Emerging Media & Politics Part 2

Those staunch, staid Republicans keep getting all interactive on us!

First there was the live web tour of the convention facilities I wrote about a couple of days ago.

Now they're sponsoring a contest to win a free trip to the convention. All you have to do is make a video of yourself, 2 minutes or less, about why you're a Republican. The winner will get to attend the convention as part of the press corps, and will see their video played on the convention floor. Pretty cool, although I don't have the time, energy, or interest to actually make a video and post it. Which got me to wondering: are these types of promotions really aimed at (or even successful at) attracting new devotees who are drawn by the interactivity? Or are the party faithful the only ones who are really participating?

I noticed while I was at the contest site that the Republicans have 27 other convention related videos on YouTube, including an archived version of that lunchtime chat web tour of the convention center from last Friday. One of the most watched videos is a spoof of a costumed donkey visiting the convention headquarters to deliver a singing telegram (and then being mock "arrested"):



When something as old school as a GOP convention can get into the new media act, you know it must be mainstream!

Randy Pausch & the Power of the Internet

Randy Pausch 1960-2008

If there ever was an example of how social media can spread an important message virally -- Randy Pausch's story has to be it.

Randy died today at age 47, 11 months after giving an academic lecture that was seen in person by several hundred people, but thanks to the Internet, has been watched by millions more.

Randy was a ground-breaking professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University here in Pittsburgh. He co-founded the university's Entertainment Technology Center and developed Alice, the university's innovative educational software for teaching computer programming. He was at the top of his professional game, when, two years ago he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given less than a year to live.

On September 18, 2007, he delivered his "Last Lecture" at CMU -- I've capitalized the words "last lecture," because that's the name of a special lecture series at CMU. Speakers are invited to talk about what they would say if indeed, the lecture was their last.

For Pausch it truly would be his last lecture at his beloved alma mater. Entitled "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," the lecture was Pausch's funny, upbeat and self-deprecating look at his own life, punctuated by his sage advice for living -- even as he knew he was dying. If you haven't watched it you should (click here).

Randy's lecture was posted on CMU's website, then on YouTube, and has been watched by at least 6 million people, probably more. It was turned into a best-selling book. It lead to invitations to testify before congress about funding for pancreatic cancer research, to appear on Oprah, to work out with the Steelers, even to appear as an extra in the upcoming Star Trek movie. As one colleague put it, Pausch lived more in his last year of life than most of us will live in a lifetime.

For those who knew Pausch today is bittersweet: he is gone, but his legacy will live on, thanks to his courage, humour, and a lecture that, thanks to the Internet, has touched people around the world.

Watch one of KDKA's obituaries on Pausch by clicking here.

Watch Pausch's address to CMU graduates in May by clicking here.

Watch a version of the Last Lecture with running commentary by Jeffrey Zaslow of the Wall Street Journal who co-authored Pausch's book by clicking here.

Emerging Media & Politics

As a journalist, political junkie and marketing student, I've been fascinated to see how the 2008 presidential campaign has embraced emerging media and social in such a big way.

It's a given that candidates large and small will have websites, and of course McCain, Obama and Clinton have them -- all let you switch from English to Spanish -- very smart, since Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S. These websites are not only places to disseminate information and connect with voters, they're fundraising powerhouses. How else to explain how Hillary Clinton raised more than $1 million in less than 24 hours after she urged supporters to visit her site during her victory speech in New Hampshire in January?

E-mail has also become a huge tool for the candidates to communicate -- including with those of us in the media. I'm signed up/was signed up to receive e-mail releases from both the Obama and Clinton camps. During those long six weeks of campaigning leading up to the primary here in Pennsylvania, I was inundated with at least a few -- and often dozens -- of press releases and position papers every day.

Today I learned of yet another way that politicos are using new media. I got an invitation from the people who are organizing the 2008 Republican National Convention to participate in an on-line "Lunchtime Chat" tomorrow at 1pm, which will take participants on a live walking tour of the convention headquarters in Saint Paul, and give us a chance to meet the people behind the scenes of the convention. The chats use technology powered by a company called Ustream.tv, the live streaming provider of the convention. The fact that the Republicans actually have a live streaming provider tells me that we're probably in for 24/7 streaming of both of these conventions for those who just can't get enough!

P.S. No surprise, the convention homepage also has a blog, wallpaper, and a social networking site where people going to the convention can hook up and make friends even before they get to Minnesota. The Dems have their own page with some of the same features, plus an invitation to make a "why I'm a Democrat in 2008" video and post it to YouTube!

Breaking Up is (less) Hard to Do

Under the category of what will they think of next, a new phone service called Slydial is making it easier to get through those awkward moments (like breaking up with someone) by connecting directly with their cell phone voice mail.

You call 267-Slydial either from your cell phone or a landline, enter the other person's cell phone number and voila. The only caveat is that your phone has to be caller ID enabled, to prevent people from anonymously harassing other people on their mobile phones.

Gavin Macomber, co-founder of MobileSphere Ltd., the Boston-based communications company behind Slydial says the idea for the service while developing a service to lower the cost of international roaming on cell phones. And it actually does have some great business applications: business people wanting to leave reminder messages for clients, or leaving messages for people traveling in faraway time zones without having the phone ring at an odd time of day or night.

That said, the ability to leave really bad news on someone's voice mail box without having to actually TALK to them seems like the most intriguing benefit of Slydial! And isn't that lack of face to face contact the way we like it in these days of e-mailing co-workers who are sitting an office away, and texting people that we could call on the phone?

The Birth of a New KDKA Blog

It’s always fun when the things I’m learning in my Master’s Degree program dovetail with things that are going on at the TV station. It feels good when my learning allows me contribute to the success and health of my company in new ways. And it gets me excited again about the possibilities for the future of a business that a lot of people say is dying.

For the past several months we’ve been talking a lot about how to make our website, kdka.com, even better. Right now our site traffic is consistently second in the chain of CBS owned and operated TV stations, coming in ahead of giant markets like LA, New York, Miami and Chicago. But we’re always being challenged not only to increase traffic, but to increase time spent at our site.

One of the ways we’re doing that is by encouraging more of our reporters and anchors to blog. Right now we have 12 blogs on the site, 10 local, 2 produced by CBS and distributed to all of the owned and operated stations. Our local blogs range from one that answers viewer health questions written by our medical reporter, Dr. Maria Simbra, to a blog about road construction and transportation issues written by our traffic reporter Jim Lokay. Even producers are getting in on the act: web producer Angela Taylor writes about her passion for the Young and the Restless, and sports producer Mike Vukovcan keeps readers up to date on the latest scoop from inside the Pirates organization.

One of the things I don’t like about our blog page right now is that it isn’t engaging. The way it’s set up, the blogs all appear by title, but in no particular order. There’s no way of knowing which blog has new information posted, or even what’s inside the blog. In other words, there’s nothing to guide you. How would you know from the headline on reporter Mary Robb Jackson’s blog called (duh!) “Mary Robb Jackson’s Blog” that inside you would find the emotional story of Mary Robb’s adopted daughter Mariel’s travels to meet her birth mother for the first time?

Contrast this with one of my favorite company blogs, Direct2Dell, a “blog about Dell Products, Services and Customers.” Like the KDKA blog, it’s written by Dell employees, including everyone from vice-presidents to customer service reps. But the set up and layout of the site is, in my opinion, much more intuitive than the kdka.com blog page.

Sign on to the Dell blog, and you’ll find one or two main posts of the day – almost like a lead story in a television newscast (see where I’m going with this?). To the right of the main blog is the list of other categories where employees may also be blogging or answering customer questions. Someone (probably lead blogger Lionel Menchaca) has decided, of all of the blogs written that day, which are the most newsworthy or of the most general interest to be the main blog, and Menchaca writes the lead post on days when it needs to be an over-arching message that’s not specific to a particular subject category. He also writes a week in review on the weekends, summing up the discussion at the blog that week. My guess is that Menchaca also prods his colleagues to write posts when he believes that the most important story of the day for Dell is something in their area of expertise. He may even be the one who makes sure customer service is monitoring the blog for consumer complaints and answering their questions.

My hope is that the future KDKA blog will look a lot like the Dell page, with a “lead” story relevant to the day’s news or to what people are talking about, and the list of all blogs marching from top to bottom on the right. For example, expect me to blog early on about the avalanche of viewer e-mail I get about why television newscasts “tease” so much. I’ll probably also blog early on (or get my consumer reporter Yvonne Zanos to blog) about the frequent viewer e-mail we receive related to on-line scams. When there’s a big court case going on, I’ll certainly get our veteran reporter, Harold Hayes, to blog about the behind the scenes scoop he observes. When a big weekend construction project threatens to cause traffic nightmares, Jim Lokay’s blog will be featured that day. And if I had been chief blogger when Mary Robb wrote the blog about her daughter, that would certainly have been front page news!

The Bling in "Ning"

I’ll admit to being really late to this social networking thing. This year I finally signed up for LinkedIn (only because a bunch of my business acquaintances kept asking me to join their networks), and created a presence (I can’t really call it a “page”) at FaceBook after my husband and some other friends joined there.

So it’s no surprise that I had never heard of the social networking service called Ning until my friend and classmate John introduced me to it. You might describe Ning as social networking page crossed with a wiki crossed with a blog, where people create customized websites to host on-line communities around just about any subject (in any language) to connect with like-minded people.

There’s GAX for gamers (2700+ members) and “Mamas Fallen Angels” for people who love “hair metal” music of the 80’s and 90’s (3700+ members). Hip-hop mogul 50 Cent has a Ning site with more than 100,000 members! Launched in February 2007 by Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreesssen, Ning was recently valued at half-a-billion dollars (yes, that’s a capital B!) as reported by TechCrunch, and the company predicts by 2010, it will host 4 million social networks.

In an article on FastCompany, Adam Penenberg describes Ning as something called a “viral expansion loop”:

"It's a type of engineering alchemy that, done right, almost guarantees a self-replicating, borglike growth: One user becomes two, then four, eight, to a million and beyond. It's not unlike taking a penny and doubling it daily for 30 days. By the end of a week, you'd have 64 cents; within two weeks, $81.92; by day 30, about $5.4 million. Viral loops have emerged as perhaps the most significant business accelerant to hit Silicon Valley since the search engine. They power many of the icons of Web 2.0, including Google, PayPal, YouTube, eBay, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Flickr. But don't confuse a viral loop with viral advertising or videos such as Saturday Night Live's "Lazy Sunday" or the Mentos-Diet Coke Bellagio fountain. Viral advertising can't be replicated; by definition, a viral loop must be."

That’s all way too technical for me. All I know is that Ning offers a lot of cool features, like total customization of the page (including the ability to use company logos) and the ability to insert widgets from other websites. It provides the opportunity to create individual member profiles and discussion groups within the Ning page, and helps users to display photos and slideshows, even allows them to integrate their FaceBook pages into the network.

CMS Wire asks if Ning is the next FaceBook or MySpace. I think that’s selling Ning short. I’m really looking forward to getting to know Ning better now that I’ve discovered it. I can think of lots of applications. I’ve just agreed to be co-chair of the committee that will plan and fundraise for my college class 25th reunion – why not create a Ning page for that?

Maybe we need a Ning social network for harried graduate students ;-)!

Celebrate Good Times, Come On!

Dear family, friends and colleagues--

I know this doesn't have anything to do with TV news, marketing or emerging media (unless my "digtal" camera counts as new media), but I had to share. My son's North Hills (PA) tournament baseball team won the Bauerstown 8-year old tournament last night against a tough team from Deer Lakes, 11-6. Given that our boys were at one point down 6-1, they learned a valuable lesson about never giving up. It's a lesson for all of us -- whether we work in the challengeing worlds of news and marketing, or are studying challenging subjects like new media in graduate school!



You're Kool and the Gang if you started singing the song my headline was inspired by!

Homepages That Try To Do Too Much

One of my pet peeves is home pages that try to do too much. I'm not talking about the psychotic pages you run across every once in awhile, like this one for an organization called Havenworks that will make your head explode (kudos for the folks at Web Pages the Suck for coming up with that one).

No, I'm talking about major corporations who should know better -- and have plenty of money to do website design right. I've always thought this about the website for Heinz. Depending on who you are (a consumer, an investor, a reporter), it can be really hard to figure out which parts of the website are for you. The Sara Lee website has the same problem: it's a melange of information for investors, consumers, reporters, business partners -- even job seekers.

Award winning website designer Derek Powazek admits, the process of designing a website is "anxiety-inducing" for even the best companies. It's your first impression, and you only get one chance. He offers four goals for homepage design that will insure a winning impression:

Goal 1: Answer the question, "What is this place?"

"This is, and always will be," says Powazek, "the number-one job of any home page. The first thing a new visitor does when they get to an unfamiliar site is ask that question. If the site does not do a good job of answering it within a few seconds, the user will feel dumb, leave, and never come back." Only companies like Google, where people already know how to use the site, can afford to be user hostile, says Powatek.

In my opinion both Heinz and Sara Lee don't do a great job of fulfilling goal #1. The Heinz homepage doesn't say anything about what the company does. Sara Lee's says "our mission is to simply delight you... every day" which tells me nothing about the company. Perhaps can get away with violating this rule because everyone already knows what their brands stand for.

Goal 2: Don't get in the repeat visitor's way

Powazek says one good way to do this is to make a homepage dynamic. New visitors get an explanation; return visitors who log in get information specific to them. That helps achieve goal three.

Goal 3: Show what's new

Powazek says: "Too many sites stop after addressing goals one and two. But once a user's gone through the trouble of figuring out what you do, and then actually coming back, you owe them something: what's new." Heinz does an OK job here: one of the boldest items you see when signing onto their page is a come-on for their latest "TopThisTV" make-your-own-commercial campaign. The only new thing on Sara Lee's homepage are the press releases posted at the bottom -- and who cares?

Goal 4: Provide consistent, reliable global navigation

Heinz's navigation is consistent and reliable, but by gosh there's a lot of it. There are 26 different links on the tabs that make up the top navigation bar, another 13 that run down the right side of the page, and another four on the bottom navigation bar!

Here's an example of a website that I think hits on all of Powazek's goals: the website for the language learning company Rosetta Stone. Call up their home page and there's goal number one, right in the upper lefthand corner: "The fastest way to learn a language. Guaranteed" cycles with "Comprehensive language learning for individuals, organizations and schools." Goal number 2 is met with their "sign-in" feature on the homepage that allows those who are already subscribers to sign in and get immediately to their personal content. Goal 3 is also met right on the home page, as the "who are we" phrases share space with "NEW! Rosetta Stone's Personal Version 3: Language Learning Just Got a Whole Lot Better!". Finally -- my favorite part of the website -- its crystal clear navigation. Right below the top line animation and photographs are three links "Personal, Organizations, Schools" that direct the user immediately to the content that's relevant to them.

Merci, Rosetta Stone!

TV + Direct Marketing + Website = Good IMC (but no sale)

Lately I've had a chuckle from the ongoing series of advertisements for Fiber One cereal. Perhaps I've paid closer attention because my husband is hooked on this brand thanks to word of mouth from a friend.

Or perhaps I just enjoy the interaction between the characters in the ad:

There's the generic "customer guy." He doesn't believe the Fiber One product actually contains fiber, so much so, that in the latest commercial he's caught writing an "N" in front of the "One" on a store's cereal boxes to create the name "Fiber None."

There's the blank-faced,confused "stock boy" who can't answer the customer's question: where's the fiber.

And finally, my favorite character, the smooth "store manager," a handsome older man (actor Ajay Mehta) with an intriguing accent, who demonstrates how delicious the cereal is by eating it on camera. "Cardboard no. Delicious, yes," he says.



A newer version of the "Fiber (N)One" commercial takes the company's marketing effort fully into IMC: it offers a free sample if you visit the opt-in landing page on the company's website.

I clicked lower left on the free offer section and was taken to an opt-in landing page where I was invited to create an "Eat Better America" profile that asks for name, address (of course to send the free sample). It also asks for my e-mail address and birthdate (so now they're creating a database with some basic demographic information about me). In return I get the free sample of cereal and a Fiber One bar and an automatic sign-up for the "eatbetteramerica" newsletter.

So, in one fell swoop you've got mass media advertising (TV), a direct marketing offer (the free product), and Internet marketing (the driver to the website and sign-up)all rolled into one.

That said, I didn't end up signing up. I'd love to get the free samples, and I wouldn't mind receiving additional discounts. But I already get a lot of e-mail pitches from companies and I'd rather not sign up for another.

It got me thinking about how they could have made the offer better so that I signed up. Keeping the offer the same, maybe if they told me up front how often I would receive e-mails would have calmed my fears about being inundated with more unwelcome e-mail. They could have changed the offer to increase the value of it -- for example, driving me to the website for a coupon or code to get a free full-sized box of Fiber One the next time I go shopping. In terms of campaign cost, eliminating the need to mail me the sample might have been a wash with the increased cost of giving a full-sized box. They could have simply sent me a free sample in the mail or included it with my Sunday paper. This might have increased trial of the product, but it wouldn't have helped them build their on-line presence and customer database, and there might have been media waste, since some of the mass market that receives the free sample might not be interested and throw it away.

I'm going to assume that the company has really smart marketers who thought long and hard about how to structure the offer and then tested it beforehand. Bottom line: in my opinion it's a great example of what integrated marketing can and should be.

The Avalanche of E-mail

I have to vent. I returned from a week of vacation yesterday to find 494 e-mails in my work in-box (where were you other six slackers who could have helped make it an even 500?).

My volume of mail is somewhat unique to my situation, as yours probably is as well. As a manager, I'm copied on any e-mail of importance, including messages from our corporate offices. I get copies of quality control reports on each and every one of our newscasts (so that's an automatic 9 e-mails a day). I field all of the e-mails from viewers that come to our investigative mailbox from our website, which range in volume from one or two to upwards of 10 a day. And for some reason, I got labeled in the PR community as the station's arts and entertainment news coordinator, so now I get probably a dozen press releases each day on everything from movie openings to book signings. I can't imagine how I'd be tearing my hair out if I owned a BlackBerry!

An IBAC survey survey of more than 13,000 members in 2006 found that 47% say they receive too much e-mail, 44% admit sending too many messages, those in larger companies (5000+) reported e-mail overload more often than their small-company counterparts, and 61% felt that outside news sources and professional subscriptions was the main source of the e-mail overload.

While e-mail has certainly become an indespensible part of communicating in many workplaces -- mine included -- I think it's almost become a hindrance that wastes a lot of time, and allows people to avoid face to face interactions. When a colleague who's sitting a few feet away e-mails me instead of getting up to come and talk, you know things have gone too far. And when you obsessively check e-mail to avoid doing other work, you know you've got a problem.

One study out of King's College in London found that our "infomania" or obsession with e-mail and texting actually lowers our IQ as much as 10 points, or more than smoking pot! The researchers theorize that you can't fully concentrate on a task when you have one eye on the in-box, and long term, they say, this constant distraction can cause damage to our mental ability. Yikes!

So, what to do?

We can start by looking in the mirror: if I send fewer e-mail messages today and deal with my co-workers face to face, at the very least I won't be contributing to their overload. But when it comes to managing the e-mail I get, here are some tips that those in the IABC survey say they use:

@deal with a message only once: read, and then delete or respond immediately

@triage your e-mail account, removing the irrelevant and low-value messages

@organize messages by deadline, subject or assignment

@schedule regular times to deal with e-mail and close the browser in between

@shut off the pop-up window and audio that come with the arrival of a new message

Survey respondents also had some great suggestions for how companies can help their employees deal with the avalanche of e-mail and clean up workplace "nettiquette." They include:

@use clear and correct subject lines, and indicate if the message is for action now or FYI

@eliminate distribution lists of more than five names.

@outlaw the use of the cc, bcc, forwarding and "reply to all" functions.

@ban e-mails that are intended only as "butt covers"

@for short messages, put all the information in the subject line, ending with "EOM" (end of message) to indicate that the reader doesn't need to open the rest of the message

@use e-newsletters which can eliminate many e-mails from a particular source (my parent company CBS has done this by sending out regular regular newsletters encapsulating multiple subjects, instead of sending out memos on each one)

@create an "e-charter," a formal, companywide set of policies, rules and guidelines about e-mail use.

The experts also recommend the use of alternative forms of electronic communication, like wikis for collaborative projects (sure beats all those e-mail strings forwarded around and around your group), and text messaging for short messages or urgent matters.

Excellent suggestions all. But even though we all moan and groan about getting too much e-mail, given our obsession with it, I wonder if we'll really take the advice.

P.S. That IABC survey? It was sent to members... via e-mail!

Designed to Sell

OK, I'll admit it. I'm nebby (that's Pittsburghese for nosey). I'm especially nebby when it comes to other people's houses. Is the inside glamorous or run down? Kitchen cluttered or high tech? Yard pristine or overgrown? Bedrooms cramped or spacious?

It's why, when I have time I love to watch HGTV shows like "Designed to Sell" and "House Hunters." I also religiously read the real estate listings in the Sunday paper, and like to surf realtor websites to see what's for sale locally and what people are asking, even though my husband and I are not in the market.

You've probably noticed, real estate companies have made the process of finding a house a lot more interactive than it was even 5 years ago. Most for sale signs include an MLS (Multiple Listing Service) number code, which is also included in any newspaper listings. These codes allow curious homeowners to find out more about the house on the spot, either by calling a hotline, plugging in the home and hearing a recording about the features, or going to the realtor website and using the code to find an on-line listing for the property, including in most cases, photographs of the inside of the home. But getting a recorded message telling me about the inside of the house is certainly not the same as seeing actual pictures of it. And it's awkward and time consuming to have to write down the MLS number or drag your newspaper over to the computer to check out the home on line.



So when one of my classmates introduced me to an emerging marketing technology called Quick Response codes (QR codes for short) a light bulb went on. I had never heard of QR codes before he introduced them in a discussion post thread. These are two dimensional bar codes, invented by a Japanese company back in 1994. While they're popular in Japan, they've never really caught on here in the U.S. They were first used to track car parts, but today QR codes are used in applications aimed at mobile phone users. QR codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, even business cards. Someone with a camera phone that has the correct reader can scan the QR code, sending the phone's browser to the URL.

So, I'm wondering, why couldn't realtors attach QR codes to the sign outside a home for sale (or on the brochures that they often provide in a plastic box attached to the sign) allowing someone passing by a property to get to the URL for the property and check it out on line on the spot? The realtor could even put a QR code in newspaper listings, allowing the reader to scan to the URL for a property as they sit back in their easy chair, cup of coffee in one hand and enabled mobile phone in the other on a Sunday morning. Not only would the potential home buyer get to see photographs and even videos of the inside of the house instantly, the QR code could direct the phone to the realtor's phone number, ready to dial, or even give directions. A Seattle realtor is already using MLS codes to send photos, virtual tours to the cell phones of leads -- QR codes can't be far behind.

The only drawback here, of course, is that most Americans don't know what QR codes are. Any realtor attempting to use the codes to market houses would have to do some pretty heavy duty consumer education. This could include putting everything from "how to" instructions in property brochures and in Sunday newspaper listings, to pitching stories about the new technology to local newspapers, radio and television stations. It would be a challenge. But if QR codes become a successful component of marketing property, the realtor who tries it first could get a leg up on the competition in building brand loyalty with consumers. And isn't that's what every marketer is looking to do?

Are You Selling a Groundhog?

Self-described online thought leadership and viral marketing strategist David Meerman Scott recently wrote a funny (but of course completely relevant) blog post in which he described how many times -- when he gives a speech or seminar -- people will say "But my buyers aren't online. My buyers don't use Google to find answers to problems or to research products."

Meerman Scott says when he hears this he immediately thinks the person is just afraid of social media and is making an excuse so they can stick to traditional marketing. That's when he reminds them that nearly everyone -- from corporate CEOs to the janitor who cleans the CEO's office is probably on line. He makes his point with a great juxtaposition: he's suddenly discovered the one industry where the buyers are not on line, the camel market in Riyad, Saudi Arabia (watch his sandstorm enhanced video here).

His point got me thinking about my favorite on-line marketing effort of all time: the series of viral videos created by the Pennsylvania Department of Tourism for Groundhog Day 2004. If you don't know what Groundhog Day is then you must be hibernating: it's the event, every February 2nd, where Punxsutawney Phil (the event happens in the north central Pennsylvania town of Punxsutawney) is dragged from his burrow on Gobbler's Knob to see whether or not he sees his shadow -- if he sees his shadow, that means there will be six more weeks of winter.

The online marketing campaign entitled "Groundhog Chase", features a series of eight short videos that chronicle the exploits of "The Groundhog" and "The Shadow" as the groundhog (a guy in a groundhog suit) attempts to catch his shadow (another guy in a black groundhog suit) by chasing him all over town with hilarious results. The first video was launched in early January 2004 with more videos released over the subsequent weeks leading up to Groundhog Day in an effort to build buzz about the annual event. People were encouraged to sign up to receive e-mail alerts about the release of a new video. In my house, my son and I eagerly awaited the newest installment and got on-line immediately to view it.

Groundhog Chase was fairly cheaply made: two guys in groundhog costumes, a handful of additional actors and a couple of guys with a handheld camera made this video in less than a week in Philadelphia (but notice how they try to keep the locations somewhat generic so as not to make this a "Philly" thing).

It created great buzz, so good in fact, that PA Tourism followed up Groundhog Chase with Groundhog 202 a take-off on the Jack Nicholson film "The Shining" that was written up in everything from AdRants to the Philadelphia Business Journal. 2007 brought Groundhog Crossing, in which Shadow has fled Punxsutawney and Groundhog must track him across the country (read the critique of this campaign at imediaconnection.com). This year Groundhog and Shadow went celebrity in a new series of viral videos called Groundhog Duel complete with a companion blog site, Celebrity Plush.

My point being: maybe camel sellers in Riyad don't go on line or use viral marketing. But if an organization as venerable as the 122 year old Punxsutawney Groundhog Club can be dragged into the emerging media of the 21st century, then anyone can -- and should!

P.S. if you only have time to watch one of the series of videos, watch the first one. The videos might seem a little bit "last year" but keep in mind, this idea was hatched four years ago (a lifetime in viral marketing) and on a shoestring budget. My favorite episode is the one in the laundromat (check out how Shadow flirts with the girl doing her laundry). And see if you can catch the continuity mistake in the one that's shot in a men's room.

Social Networking & TV News

It’s amazing to me how social networking has crept into the normally staid world of TV news, especially when it comes to news story research. Three years ago most people in our newsroom had probably never been on a FaceBook or MySpace page or searched YouTube for information; now these social networking sites are among the first places we go when certain types of stories break.

For example, getting photographs of victims of accidents and crimes used to be a terrible chore – no reporter likes to knock on a family’s door in times of tragedy. Today we often find the photographs we need on a person’s social networking page. While this may seem like it’s made our job easier, there are still challenges. The biggest is usually the fact that many pages are private; only friends allowed. But we have a 20-something assignment editor in our newsroom who is an expert at getting information by working backwards through the networking sites of a person’s friends whose profiles aren’t private.

Once we’re in, another challenge is to make sure we have the right person -- it’s not like people put captions on their pictures on a social networking page! Our final challenge is often finding photographs that are appropriate -- many of the pictures people put on their social networking pages are, how can I say it nicely, irreverent? These wouldn’t necessarily be right to use in a story about a tragedy, although I do recall using a gangster-like photograph of a girl a young of instigating the shooting of five basketball players on a local university campus a couple of years ago, along with her MySpace description of herself as “half lady half thug” (not surprisingly her page was pulled down a couple of hours after we reported this).

Yesterday the station may have reached the pinnacle (so far) of the use of social networking in a single newscast. During our noon news, we pulled video from a murder suspect’s MySpace page of his 2-year old daughter – who he is accused of killing, along with the little girl’s infant brother and the children’s mother. And in a story about the impending indictment of former state lawmaker Mike Veon in a staff bonus scandal, we pulled video from a YouTube page of Veon answering questions about Bonusgate during an interview a year and a half ago (he has rarely been in public over the past year to be questioned about the scandal).

It will be interesting to see how the practice of using material from social networking sites continues to develop, especially as it applies to copyright laws. So far the most public battles over copyright have involved major content providers suing over use of their copyrighted material on networking sites – my employer Viacom (now CBS) is currently suing YouTube over the posting of material from shows like “SpongeBob Squarepants” and “The Daily Show.” But there’s been no legal activity – that I know of – involving news outlet’s use of material taken from social networking sites. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems as if, once you’ve put material out there in cyberspace it’s becomes fair game. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some guy who took a candid photo or video of someone and posted it on MySpace suddenly claim ownership and try to sue a TV station for using that photo or video in a news story.

Stay tuned!

Now that I M txting will I B spammed?

I’ll admit it. I’ve been slow to this mobile phone texting craze. I have an old Verizon phone that doesn’t have the fancy keypad that most savvy texters are using these days. I’m also in the generation that generally views mobile phones as something to make a phone call on, not to type on (although one of the TV station’s 50-something reporters has become a whiz at texting information to the newsroom from closed courtrooms where he’s covering trials – shhh, don’t tell the judge!).

Last night I felt like I had truly entered the texting generation. My husband and our 8-year old baseball-crazed son attended a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game, and I experienced something that up until then I had heard about but never witnessed: in-stadium texting. From what I understand from my friends lucky enough to get tickets this sold-out season, the Pittsburgh Penguins do it too.

The premise is simple really. The Pirates have taken over one of the electronic message boards around the rim of the stadium that used to be reserved for baseball statistics and turned it into an instant message board. The board invites you to dial 282-26 and text a message to someone else in the stadium. After what I assume is a process of weeding out those messages with profanity or other inappropriate content, the message is posted on the big board for all to see. As we sat there waiting through what would be the first of two incredibly long rain delays (the game didn’t finish until after 1am), I couldn’t help myself: I texted a “hello” message to my son. When my message finally appeared on the message board we both got a big kick out of it.

I got a different “kick” out of the experience this morning when I checked my cellphone and discovered that the message board (to be exact, the Pirates) had texted me back with the following message: “Thx for txting. Get a taste of All You Can Eat Seats at PNC Park this season, just $35 in advance! Visit pirates.com/allyoucaneat. Std msg rts aply.”

I was taken aback. Did sending the text to the message board mean that I’ve opted into getting marketing text messages from the Pirates? Is this the only one I’ll receive or will I suddenly be bombarded with mobile spam from the team?

This reminded me of the ongoing debate about opt-in, not necessarily whether to do it, but how to define it. The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) code of conduct requires all mobile marketing to be opt-in, as does the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA) license agreement for the use of short codes (those 5 digit numbers like the one the Pirates used to text me). Yet a 2006 study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 18 percent of cell phone users report getting spam on their cellular phones, and two years later, you’d have to think that this statistic would be higher. If opt-in is required, how can this be?

As Issac Scarborough of Chappell Associates writes there could be a couple of issues at work here. The first is the fact that as in every industry, there are those marketers who will not behave ethically or follow the rules. A second issue, says Scarborough, is the fact that cell carriers are initiating a lot of what’s perceived as spam, “leveraging their existing relationship with the consumer” to get around the rules (kind of like the FCC allowing companies to telemarket to current customers even if those customers have signed up for the do-not-call list). The third, and probably most problematic, is the differing definitions of spam:

"Those of us with experience in email marketing," writes Scarborough, "know that consumers often talk of "spam" very differently than do advertisers. At the end of the day, what counts as SMS spam? From a cell phone users' perspective, this seems intuitive-- if I didn't ask for it, it counts as spam. For many industry participants, however, the question is less about whether an advertisement has been "asked for," and more if the consumer has opted-in to a SMS marketing campaign. The MMA defines wireless spam as "Push Messaging that is sent without Confirmed Opt-In." Since "Push Messaging" is the equivalent of un-requested or unsolicited, this does allow marketers to send SMS ads that consumers might not have directly asked for."

Scarborough's feelings about his experience with mobile marketing spam echoes my experience with the Pirates: it wasn’t obnoxious, but it was unexpected, and thus a little bit disconcerting. But I agree with him that if the industry continues to keep its focus on avoiding spam and nailing down what true opt-in should mean, most of us may come to accept the fact that our mobile phones are another marketing channel.

You've Got Mail Part 2

I’m a broadcast journalist, so I live and die by my teases and the lead line of every story I write, just like my friends in print live and die by their headlines and lead paragraph. Capture the viewer’s/reader’s attention and you get them to watch/read the rest of the story. Fail to engage them and they change the channel or toss the paper in the trash.

E-mail marketing is no different. Craft a great subject line and the recipient will open the e-mail to find out more – and if your opening is just as enticing as the headline, they may read to the end and maybe even take you up on your offer. Write a bad subject line and they’ll never even get to your opening: you’ll quickly become the victim of the delete button, or worse, be automatically consigned to the spam file.

This got me thinking again about those 43 e-mails I received June 17-25. Which ones had headlines that grabbed my attention? Which ones would the experts say were effective? And which ones were clunkers?

I judged them against advice from two sources: an organization called MailChimp, which actually analyzed the open rates of 40 million e-mails it sent on behalf of customers, and web marketer Michael Bloch of tamingthebeast.com. Bloch says there are two different types of e-mail marketing communications: those that require a hard sell (a traditional marketing campaign) and those that require a soft sell (informational e-mails, e-newsletters, etc.). Looking back through my e-mails I could see exactly what he means. For example:

From Pottery Barn (hard sell): Outdoor sale! Save Up to 50%
From the Red Cross (soft sell): Flood relief relies on all of us

Interestingly the folks at MailChimp found that the top 20 e-mail subject lines in terms of open rate (60%-87% opened) were more straightforward and less pushy than the ones with the lowest open rates (1%-14%). They say it’s all in the recipient’s expectations: if you’re a soft-sell organization that builds customer relationships slowly, an out of the blue e-mail screaming "10% Discount! Open Now!" would be jarring. But if subscribers have opted-in to receive special notices and promotions, then they fully expect a hard sell.

Bloch goes on to describe some general rules for subject lines:

*Should be no longer than 51 characters to take into account varying subject line display lengths of different software. I received at least three e-mails during my test time period that violated that rule:

From Allstate: Reminder -- Online Survey from Allstate not fo…
From Home Decorators Collection: Choose From Hundreds of Our Most Popular Pr…
From e-rewards: Get Rewarded for Your Time – A Study About En…

See what he means? I need to know what “Pr” and “En” are in order to know whether I’m interested in opening the e-mails from Home Decorators and e-rewards! Those two e-mails would have been an automatic delete for me.

*Avoid words that trigger spam filters, like free and discount, or punctuation like “!” and “$”. Bloch says that doesn’t mean you can't use them, just don't go overboard. The organizations that market to me must have taken this advice to heart: I encountered only one mention of “free,” one “discount,” and three exclamation points during my test period. However, I can find no explanation in Bloch’s writings for the fact that every e-mail I receive from Prevention Magazine is consigned to the spam file!

*Don't SHOUT (caps lock). It can trigger spam filters and is bad “netiquette.”

*Bloch and MailChimp agree: the use of [COMPANYNAME] as the first word in a subject line seems to help achieve high open rates. If you don't want to take up subject line space, put the company name in the “from” line, along with a human name. That’s what the on-line marketing education organization Marketing Profs did when they sent me this e-mail:

From: Penny at Marketing Profs Subject: Welcome to Marketing Profs!

*Use the person's first name in a subject line if you have that information, followed by a question. I got no personalized subject lines during my test.

*Create a sense of urgency without going overboard, like this one from Borders:

Coupon Inside – Through Sunday

*Describe what the email contains, the reason it should be opened and the reward the reader will receive for doing so. That covers the majority of the e-mails I received, like:

Get Tickets First for Styx with The Outlaws (Ticketmaster)
Chilled Soups & Summer Salads (Weightwatchers.com)
Weekly Specials and More at Giant Eagle (Giant Eagle supermarket)
Best Books of June (Amazon)

*Try to stir up curiosity. Here is where the subject lines in my e-mails from Marketing Profs hit a home run – you would hope so, since they’re in the business of dispensing marketing advice! My favorites included:

It’s Time to Socialize, People! (about how everyone – even people you wouldn’t expect – are using social media)

Just Say No! (about saying no to pushy e-mail campaigns designed to drive short term sales)

Shameless Marketing Stunt (about a viral marketing campaign called “Walk of No Shame” for AMP energy drink)

You Tried Hard. I Like You (about how companies – like Avis - that are perceived as putting in more effort are rewarded with more business)

Block also recommends testing subject lines before doing a mass e-mailing. This idea is two fold: you can test your spam scoring by sending to different e-mail services like Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. And you can test different subject lines to see which get the best response. One of my classmates laid out the following scenario: you need to send out an e-mail to 200 people advertising a festival where two distinctly different activities will be going on. Before the mass mailing you send out 25 test e-mails with a subject line describing one activity and 25 promoting the other. Which ever subject line generates the most response is sent to the other 150 recipients.

I couldn’t finish this blog post without sharing the two worst subject lines I received during my test – yes, they’re even worse than the ones that were too long to fit:

Plan A Summer Vacation (Pottery Barn). Last time I checked, Pottery Barn did not offer travel agency services!

New England July Connected Living (Comcast). Might work if I lived in Boston, but I’m from Pittsburgh!

Happy e-mailing!

You've Got Mail

I love direct mail e-mail.

Why? Because I signed up to receive it and it tells me about things that I’m interested in, versus direct snail mail, much of which attempts to sell me stuff I couldn’t care less about, with the very same message it uses to target my elderly neighbors. Because it’s immediate I don’t have to wait for a message that might be urgent – a sale I want to get in on, the weekly availability of concert tickets, air fares or specials at my local grocery store. And because it’s free, I can get regular communications from companies and organizations I care about, communications that would be too expensive for them to send any other way.

I hate direct mail e-mail.

Why? Because I get too much of it too often. Because it’s clogging up my e-mail in-box so that I can barely find my personal e-mail messages. Because I spend the first 5-10 minutes with my e-mail account every night reading a few of these messages and deleting most of them. Because some organizations feel it necessary to send me a message nearly every day – sometimes more than one message in a day.

I conducted a little experiment to see just how helpful – or bothersome – my direct marketing e-mail has become. I saved all of my DM e-mail offers over the nine day period from June 17-25 to see what I could learn about how and why I’m being marketed to. My findings? I received a total of:

*43 e-mail direct marketing offerings in my regular e-mail box
*11 e-mail direct marketing offerings that were labeled as Spam

Doing the math, that’s an average of 6 direct mail e-messages per day!

Of these, the volume winner is an organization called Marketing Profs, a really cool website I just signed up for because it has great tips for marketing professionals. They sent me a whopping 13 e-mail messages over the 9 day period. At first blush it didn’t seem like so many, since they send out e-mails labeled as from Marketing Profs, some labeled as being from “Get to the Point” (an informative newsletter), and others labeled by the “name” of the sender, like the one from “Sharon Hudson at Marketing Profs” These were the hard sells to sign up for the organization’s “pay” services, like the on-line seminars Sharon was pushing.

Coming in second for "official" volume was Pottery Barn which sent me 5 e-mails in 9 days from their regular website and the one for kids. Prevention Magazine (and its parent company Rodale Publications) would have ranked right up there with 6 e-mails, except all of theirs were sent to my Spam box.

OK, so what’s the point of all this? When companies send out too many e-mail messages – even when the consumer has signed up to receive them – they risk drifting into the realm of spammer. Mark Kline of AWeber Communications observes in a post to the company's website that many web-based e-mail services (Yahoo, Google, etc.) allow their subscribers to report messages they don’t want in their in-boxes, and there are ways of monitoring the number of complaints about an organization or a particular e-mail campaign. I won’t get into all of the details about that – you can read more at his post. I was more interested in Kline’s advice for keeping your complaint rate low:

*Don't Take Permission For Granted
When adding subscribers to your campaign, take a moment to think about what kind of permission was given to receive email messages from you. Has each and every person specifically requested to receive email messages from you? Was it clear to them that they were doing this when you got their permission? If not, simply don't add them to your list.

*Use Confirmed Opt-In
Sometimes it takes only one incorrect email address on a list to cause issues. If someone repeatedly receives messages from you they did not request, they very well could mark each message they see as SPAM.

*Send Only Valuable, Relevant Information

It was this last piece of advice that really got my attention. Clicking through on Kline’s thread I found an informative piece from his colleague Justin Premick that took the idea a step further. Premick says obtaining permission isn’t enough, and unwanted e-mail isn't just mail that's labeled as Spam. He states very bluntly: if you’re not relevant you’re irrelevant. He writes:

Relevancy has to do with whether what someone wants and expects to receive from you is actually what they do get from you. Start off by setting subscriber expectations. You have a number of opportunities to do this, but none more important than when someone first signs up. Here, you must answer two key questions:
*What are you going to email me?
*How often are you going to email me?
Once you do that, reinforce those expectations (and stay relevant) by meeting them — by emailing them as often as you told them you would, and by consistently providing value in your messages.

I went back to my informal survey to measure the stuff in my e-mail in-box against Kline’s and Premick’s list of do’s and don’ts.

In my case, I signed up to receive messages from everyone who has sent me one in the past week and a half. But I’m not surprised that Prevention/Rodale were labeled as spam in my network. If you’ve ever purchased a book or a video from them, you know that they have one of those insidious “opt out” check boxes on their order forms where you must remove the check to avoid getting their marketing materials (if you don't believe me check out their subscription form). That goes against Premick’s “confirmed opt-in” advice. While the opt-out might seem like a great sales strategy in the short run, if your company gets a reputation as a spammer you've blown your brand reputation, and pretty soon you can send out as many e-mails as you want and no one will receive them. Where’s the return on that?

My volume-of-email winner, Marketing Profs, sent me information on an almost daily basis. I don’t remember exactly how often they said they would e-mail me or what they would be e-mailing me, but by gosh, it was relevant, informative and interesting. So I'm actually thinking about signing up for their service (I'm on my free trial) – and I might even read most of their e-mails too!

By the way, they also win my award for best e-mail subject line, which you’ll read more about (with some great advice from experts on writing subject lines) in my next post.

Now Playing: Short Films as Marketing

I remember reading awhile back about the incredible success that BMW had with a series of eight short films called The Hire. These shorts (this one's called The Ambush) were created in 2001 as marketing tools, but they looked anything but, and no wonder. Among the directors chosen to work on the projects were Ang Lee and Guy Ritchie. The shorts starred star Clive Owen and featured well-known celebrities including Madonna (her's was called Star) and James Brown, and award winning actors like Don Cheadle, Forest Whittaker, and F. Murray Abraham.

Before reading about The Hire, I hadn't thought much about the short film genre as a marketing vehicle, but it seems lots of people are doing it these days.

One of the most stunning examples I was able to find is one created by Mercedes Benz in 2007 to promote the launch of its luxury SLR McLaren Roadster, which can be yours for about $500,000! For a car like that, this short, entitled Die Erlkoenigin (The Illusive) had better be good! And it is.

George Zabrinski (Robert Seeliger) is a crack photographer attempting to get pictures of the new Roadster as the car goes through secret pre-launch road tests in the north of France. Along the way he meets up with a mysterious and sexy hotel mate Laura Ziegler (Franziska Schlattner - who turns out to be the Mercedes security chief on the road test), an inexplicably bitter waiter and a dowdy older couple on holiday, all of whom eventually figure into the plot. After several dramatic - and sometimes amusing (one involves a goat) - twists and turns, the film comes to an ending that caught me by surprise. It runs on what Mercedes calls an innovative new platform called FLOADED, with an interactive feature that enables users to stop the film at certain points and go to brand profile sites via a "brand layer."

The cinematography, editing and acting in this short is better than you'd find in most feature films. You'll rarely see a stick shift or a bumper lit and photographed this artfully! Seeliger and Schlattner develop full blown characters with a subtle sexual tension -- all in the space of 10 minutes. The film even has its own soundtrack by the up and coming band "The Kilians."

OK, cool movie. But is it really effective marketing? I guess that all depends on how you define marketing. If it's selling me the car, then the film failed. There's no way I can afford a $500,000 car -- or any Mercedes for that matter. But if marketing means building a brand, then I think the film is a success. It's, fast, it's sexy, it's good looking and well made -- all qualities Mercedes wants us to think about when we think about their cars. The campaign also invites viewers to spread the movie virally -- there's an "e-mail to a friend" icon right on the opening page. I enjoyed this movie enough that I definitely will share it.

And isn't creating "buzz" what it's all about? My colleague Elicia cited another great example that took a different tack to create buzz with a short film. In 2003, Volvo created a mockumentary about the small Swedish town of Dalaro, where 32 people all bought a Volvo S40 on the same day. The film "interviews" these people about their "motivations," and even talks to "scholars" about the psychological and sociological implications of the phenomenon. What's more, Volvo later created another mockumentary "exposing" the first as a fake! Elicia says over a million people visited Volvo's website and half watched the original film.

I do wonder, though, whether the short film is already old news as a marketing device. Over a million people watched The Hire series of films, and they've become a textbook example of innovative and creative thinking. Fast forward six years to The Illusive, and while I could find some talk about the movie in the trades and on blogs, it's nowhere near the level of buzz that The Hire recieved.

P.S. another great marketing short you should check out is The Call, a short film by Pirelli tires, starring John Malkovich. Think "The Exorcist" meets a posessed car! Thanks Dan for the heads up on that one!

School's Out For Summer...

With all due respect to Alice Cooper, summer isn't just about "no more pencils, no more books" any more. For a lot of families summer is a time when kids spend more hours than ever with interactive media like the internet. Looking at it from a parent’s perspective, at the beginning of summer vacation, the days stretch out in what seems like a never ending string of hours to fill and entertain. It's easy for frazzled moms and dads to let kids veg out in front of the TV -- or to let them get on line and surf the day away. (Photo Left: my son and his *fabulous* 2nd grade teacher on the last day of school).

I won't discuss the physical perils of letting kids explore the internet unsupervised; there's already been plenty said about the fact that child molesters are out there trolling for our kids on line (our state’s Attorney General Tom Corbett recently said that, sadly, perverts look forward to summer vacation as much as our kids do!). I'm interested in the much more insidious psychological threat: the marketing messages that our kids may be exposed to when they’re on the internet.

It’s really scary when you consider how marketers have thought of ways to manipulate the littlest consumers – oh, and they are consumers! Many parents don’t know it, but marketers are using psychologists to research our children to find out everything about what motivates them as consumers, from why 3 to 7 year olds love toys that transform themselves, and 8 to 12 year olds can become obsessive about collecting things. Some in the world of psychology were so upset by this so-called “abuse of psychological knowledge” that they asked the American Psychological Association to denounce the use of psychological principals in marketing to children (read more).

This knowledge has helped explain a lot about my own son’s behavior. We were among the families that got into the WebKinz craze last year. If you’re a parent or grandparent, chances are you know about these cute little bean-filled stuffed animals with the web component that allows children to go on-line and care for their pets in a virtual WebKinz World. We stopped at four WebKinz, but left to his own devices my son would have wanted many more. The WebKinz World website doesn’t help. It plays upon an 8-year old’s innate desire to collect. Here, the banner “collect them all” is a call to action to hoard as many WebKinz as you can (there are more than 80 animals in active circulation) – a call that has now branched out into collectable WebKinz cards (think Pokemon).

So, while there are lots of valuable things to learn on the WebKinz website (children learn how to responsibly earn and spend virtual KinzCash to aid in the care of their animals), there are also blatantly commercial elements that, the Canada-based Media Awareness Network says, my son and other children are too young to discern. Even the most ostensibly educational websites have commercial messages – National Geographic’s kids’ site has ads for the new Indiana Jones movie (rated PG-13, by the way) and contest connected to the film. If our kids are being pitched to among lessons about environmental responsibility and endangered species, what do you supposed they’re “learning” on the thinly veiled educational websites for Lucky Charms and McDonalds?

In my mind this really comes down to parental control and using every situation as a learning opportunity. My husband and I are the ones who control the computer in our house, not our son. Could I shut down the computer and never allow my son to visit the website for a favorite brand or product. Sure. Would I be better to let him experience these things and then educate him about what it means to be a responsible consumer? Absolutely. The Media Awareness Network has some great resources to help. If you’re a parent they’re definitely worth a little bit of your time.

Making It "Official": Why Don't More Companies Have Official Blogs?

Why don't more companies have official blogs? It seems like a great way to interact with consumers. You get to put out messages and initiatives you want them to know about, and they get to give you feedback, good and bad. People are probably blogging about you any way at an unofficial blog. Why not get into the game?

Rich Julius a partner at the marketing strategy company Crimson Consulting Group brings up one reason why: your company's lawyers won't let you have an official blog. It's certainly a consideration. I can think of a lot of situations where blogging with customers could get a company into legal trouble. What if the blogger lets slip something that's proprietary? Or makes promises on the blog that the company later fails to keep? Here at the TV station our lawyers always counsel us to be cautious what we say in e-mail or on the phone when we're talking to angry viewers -- certainly this would be true of interactions with viewers on a blog as well. Sure, legal could review every post, but Julius says if you're going to sanitize the blog, then why bother. It's not really a blog.

On his company's blog (yeah, this company's definitely got one--check out their blog roll for some really useful links), Julius' colleague Karen O'Brien talks about another reason possible reason why companies don't have blogs: they don't have the kinds of experts on their staffs to make it happen. On her post O'Brien lists a dizzying array of 13 different areas of expertise for which a company might need a "strategist" to support their social media activities. She links to another informative blog by Jeremiah Owyang, a Senior Manager at Forrester Research, in which he asserts that to do social media right, companies will need an actual social media manager who focuses full time on the subject. Yikes!

Which leads me to another reason why companies probably don't blog: it's really time and labor intensive! Blogger Yaro Staraks says that a good blog should have at least one new post a day to keep it fresh and keep people coming back, so someone needs to be constantly researching and writing blog posts -- or recruiting others to write. Then someone needs to monitor the blog on a daily (if not more often) basis to see what's being said in the responses -- and respond to those if necessary. I can see how the task could balloon into a full time job.

I talked with our web manager Jennifer Pollard about whether the TV station has ever considered an "official" blog. We do already have 10 personal blogs written by our staff on everything from The Young and the Restless to the city's three sports teams. Jen said no, we've never talked about an official blog, and we started brainstorming about what it might contain. In a minute or two we came up with a whole list of potential ideas. For example, we get lots of complaints from viewers about why we tease so much. So I could blog about how television ratings work and why they necessitate the need for promotion and teases. Our awesome Creative Services producer Greg Loscar could blog about the effort that went into directing, shooting and editing the station's latest "Your Home" image promotion spot. Some of the station's individual blogs could be incorporated into the main blog, kind of like Dell computer's blog posts to their main page, and then to the various blog categories represented on the page.

Then Jen and I got curious. Do other television station's have "official" blogs like the one we were talking about? My first stop was the website for WRAL, the ABC affiliate in Raleigh, North Carolina. Jen says their website is one that's often mentioned as one of the best TV sites because they've been at it for so long and tend to be more creative and cutting edge than most. WRAL has no fewer than 27 staff blogs, but no "official" blog. None of the stations in New York, the biggest media market in the country, has an official blog either. In fact I checked out a number of large markets and no one has an "official" blog.

If any of you have found an official blog for a TV station, I'd love to hear about it.

When Will the FCC Get Sirius About Satellite Radio?

As a graduate student in marketing, a fan of satellite radio, and a broadcast professional who started her career in local radio, I've been recently watching what's going on with the FCC's foot dragging over whether or not to approve the merger between Sirius and XM radio. I've found the blog Siriusbuzz is a good place to keep up with the latest developments, which today include FCC Chairman Kevin Martin telling CNBC that a decision is coming "soon." Blogger Tyler Savery makes a great analogy between that lame answer and what your parents told you as a kid when you asked "are we there yet" on a long road trip -- without satellite radio, of course!

There was recently an interesting op-ed piece about the merger issue in the Tennessean, written by Whit Adamson, the president of the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters. It got good back and forth discussion about the pros and cons of the satellite radio merger that helped me crystallize my own opinions. While I'm all for competition because it results in more choices (and usually lower prices) for the consumer, it appears that neither Sirius or XM will survive without a merger, leaving consumers with fewer choices, not more.

Adamson claims he's worried that the merger will give satellite radio an unfair monopoly. I suspect he's really more interested in eliminating competition for the over the air radio stations owned by his members. The radio section of the 2008 State of the News Media report by the Project for Excellence in Media says there's really no reason for him -- or other radio broadcasters for that matter -- to be afraid of satellite radio wiping out their audience any time soon. Some highlights (in case you don't want to read it for yourself):

*While Sirius ended 2007 with 8.3 million subscribers (up 38% from 2006), and XM grew to more than 9 million subs (up 18%), audience growth may be leveling off. Arbitron says awareness of both services was flat compared to 2006.
*93% of car radio users still favor AM/FM stations, compared to MP3 players (19%) and satellite radio (4%).
*233 million people over the age of 12 tuned into the AM/FM dial at least once during an average week in 2007. That's a 1.6% drop since 2000, a relatively small decline compared with other media that also face competition from new technologies, especially newspapers.
*7 out of 10 satellite radio subscribers anticipate maintaining their current levels of traditional radio listening.

Why? Because as great as satellite radio can be for listening to music, talk, and sports, it will not soon replace local radio. Local radio has local news, local traffic and local weather -- and, like it or not, advertisements for local businesses we like to patronize. And it's free!

Plus let's face it: even if the FCC doesn't approve the merger and satellite radio goes away, local radio will still face competition from iPods, MP3s, cellphones, and listening mediums we haven't even thought of yet. So instead of lobbying against the satellite radio merger, maybe Mr. Adamson would be better off spending his time thinking of ways to help make his members' products more relevant to the digital generation.

If you're one of my friends in the news media and you haven't read the 2008 State of the News Media Report, here you (or "yinz" if you live in Pittsburgh!) go. Read it and rejoice -- or weep -- depending on which medium you're in. Better yet, let it get you thinking and talking about what we need to be doing to make sure our media continues to exist in the digital age.

Iced Coffee, Blogs and a Scarf

Has anyone read about the big dust up with Rachel Ray and a recent ad for Dunkin' Donuts? Seems said celebrity chef was wearing a scarf in the ad that shows her enjoying a DD iced coffee against the backdrop of some pink flowering trees. So, what's the problem? Believe it or not, the problem is the scarf! Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin claimed on TV that it looked suspiciously like a kaffiyeh, a traditional Arab scarf. Once the story hit the media, including multiple political blogs, Dunkin Donuts decided to pull the ad.

The marketing implications of this go beyond the initial story. While the blogs I've read have generally panned the Malkin's criticism of the scarf -- "Is this idiocy or what?" writes Jacob Hornberger in his Media with Conscience blog -- they're reserving even more ire for Dunkin Donuts. "Dunkin Donuts should never have caved" says blogger Charles Cronn. "Even more disquieting (than the controversy) is the fact that Dunkin' Donuts quickly yanked the ad," writes the LA Times' Monica Corcoran (156 responses so far) -- BTW, love the title of her blog post: Rachel Ray is a fashion terrorist. And MarketWatch blogger Jon Friedman (82 responses so far) says it "underscores the potential perils of employing celebrity endorsers. Dunkin' Donuts was eager to capitalize on the legitimacy of Ray, a celebrity chef, in its ads. But in a way, her fame worked against the interests of the food company. Celebrities can make consumers pay closer attention to products because ordinary people want to identify with them. But when the celebrities run into criticism, the company that hired them can pay a price by getting unwanted publicity."

It seems like Dunkin Donuts can't win the PR war here, even though their only offense is a poor wardrobe choice. Don't pull the ad, have Michelle Malkin and her supporters continue to rail. Pull the ad and have people criticize you for "caving to the right's fear of clothing accessories." So far I haven't found any response from the company beyond their initial statement that they didn't want a "misperception" to detract from their promotion of the product.

Here's what people in our business are saying. What does anyone else think?

You Still Gotta Tell A Story

I had the pleasure of meeting Bruce Nelson, the Vice Chairman of the Omnicom Group and all around marketing icon at the IMC weekend at West Virginia University last Friday. He was the keynote speaker at the Friday night reception and dinner. Since I'm an a new/emerging media class this semester, I was anxious to hear what Nelson has to say about new media. He didn't disappoint.

You might expect a guy who has come up with some of the most brilliant marketing ideas of all time to have it all figured out, but he's the first to admit he doesn't. "I'm a tremendous believer in ditigal," Nelson told the group. But "we are just beginning to figure out how to talk to people in a digital environment."

Nelson observed that everytime there's been a sea change in communication it took a generation for people to really get it. "TV -- it took us 10 years to realize that (advertisements) shouldn't be radio on TV. This is the best time to be in our business because we know the least. How do we connect the (IMC) disciplines? How do they work together? How much should we spend? What's the mix? That's your generation's job to figure out," Nelson charged. Hmmm I thought. Does that sound exciting -- or scary?

Nelson's address did have one comfort -- and caveat. It's his opinion that some things about what we do won't change. The biggest thing is story telling. While the way we tell the client's story and how we deliver it will change "without a story we are lost," says Nelson. So if we're good at figuring out what the story should be, and good at telling it, then we will still be successful no matter what the landscape.

Anne

P.S. Given his background and success you might think that Nelson would only want to talk about himself and his achievements. In reality he is full of surprises (he wears light blue socks with his dark business suit), self-deprecating in a very funny way (he makes lots of original jokes about his baldness), and he is a GREAT listener. Before dinner, he made the rounds of the room, stopping to talk to each student, asking what we were learning. Friend and former classmate Dave Michaels chatted with him about a project we collaborated on in Creative Strategies last summer, and he focused on what we had to say with great interest. He didn't say it in his speech, but I have to think that's another reason why he's been so successful: he listens. That's another good lesson learned. You can be an expert at all the technology involved in new media, but you still have to be able to listen.

Old Media (try to) Become New

It's fun to see how traditional or "old" media are scrambling to become relevant in an increasingly digital world. I've been having a debate with one of my classmates about the future relevance of Direct Marketing in the integrated marketing mix. She thinks DM is on the way out. I'm pretty sure that it isn't.

A study by the Direct Marketing Association (2005) predicted that expenditures, sales and ROI for DM would continue to grow, thanks to an increased focus on the Internet and interactive marketing. We've already seen how telemarketing is basically dead as a DM tactic. Now that society is becoming more concerned about the environment, I think that snail mail DM (circulars, pitch letters, catalogues) will eventually disappear too. But I predict that e-mail and the internet DM will become even more popular. Even now I'm signed up to receive e-mails from several retailers, and I love it. These retailers know me and my purchase habits; they send me offers that appeal directly to me. I can can either open them and be directed to a website for more information, or delete the e-mail if I'm busy or not interested. My dinner was not interrupted and no trees were killed in the making of these offers, and I get information that's tailored just for me. I can't think of anything more new media or interactive than that.

Another old medium that's trying to improve its image in a new media world is outdoor advertising. Last night I was driving on a highway I don't usually take, and noticed a huge electronic billboard. Between the time that I noticed the billboard and finally drove past it, ads for three different advertisers flashed past. The first was for a local minister whose name I recognized -- but it went by too quickly for me to determine what it was "selling." The third was for the biggest local hospital chain -- again, I missed what it was selling. Only the second ad got through to me: it was for a bank, and made the point that of the 1,688 ATMs in my area, this bank rebates fees on all 1,688. So, while this billboard may be high-tech, it didn't make a sale with me because its messages went by too quickly. And of course there's nothing interactive about a billboard, no matter what kind it is.

What does anyone else think about the future of these two media?

The Future of Interactivity (1996 Style)

We read a fascinating article in class this week. It’s titled “The Future of Interactive Marketing” and it was published in the Harvard Business Review in 1996. It was edited by John Deighton of Harvard and features the opinions of academics and practicing professionals about where interactive marketing was headed 12 years ago. It’s at once funny, prophetic, and surprisingly relevant in a business where even 5 years is a lifetime.

What’s funny about the article is how antiquated some of their observations have become. Martin Sorrell and Eric Salama, then of the WPP Group, speculate “there is a reasonable chance that interactive media – including the web – could transform the way we build brands and communicate them to consumers.” Yeah! Been there done that. Anyone who didn’t take Sorrell’s and Salama’s advice to plan as if interactivity would revolutionize marketing probably still isn’t in business.

The practitioners in this article were also prophetic. Patrick Barwise of the London Business School predicted that security would be a big sticking point to the growth of on-line interactivity and commerce. Indeed, e-tailing didn’t really take off until on-line retailers could assure consumers that their transactions were secure, and many people still don’t trust it.

What’s even more eerie about this article is how relevant some of the concepts still are to marketers over a decade later. Here’s a sample:

Dennis Carter, VP at Intel: “You’ve got to be a pioneer. It is very complicated to do (interactive marketing) right (because) the target keeps moving”

Martin Levin, Microsoft: “A corporate website is different from a marketing website” (more of my thoughts on this later)

Frederick Webster, Dartmouth: “don’t forget the basic lessons of marketing strategy” like knowing the customer, and setting strategies before tactics

Stephan Haeckel, IBM’s Advanced Business Institute: “the important applications of any significant new technology are usually unthinkable in advance.”

Smart, smart folks.

If you’re interested in reading the whole article it’s available for paid download at the Harvard Business Review.

Welcome to My Blog

Welcome everyone! I'm a broadcast news professional working as a manager at a television station in a major (slowly becoming medium!) media market. I'm also a Master's degree student at West Virginia University, hoping to earn my degree in Integrated Marketing and Communications next spring, and taking IMC 619 New Media this semester. In this blog I'll be posting my thoughts about emerging media, and some (but not necessarily all) of my musings will reflect on the impact new media is having on my business.

For someone like me who has a career invested in what some might call "old" media, the idea of new media is a little bit frightening. It's threatening the very basis on which television news was built, and we're already part of the revolution that will change us. For example, our website. Five years ago my TV station had a good (for the times) website, staffed by webmaster (the best in the world, BTW) Jen who worked days M-F in the office, and off hours from home. In addition to containing the usual content you'd expect from a TV station website (information about the station, its anchors & reporters), the website mostly re-purposed in written form content that had already been broadcast.

Fast forward to today: the website is now staffed by four people (Jen is the boss!) and covered 6am-midnight seven days a week. The site breaks news all the time, not just waiting for a story to be broadcast before it's published to the web. Site visitors can not only read written versions of most stories, they can watch them on-line. Plus the website offers tons of web-only content including blogs, slideshows, web chats, web casts, links, live video streaming of breaking news events to name a few.

I bring this up to make the point that, in a world where people want their information when they want it, where they want it and how they want it, making an "appointment" to sit down and watch an entire newscast on TV is something that a lot of folks aren't willing to do any more. And thanks to new media (in this case our website) they don't have to. Even older people are catching on. I got an e-mail from a viewer the other day who saw a promotion for a story about the dangers of some osteoporosis medications, and was irritated that she had to wait through our entire 5 o'clock newscast (it aired around 5:55pm) to see it. She said "next time I'll just wait to watch it on your website." That one statement has interesting implications for the future of local broadcast news!