Month: November 2012

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TV-evolution: second screen and social TV

Continuing discussion about different eras, started in previous post, let’s now direct our attention to TV era. In the light of American President elections and Obama’s data-based victory there are a lot of comments that  TV times are about to end especially in sense of using it for advertising. Customers became more clever and selective; they don’t absorb “buy it” ads, interrupting their favorite TV-shows. But they still watch TV… and chatting on Facebook or posting to Twitter or checking the news… What kind of phenomenon is that?

It is called the “second screen”. Second screen experience is the process when you use your smartphone or tablet simultaneously with watching  TV, which doesn’t fully capture your attention.

According Nielsen research nearly 40% of Americans now use tablets or smartphones while watching TV at least once a day; 62% do it multiple times each week.

 

“Second screen” became the catalyzer, which turned passive TV-watching into shared experience, now called “social TV”. It enables viewers to go deeper into the story world, find necessary information about the product exactly when needed, share opinion, participate in discussion about what’s going on on the main screen in real time.

“Social TV” is new interesting tool, so how can it be used by marketers? Different studies suggest various combinations, let me mention some of them.

1)  Engagement. Now TV viewers have another motivation to watch TV content –  they can be rewarded through related Mobile apps. For example, during the basketball championship March Madness brand “Dove” Men+Care  made a partnership with  Viggle (the app rewarding  for watching TV shows). When user was checking the broadcast, watching the game, he was re-directed to a Dove Men+Care page, where he could earn the extra points for watching  Dove’s “Journey to Comfort” videos, involving basketball legend stars, such as Shaquille O’Neal.

2)  TV gamifying. One more way to increase viewers involvement into TV ads absorption is to add gaming element, which is possible on the second screen. Great example is Coca-Cola’s “Chok” the app, which allowed users collect virtual bottle caps and then exchange them for digital goods, like mobile games. It worked in tight connection with the TV-commercial. Each time there was a music from  Coca-Cola TV commercial, the app opened and offered users to shake a phone. Each “shake” was measured with the phones accelerometer and users were granted with the bottle caps.

3)  Hashtags usage in TV commercials. By adding hashtags to TV commercial, brand can extend the commercial life beyond the main screen. It can lead to discussions in social networks and better customers’ involvement.

4) Synchronizing e-commerce with TV. Simultaneous watching and shopping was a dream for the whole history of TV commercials. Nowadays it may be possible. First steps in this direction were taken by eBay in the app “Watch With eBay”. By providing the information like zip code and cable provider and then accessing live auction, linked to what’s on the main screen, viewer is supposed to be able to purchase products, related to the movie star on the screen (Jessica Simpson brand T-shirt) or to the certain TV-show. There are still problems with algorithm of how to identify related products (now eBay app captures the whole stream and offer everything), but there is a real possibility for future.

There are many ways to extend the influence of social TV and there will be more other. So yes, traditional TV role in marketing has changed, but TV is not dying,  it evolves, transforming  its  approach to viewers.

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Mobile Era is wonderful. So where is “but”?

Several years in a row there are conversations about the transition from the desktop era to the mobile era. Someone calls it “Web 3.0: Mobile”, which came after the “Web 2.0: Social”. And it’s really so. Look around: with abundance of offers from different brands, everyone now owns a smartphone or a tablet, or electronic book with wireless connector, or all of that…

Recent research of Pew Research Center (PEJ)  showed that half of all U.S. adults have a mobile connection to the web through different devices.

Impressive! So many opportunities for the business! With mobile there is a possibility to keep in touch with the client constantly. Why? Because mobile device gives a chance to reach the customer in real-time regime, anywhere, in easy way. More and more brands nowadays are using mobile approach, offering entertainment, location-based services, news delivery, electronic commerce, almost everything you can do using desktop. Mobile environment is a new field for marketing information gathering, advertising and involvement.

Everything is so great… Where is the “but”? It’s right here. And not the only one. Let’s consider some difficulties before we go down to mobile stream:

1)      First of all, there is a problem to go smaller. Majority of leading businesses created entered Web world with PC-based approach, that’s why the web-pages contain so many elements. It’s different with small mobile phone screen. So now it’s a challenge for most of the companies to make a good mobile design, to tailor their web-pages for new micro environment, reduce amount of elements, but still be informative enough and attractive in usage.

2)      Measurement is another issue. Recent Forrester research reveals that many marketers still use desktop metrics to measure mobile performance, instead of using new, tailored ones. For example, popular metrics are traditional advertising engagement metrics like website traffic and visitor number or click-through rates to measure mobile ad campaigns. But these are desktop metrics and they are not effective for mobile devices, where the “fat-finger” effect is quite popular occurrence.

3)      Third point to consider is cultural or even economic. Some local brands should be careful in mobile ad campaigns financing, because mobile era has arrived, but mostly to developed word. Though many users in developing countries having the smartphone or tablet, it is still expensive to afford mobile Internet access. So research on such kind of market can show huge amount of mobile devices in use, but on-line marketing results won’t be so impressive.

4)      And the last point to mention. There are various types of “mobile devices”, not talking about the brands or platforms, it’s important to separate smartphones and a tablets. Time of usage, content consumed, the environments and user behaviors are wildly different. This point should also be considered by marketers, going mobile.

Anyway, mobile era is what’s going on now. It behaves like an adult in Japan and North America, is still a teenager in Europe and just knocking to the developing countries’ door, but it has already arrived, so get prepared.

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T-shirts again. What a great tool of making money!

In this article 12 Top community managers shared several secrets of better engagement. And one of them was “to go offline” and try to attach your on-line fans to something physical and tangible. What should it be? Flashmob downtown? Free cup of coffee or painting contest?

Social networks decided for clothes. Why not? What can be more physical than a thing you can feel with your skin?

That is why Facebook has recently opened the company shop on its campus in Menlo Park, SF. According to TechCrunch, shop is called “Store” (without “the”) and sells T-shirts, hoodies, jackets and hats with company logo and name.

Strange that it took so much time for Facebook to open its store, because, for example, Foursquare has done that almost two years ago. A lot of similar swag can be found on their store website.

The same did Apple in its “Company Store” on Apple campus. Its t-shirts “I visited the Mothership” and “I visited the Apple campus. But that’s all I’m allowed to say” were must-have for all the Apple  geeks the last several years.

Why do they do it? First of all it’s a form of publicity for the brands, but it’s not the only reason. If these shops exist for several years already, there is a demand for this products, it means that these stuff helps loyal customers to express their love to the brand. Moreover, now employees of these companies can show how proud they are of what they do and whom they work with. And, of course, in the end it’s all about building the community, because you probably think about common interests, tastes or way of life being geek, when see someone in the same T-shirt as yourself. So, brand evangelists, that’s you whom they are trying so hard for.

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Passionate niche for Paul Cubbon

“Who is John Galt?” – the famous opening line of Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged”. Only those who read all the three books in this trilogy know the answer. On the contrary, everyone in my E-marketing class knows, who Paul Cubbon is. He is a guy, who owns numerous amount of awesome indie T-shirts. Why am I talking about such random things? Because this post is about on-line based niche business, which combines literature and T-shirts and can be interested for guys like Paul.

Browsing around, I found the web-site of “Miles to Go”. It was started by Greg Kerr as one-man business, the on-line outlet of T-shirts, accessories and posters, designed under the influence of art and literature. Each T-shirt is a unique print, representing the cocktail of wearing and viewing pleasure, connected with novel name or certain character picture. Look at these masterpieces:

1)      H. G. Wells’s  “War of the Worlds

2)      “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac

3)      And my favorite “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley

Promoted by the social media, such as Facebook, Twitter as well as through fashion blogs, this brand quickly gained popularity among book nerds and marginal fashion followers. Through his blog on the company web-page Greg Kerr is promoting his rock-band. So now “Miles to Go” is no more just a shop, it’s a philosophy, which turns its fans into the community of art hedonists.

Today’s TechCrunch article reveals another start-up, which went even further. Litographs puts the entire books on the T-shirts. The project creator came up with this beautiful idea working as a data analyst for a software company. Kickstarter gave a good word of mouth to this initiative. Let’s see what it is about:

So now your favorite novel can be printed in the shape of nice picture and be bought just for $30, what a miracle!

Paul, how do you like this? I would definitely order one!

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It’s all about self-monitoring

Not just individuals, but each company now tries to be presented in as many social networks as possible. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, Flickr, Printerest…you name it. Thousands of posts, pictures, tags… Human memory is short even if you post your life on-line by your own, but company profile is managed by bunch of employees. How not to get lost in informational ocean of changeable data and still remember all the traces you left to cover them in case of emergency? There is a new great solution for such a purpose called Recollect.

This is a tool, which helps to archive all the up-dates, photos, comments and other information related to the profile from the several social networks and gives a possibility to download it to the computer like a zip-file. Another interesting feature of this service is the ability to search through the data you downloaded. Though, there are some other tools, maintaining this function, as, for example, CloudMagic, discussed in this my post. For now there are four supported social networks: Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare and Flickr, but developers will expand this list adding some more, Facebook being the first in the line.

This is a paid service, price is charging per month and varies according the amount of data downloaded. Three monthly plans are available (from $6 till $24/month), first month being free. Combining with HootSuite, this service can be a good addition to keep the on-line life of the company under control.

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