My Top Ten Digital Campaigns for 2011, Part 3 of 5

Number 6

 Mad Men Ad Facebook App   (PER, RWA)

If you love great tv, you probably love MadMen and can't get enough of their incisive wit and '60's styling. Greenberry, an agency in the Netherlands, came up with a brilliant Facebook app that allows users to create a Mad Men-themed ad that incorporates their personal data after completing a creative brief and choosing one of the cool templated designs. And what's even better, the best ads appeared in the Dutch print magazine, BLVD Men, and on billboards in Amsterdam. It's perfectly on brand, yet still allows users to personalize the content. How cool is that? 

<p>MAD MEN AD 

No 5

El Norte Beer: The Best Excuse Ever  (RWA, LBS)

There's just so many reasons to love this campaign because it solves one of the age old issues between Men and Women with first world problems. Men like to go out and drink with the guys, especially after they're married or settled down, women ..not so much.  So Norte Beer takes the guilt out of going out drinking..not that I condone it, but it's perfect for a beer company.  Every time they had a beer, the guys would put the bottle cap into the collection jar, and it would count towards a minute of good deeds sponsored by El Norte. In all 50,000 minutes were donated to restore schools, improve parks, clean up lakes and plant trees. What girl would complain about their guy contributing to those lofty goals? The perfect excuse. 

Click here to see Part 1 and Part 2 of My Top Ten Digital Campaigns for 2011

My Top Ten Digital Campaigns for 2011, Pt 2 of 5

Number 8

Kraft’s Jello iphone/ipad app  (PER)

It’s certainly not easy to make a 100 year old food product made from animals’ bones, sugar water and artificial coloring relevant to a new audience, but that’s exactly what Kraft did for their gelatin dessert known as Jello.  Rather than highlight its healthful qualities in these days of promoting water as calorie free—Jello has no fat--the campaign focused on its fun factor by creating a free mobile app that’s pure joy. Users select their favorite flavor and then choose any song from your iTunes library, and then watch your favorite Jello dance in time to the music. They even suggest choosing different genres, from Punk to BlueGrass, to watch the Jello groove out. Try it, you'll like it. 

 

Number 7 

 

KLM Surprise  (PER, RWA, LBS)

I love KLM even though I've never flown the airline.  And I'm not alone. They have over 600K fans on Facebook, Virgin America under 200K. Here's one great reason why. They not only understand their customers, they appreciate them. Everyone knows that waiting in airports before boarding your plane is unbelievably boring, but KLM thought of a way to change that. Using Foursquare and Twitter to locate KLM  passengers who had checked in at the airport, they surprised them with a personalized gift as a thank you for flying their airline.  

 

A little surprise goes a long way and the smiles on the faces of the recipients tells one part of the  story, and 1MM impressions on Twitter tells the other side too. Decidedly a brilliant use of all three themes. 

To read Part 1, featuring Numbers 10 and 9, click here.

Google + Pages for Business: Coming at the Right Time?

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It’s nothing short of meteoric. Google Plus took only 16 days to reach 10mm users. Facebook took over two years to reach that many fans. And now that G+ is open to anyone, their new user base is estimated at 43 million. Experian/Hitwise stated that last week, visits to G+ increased by almost 1300%, elevating it from no. 54 to no. 8 on the Hitwise Social Networking and Forums Category. And though their numbers have dropped recently, the platform will only get more users as brands come on board.

Worth The Wait

At the launch, brands were upset that only individuals could create pages—(except for two beta partners, Ford and Starbucks), however they will see three clear benefits from the long wait. 

1.     There is a very large audience already familiar with the platform, and in fact, these early adopters are a highly influential group.

2.     Google has been tweaking the platform and features over the past couple of months creating a better user experience overall, with increased functionality, including the addition of games.

3.     The platform is very stable and able to handle large amounts of traffic.

Content Propagatio

There is no doubt that Google, which owns over 65% of all searches, will drive         synergy. However, G+ did borrow the ability of tagging content off of the main site in a  manner similar to Facebook where users can Like external content. G+ has added the +1  tag for interactions on external websites, thereby increasing the visibility and relevancy of  the site for users outside of the network., and there has already been widespread adoption  by sites and users. 

Content Segmentation

With Circles, G+ created a unique tool that allows users to target content to specific groups, and will allow brands to offer specialized content to different user groups, based on customized criteria. Publishers’ whose content is highly relevant and targeted to their audience will see engagement gains as opposed to those who publish generic content on an irregular basis.  Brands may have a Brand Advocate circle, or a Focus Group circle, or possibly just those Coupon circle. This feature will require strong community managers able to make the best use of the nuances of content creation.

Other ways that brands can target their content is through Hangouts and Sparks. Hangouts, which is essentially a video chat tool, only allows 10 users at one time, but may be leveraged by brands to interact with their core audience through a visual real time connection. And although not used much, Sparks is a search tool within G+ allowing users to find relevant content created by those in your circles and allows content to be accessible long after the original publication date.

Content Analytics

An advanced analytics dashboard will be a huge differentiator for G+. Although not fully integrated yet, it is assumed they will leverage their proprietary tools such as Google analytics, Adsense,  and Adwords. This would inevitably allow brands the best in class data and the ability = to drill down into social media analytics to help gauge social media ROI on G+.  

Once realized, the advantages of a Google+ business account may be in the ability to analyze its effectiveness and reach getting what is probably the clearest return-on-investment (ROI) picture of any social media tool to date.  And if leveraged correctly, this information will help guide brands to create the most compelling and relevant content for their users.

With all these benefits, it would seem that brands will be able to set a new engagement level with their customers, making it a “must-have” as part of their marketing mix.

 

New York Times Paywall: is it the wrong solution to the wrong problem?

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There has been so much written about the NY Times paywall over the past weeks, but everyone agrees on one thing:  It’s a big risk. With that said, the voices are mixed as to the chances of its success or failure. I understand the Times needs to increase profits, but I believe they may need to reinvent the Times, not their revenue model.

 Ben Kunz smartly tried to prove this new pricing model may actually produce less or at best only equal revenue numbers in his recent post on Thought Gadgets (http://bit.ly/fTG4dO), but there are three additional negative issues I see.

 First, it’s a complicated system, with tiered pricing, numerous loopholes and arcane favoritism.  Most people own more than one device and use them interchangeably. Punishing those with an iPad and iPhone and a computer is not user friendly. And it’s a fact that there are numerous ways to avoid paying altogether, e.g., if you come from Twitter or Facebook, you are able exceed the 20 article limit per month. And in a truly cluelessness move, they assume that charging less for the print edition will conserve that audience, ergo maintain the high price they get paid for print ads---well guess what, print readers are a dying breed.

 Second, this kind of experiment is better launched with partners. I remember when airlines began charging for luggage. This was an outrage and would normally cause an immediate brand exodus, but because the airlines acted in almost full unison, passengers had no choice and grudgingly accepted the fees. Now obviously getting 5-10 airlines is a lot easier than corralling the dozens of major news providers to agree to charge for what was previously free,  but  going it alone* when there are so many other choices for news is close to suicidal.  I guess the Times is hoping or praying that a consumer feels only they can offer all the news that’s fit to print, but I don’t think they should hold their breath.

 Third, their content is not unique—especially for global news. In some cases, there is actually better content from other news organizations, e.g., BBC and NPR. In addition, there are news outlets better suited to presenting news online that are not hurting for revenue, namely television news stations. CNN and NBC, to name a few. They still derive healthy revenues from their original content platforms, so the digital platform is not impacting them as negatively. In fact their broadcasts provide exactly the kind of content users are looking for on the web: video.  

 And that is really the rub.   

 The Times is trying to solve the wrong problem with the wrong solution.   We know they need to increase revenue, but  we also know you don’t make money by charging more, you make money by providing  more value.  The Real Problem: their content is just not as valuable as it used to be.

 When the “grey lady” as it’s affectionately known launched in 1851, it grew to an ascendant position at a time of  much less competition, but  those days are gone and they are not coming back. They managed to hold on during the advent of television because they still had a brand name second to none, but those days of waiting for news to be delivered to your door or having a single trusted source, are over. The standard network news anchors still hold some sway,  but even they face competition from  independents such as Current TV, Boing Boing, citizen journalists, and, of course, twitter.

I read an excellent article today at Co Design today titled “Wanna Solve Problems: Find Ways to Fail Quicker” (http://bit.ly/fuF7hm). Basically, when challenged to invent a man-powered flying machine, most people took a year to design and build a machine, attempted to fly it, crashed it, then they would take another year to build a different machine, and then …well you get the idea. So instead, the inventor built a model that could crash and be rebuilt quickly, so he moved towards a solution much faster than his competitors.  The problem wasn’t the flight, it was the crash. Extrapolating from that, the problem is not revenue, it’s content.

No, the Times doesn’t need to reinvent the payment model, it needs to reinvent the Times. They do have three key brand attributes that they can leverage to explore new content directions: Their name and their location and their one edition that really sells, the Sunday Magazine.  So here are my suggestions:

1.    Leverage their name to launch their own evening news show.  I could easily hear the announcer say “And now it’s  time for the “New York Times Evening News”, and highlight their editors and reporters. If Al Jazeera can break into this market, so can the Times.  Of course, it will take time to grow the market but TV news is not going away, and it provides a highly visible platform with associated ad dollars and generates excellent content to be repurposed on other channels.

2.    We all know NYC is the best city in the world (and I’m allowed to say that because I was born there) so they should leverage that and start their own TED series..there’s room especially if they make it less expensive than TED but with a New York twist: Call it the New York Times Artists and Innovators Series. Rent out Julian Schnabel’s Pink Palazzo and hold a series of talks there that would include NY luminaries such as Woody Allen, Jeff Koons, Clay Shirky. Start small but with stellar talent. I know they’ll draw the right crowd, and create the right content that they can sell ads against.

3.    Leverage their location to create a site called the New York Blogs. And by that I mean, a la AOL, buy the top ten NYC centered blogs, such as the Sartorialist, Gawker and Gothamist, and aggregate the content to be THE New York City online destination for what’s hot/what’s not. NYC is the one local destination that’s really global.

4.    Maybe even…dare I say this…get rid of the daily print edition and beef up the Sunday Mag into a glossy.   In 2009, The Sunday Edition it was the best selling newspaper in the county and I’m sure it’s still very very popular

 In the end, everyone wants the NY Times to survive, so hopefully they'll find the right solution to the right problem sooner rather than later.


* I just learned The SF Chronicle may be putting up a paywall so maybe the Times will have a partner.