probably a way to achieve this with today's technology, ad serving and robust analytics.
As noted by eMarketer in December, there are several ways to target:
For Pharma, exploring effective targeting and retargeting holds true promise, and should be a low hanging fruit. We are able to geo-target patients for enrollment in clinical trials or patient support groups. We can contextually reach physicians when they are reading relevant specialty or condition content. We are able to tap into robust publisher networks to reach the right demographic or psycographic, and even go further to optimize the list of network sites based on click through and engagement to our destination site. Behavioral targeting offers the ability to engage difficult to reach audiences. Example: hepatitis C patients -- most do not realize they may have this, as it is often confused with flu or fatigue like symptoms. Many would not assume they have risk factors. Through targeting we are able to find them when they are searching on relevant terms or if they have demonstrated a sequential pattern of content consumption (eg, first responders, flu/fatigue content, etc.).
The most overlooked form of targeting for pharma in my opinion is retargeting. Most pharma companies either have a list of their segmented targets, or are able to do so with a list partner such as SDI or IMS. When you have the power of this list, you are then able to reach out to key sites such as Medscape, and only market to your target list when they are signed/logged in - this eliminates waste. We can also deliver sequential messaging to key targets, which in essence is relationship marketing. For example, if a patient clicks on a tagged email to a unbranded condition support site, but elects not to opt-in, we are able to find these people when they are on the top Nielsen rated sites, and deliver specific messaging about the value of enrolling in our patient support program.
"Just 30.5% of marketers surveyed had used retargeted display ads in the past, but the majority of those who reported using those ads had seen greater impact" as referenced in the eMarketer article, which goes on to cite that retargeting can boost response up to 400%.
So, I ask you... why wouldn't you target?
Convergence
The Consumer Electronics Showcase (CES) in Vegas this year showed that "soon" may actually be right now. Technology advancements in television have enabled linking to web content portals and sites such as YouTube, Blockbuster and Netflix today. Gaming applications such as Wii do t his as well, in addition to mass multiplayer (MMP) gaming. Usage of the "third screen" or mobile and computer advancements - are also accelerating this trend. While the ability existed before, it was not intuitive or user centric to advance past early adopters and techies. Now it is - almost anyone can do it, or read how to, or purchase a kit to do so. This excitement also brings challenges in that it is not only easy but commonplace to ignore advertising. Indeed, ads are still here, but they are not relevant or embedded contextually.
This is the challenge and opportunity, to relinquish control enough to be "generous", inviting people in to understand what relevance and value is to them, and remaining honest to this. Anytime you engage with your audience to in a value-driven way, even in the absence of branding, this is more meaningful. In fact, delivering content in a commercial-neutral way may be even more meaningful. It becomes engagement, not advertising. For pharma, this is still intimidating if not inviting risk. If you execute on this consistently your customer will associate the quality of content with your brand and your company. Social media has proven this out for us. Today, there is no shortage of pharma and health company presence in social media. Yet, ad spending on these channels is at the bottom of the investment priority. What tops the list is creating content and applications that actually help audiences, either by giving them a place to find support or information, or enabling them to make more informed decisions. It takes longer to show ROI, but the ROI promises to be greater, with more longevity. In the end, the mantra, "if you build it they will come", rings truer than ever, it just has to be welcomed.
Right now, Convergence via TVs is in the "make it easier" stage - such as with Netflix. I am watching out for the proliferation of what the now nearly-dead, WebTV promised - true engagement and relationship.