View from 30,000 feet

An interesting post on Facebook about the wisdom of friends.  While the idea of questions is an obvious extension to a social community, and though I don’t consider this an attack on Quora or any other wisdom network, what I think is most interesting about this is how it continues with my previous post about the evolution of search and how facebook has a huge opportunity to own true contextual search. Another clue?

An interesting article about the intersection between apps and our personal privacy.  If one thought the debate and challenges around the online “privacy Bill of Rights” was rough, considering the challenges the EU has faced,  the mobile device will make it look like a cakewalk.  Especially when one looks at the utility of the device and ultimately the utility of the apps for the user being used.

IPhone and Android Apps Breach Privacy – WSJ.com

Few devices know more personal details about people than the smartphones in their pockets: phone numbers, current location, often the owner’s real name—even a unique ID number that can never be changed or turned off.

These phones don’t keep secrets. They are sharing this personal data widely and regularly, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.
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An examination of 101 popular smartphone “apps”—games and other software applications for iPhone and Android phones—showed that 56 transmitted the phone’s unique device ID to other companies without users’ awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps transmitted the phone’s location in some way. Five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders.

The findings reveal the intrusive effort by online-tracking companies to gather personal data about people in order to flesh out detailed dossiers on them.

WSJ’s Julia Angwin explains to Simon Constable how smartphone apps collect and broadcast data about your habits. Many don’t have privacy policies and there isn’t much you can do about it.

Among the apps tested, the iPhone apps transmitted more data than the apps on phones using Google Inc.’s Android operating system. Because of the test’s size, it’s not known if the pattern holds among the hundreds of thousands of apps available.

Apps sharing the most information included TextPlus 4, a popular iPhone app for text messaging. It sent the phone’s unique ID number to eight ad companies and the phone’s zip code, along with the user’s age and gender, to two of them.

Both the Android and iPhone versions of Pandora, a popular music app, sent age, gender, location and phone identifiers to various ad networks. iPhone and Android versions of a game called Paper Toss—players try to throw paper wads into a trash can—each sent the phone’s ID number to at least five ad companies. Grindr, an iPhone app for meeting gay men, sent gender, location and phone ID to three ad companies.

“In the world of mobile, there is no anonymity,” says Michael Becker of the Mobile Marketing Association, an industry trade group. A cellphone is “always with us. It’s always on.”

The article is continued here.

Facebook just announced Location Based Services integration, with Facebook Places. This is required viewing for any marketer or agency professional, or just about any entrepreneur. But from a marketing perspective this is going to require those who are looking at retail, ooh, POS or any environmental marketing to consider the social media, mobile and digital impact of what they do.

From a user perspective now you can not only provide your status update but incorporate the location, context and ideally the people around you.

But this is very significant for our business, while LBS isn’t new (its been around for years – the wireless company I started was one of the first to create Location Based Services – 1999), this is the first time its available at scale.  While Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and others have been in place the scale has never really been there. Now that Facebook has integrated LBS into its platform 500m+ people have access to this tool’s capability and over 150m people using Facebook mobile can begin to be using it directly. Users can now share where they are, see which friends are in the local area, and discover new places by following where others from their social network have checked in.

Some interesting things to think about:

• Retail, POS, OOH, Experiential have a new requirement and that is mobile and the digital/social experience.  How do you want your audiences to engage with your experience on the mobile platform while they are there and what will they be talking about?
• How will you reward customer loyalty? Provide customers a reason to keep coming back and “checking in” to places, as well as share that with their networks
• Places will be a wonderful tool for promoting business and experiential marketing as well as providing special offers.
• APIs and data of facebook places will be a great resource for applications, start thinking about how to leverage this resource of information – Marketers should be thinking about this as well as entrepreneurs.

There is a Facebook Places FAQ for Advertisers here http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=places#!/help/?page=1159

As well as a user guide for Facebook places here: http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=places

If you haven’t had a chance to see the amazing Old Spice Campaign by Weiden and Kennedy look anywhere on the internet and you will find it. The campaign, which did include the usual print, tv and other traditional media, really built its buzz around digital and social media.  It wasn’t just the creative idea which was brilliant, it was really the execution, production, distribution, and ultimately the ability to create and deploy almost real time high-quality content efficiently and I am sure cost effectively that makes it so amazing.

The campaign, staring the spokesman Isaiah Mustafa, a former football player, now turned smooth talking spokesman, responded to over 186 social media comments with funny videos including responding to Demi Moore and Alyssa Millano, as well as this one to George Stephanopoulous:

Re: @GStephanopoulos | Old Spice

and the entire campaign had over 40 million views of the responses, 94 million views of the youtube channel and over 120k subscribers.

The most important part of this entire campaign is this paragraph burried deep in this article:

According to Nielsen data provided by Old Spice, overall sales for Old Spice body-wash products are up 11 percent in the last 12 months; up 27 percent in the last six months; up 55 percent in the last three months; and in the last month, with two new TV spots and the online response videos, up a whopping 107 percent. “Our business is on fire,” Moorhead says. “We’ve seen strong results over all of our portfolio. That is the reward for the great work.” (See also: “OId Spice Campaign Smells Like a Sales Success, Too.”)

Spice It Up

Spice It Up
The Old Spice campaign has certainly garnered attention, but did it work?

July 26, 2010

- Eleftheria Parpis

Isaiah Mustafa, the buff, bare-chested Old Spice guy in the shower, may be the man of the moment. But it was Bruce Campbell, the B-list cult movie actor, whose droll humor introduced the world to the 73-year-old Procter & Gamble brand’s cheeky new attitude in Wieden + Kennedy’s “Experience is everything” campaign back in 2007.

Rather than throw out all the old, Wieden embraced the heritage of the brand, including its seafaring theme, but gave it an ironic twist to repackage it for the modern young man who might remember Dad’s cologne and appreciates a satirical take on that ancient history. The Portland, Ore., agency, which won creative and media duties on the brand in 2006, kept the cursive script logo, the clipper ship from the fragrance bottle and the whistle from the jingle.

Campbell was the first of many Old Spice men. Tony Stewart did “Armpit Marketing.” Will Farrell sported Old Spice in a 12-spot series as his Jackie Moon character in a cross-promotion with the movie Semi-Pro. As a former TV doctor, Neil Patrick Harris recommended Pro-Strength antiperspirant. And LL Cool J found his cool with Old Spice Swagger.

http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

Google is opening up the mobile platform to the masses by providing a set of tools that lets give everyone from six graders to lit majors tools for building mobile applications and being able to launch them on the Android platform.  Using a GUI the application lets anyone build applications without the need for a PHD in C++ or an engineering team of HTML 5 developers.  The application system also allows users to create “disposable” applications, simple solutions that fit an immediate need, can be built quickly, launched on the mobile device, used for a few hours and then disposed of.

Not only is this a direct shot at Apple, which is known as a walled garden on the application and content to their iOS4, but it continues to position the mobile device as a fully functioning consumption and creation device.

I am looking forward to seeing the new content available, the new marketing opportunities that become viable and the continued success of this mobile,  personal, portable and highly targeted platform

My friend Niel Robertson wrote this article about how he looks at business through these three charts: Distribution Curve/Bifurcated Distribution, Sigmoid Curves, and Network effects.  Its interesting to apply these different charts to current and future business models: Search, DSPs, Media consumption.

He also makes an interesting analysis of the professional services business as how it is counter to the Network Effect, in fact its much more of a linear effect – therefore takes considerable time and effort to grow and scale since adding each additional customer requires almost as much (sometimes more) costs as the previous customer.  This is very relevant as the advertising industry begins to look at potentially finding network effect solutions for the marketing and advertising industry for scale – a great example is Demand Side Platforms and their effect on the media buying and planning industry. Once you have established your DSP, your next primary cost is data, with some staff costs, but the incremental cost of adding an additional customer is lower as the business scales especially if you can gain economies of scale around data and audiences. . .

Everything I learned in business I learned from these 3 charts | VentureBeat

Everything I learned in business I learned from these 3 charts
July 8, 2010 | Niel Robertson

(Editor’s note: Niel Robertson is the founder and CEO of Trada. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.)

I’ve been building venture-backed businesses for over 11 years now. In that time, I’ve seen a sea change in how businesses are put together. Engineering approaches, marketing approaches, pricing, service delivery … they’re all dramatically different than what they used to be.

But what I’ve come to appreciate is that, ultimately, businesses live and die on three simple dynamics: Distributions, network effects and sigmoid curves (s-curves). Almost all problems (and most opportunities) come from understanding how to take advantage of these functions – rather than fight against them.

Distributions – A distribution is a measure of how tightly grouped something in your business is. For instance, if you plot all of your customer deal sizes in a distribution, you’ll identify some interesting observations. You might see a tight packing around the mean (average), which indicates that most of your deals are about the same size.

You may also see a bifurcated distribution – which means you have two types of customers. (For discussion’s sake, let’s say one has a peak value of $1,000, while the other’s peak is at $100,000). If you find yourself in this scenario, you’re likely heading towards a problem.

The advertising industry was built by people that didn’t believe in the status quo. They were sitting in their current jobs and believed that they could do it better, smarter, more creative and deliver more value to their clients.  They pined, they collaborated, they worked at midnight when their current jobs ended, they sometimes took jobs as fry cooks putting it all on the line, until the moment that their business finally began. . .and then they put their name on the door and changed the industry.

MDC wants to make it just a little bit easier.  With an idea and a brilliant submission, MDC will invest $1 million in starting up the next new transformational marketing communications business and own 51 percent.

I am excited! oh and just in case you didn’t know the email address is startup@mdc-partners.net

‘Million-Dollar Challenge’ for New Marketing Firms – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com

Venture Capital
‘Million-Dollar Challenge’ for New Marketing Firms
June 25, 2010, 2:29 am

The TV quiz show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” is about to get a Madison Avenue version, “Who Wants a Million Dollars to Start an Agency.” MDC Partners, the holding company based in Toronto that owns agencies like Crispin Porter & Bogusky and Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners, plans to announce on Friday what top executives are calling the “Million-Dollar Challenge.”

Would-be entrepreneurs will be invited to submit business plans for agencies in any area of marketing communications. MDC will review the submissions, choose at least one plan from among 10 finalists and invest $1 million in starting it up in exchange for a 51 percent stake in the new shop, Stuart Elliot reports in The New York Times.

The proposal is to be described by Miles S. Nadal, chairman and chief executive of MDC, at a seminar at the 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France. The seminar, titled “How to Build an Agency From Scratch,” is to feature Mr. Nadal as the moderator and Chuck Porter, chief strategist of MDC, as a speaker.

“It’s a great time, as we come out of the recession, to back entrepreneurs,” Mr. Nadal said in a telephone interview from Cannes on Wednesday. “There’s such an amazing amount of talent in the world today, to not capitalize on it would be a lost opportunity.”

With over $60 million in commitments?!? wow
Apple to Debut iAds on July 1

Apple to Debut iAds on July 1
Over $60 Million in 2010 Commitments from Leading Global Brands

SAN FRANCISCO—June 7, 2010—Apple® today announced it will debut its iAd mobile advertising network on July 1 on iPhone® and iPod touch® devices running its iOS 4 software platform. iAds combine the emotion of TV advertising with the interactivity of Internet advertising, giving advertisers a dynamic and powerful new way to bring motion and emotion to mobile users. iAd will kick off with mobile ad campaigns from leading global brands including AT&T, Best Buy, Campbell Soup Company, Chanel, Citi, DirecTV, GEICO, GE, JCPenney, Liberty Mutual Group, Nissan, Sears, State Farm, Target, Turner Broadcasting System, Unilever and The Walt Disney Studios. Apple has iAd commitments for 2010 totaling over $60 million, which represents almost 50 percent of the total forecasted US mobile ad spending for the second half of 2010.*

“iAd offers advertisers the emotion of TV with the interactivity of the web, and offers users a new way to explore ads without being hijacked out of their favorite apps,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iAds will reach millions of iPhone and iPod touch users—a highly desirable demographic for advertisers—and provide developers a new way to earn money so they can continue developing free and low cost applications.”

“iAd will allow Citi to reach millions of people on their iPhone and iPod touch,” said Lisa Caputo, executive vice president and CMO, Citigroup. “iAd gives us a remarkable level of creativity for creating ads to connect with our current and future customers in a more interactive style than ever before.”

“iAd is going to revolutionize mobile advertising,” said Rob Master, North American media director, Unilever. “With iAd, we’ve been able to create some of our most powerful and compelling ads ever. iAd is the perfect mobile format to reach and engage with our customers.”

I just started following Mike Arauz on Twitter @mikearauz, and while browsing some presentations on social media, I came upon his chart:

which refers to the spectrum of online friendship.  I think this is a very interesting chart as it creates a quanitifiable way of looking at the relationships between people online and ultimately how they evolve.  Now mind you, I do not see this as an absolute since it doesn’t factor in many aspects of “online friendships” and it does look at the primary relationships in somewhat of a vacuum, ie I stumble upon a site/feed/microblog/etc and begin to take even a cursory view of the content, and then become immersed into a relationship with the author, and if we keep that as the thesis, then the chart makes a lot of sense, and we can then apply it to a relationship with a brand and thus becomes another evolution of the standard marketing funnel.

Now I wouldn’t take the spectrum of friendship as the be all and end all of social media relationships to CRM, but you can derive a considerable amount of strategic influence from such doc.  I created a starting point for you to consider. Though not ideal, when you begin to look at social media as marketing it take a bit of the mystification away from it

Below is Mike’s blog post in deeper details, also please note the caveots on the bottom of his post, very relevant.

Mike Arauz: Spectrum of Online Friendship

Blog: Stream of Thoughts
Spectrum of Online Friendship
Update: Part 2, responses to comments here.

“What is a friend?” This question is constantly echoing across the internet. But, digital relationships (just like non-digtal ones) are not absolute. They are fluid. And online friendship is better described along a spectrum defined by the actions people take and how we feel about them. The more useful question for individuals and brands who are interested in cultivating online friendships is How do I move my friends from acquaintanceship to “best friendliness”? (as I called them on my Friend For Hire flyer PDF)

Last week I wrote about how online friendships are different from what we’ve traditionally called friendships. Digital technology has affected the number of relationships you can maintain, and the intimacy of those relationships, effectively enabling us to create fans who feel like friends.

I wasn’t finished thinking about the nature of online friendship, though.

Click for full size image

Mike Arauz Diagram

Passive Interest
This is the easiest level of engagement. It asks the least of your friends, and achieves the least commitment from us. But, it’s the crucial starting point. I follow my curiosity to you, I’m interested in what I find, and I choose to pay attention. e.g. repeat visits, blog readers, fans, followers, etc.

Active Interest
This is when I care enough to let you know that I care (in a nice way, not in a stalker way . It’s a small step, but a big opportunity for you to identify key members of your audience who are candidates to move along the spectrum. We don’t yet expect a response, we’re just letting you know that we’re listening. e.g. people who leave comments on your blog, wall comments, @replies on Twitter, etc.

Sharing
At this point the audience member starts to become a fan. You and your work become part of my identity as I use it to talk to my own friends about what interests me (remember that we share content for social reasons). I also have made myself more valuable, because I am now partly responsible for the spread of your ideas. e.g. social bookmarking, retweeting links, posting links and content to my own sites and profiles, etc.

Public Dialogue
This is the first phase that requires action on your part. I have either demonstrated an Active Interest or have Shared your work with my own friends. You foster a relationship by responding to my interest in a public forum. By doing so, you make the rest of your friends aware of my existence, and welcome me to the group. e.g. public @replies, referrals in a blog post, and references posted to our various sites and profiles, etc.

Private Dialogue
At this step, we begin to transform mutual interest into mutual trust. We are willing to share thoughts, ideas, experiences with each other directly. We trust each other with direct access, which has increasing value in an increasingly always-on world. e.g. exchanging email, TXT messages, IM, and direct messages on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.

Advocacy
At first glance, Advocacy looks a lot like Sharing. But, the crucial difference is that Advocacy means that I am making an explicit recommendation of you to my friends. It’s too easy now to simply share, all it takes is one click on your bookmark tool bar. Choosing to actually say, “This is important. It’s worth my friends’ time. And I’m willing to risk my own reputation to convince my friends to check it out.” e.g. same tools as Sharing, but different language; usually entails recommending the person or brand, and not just a specific piece of content

Investment
The brass ring of online friendship. This is the most difficult achievement to recognize or quantify. But it’s the most important because it represents the willingness of your friends to take action on your behalf. In the words of former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, “I know it when I see it.” e.g. Your wins are my wins.

The last tier, Investment, became clear to me in the wake of well-wishes deservedly showered on David Armano after his announcement last Friday of his move to the Dachis Corporation. I was one of those well-wishers myself, and was genuinely proud and excited to hear about his new gig.

When I think about people (or brands, or people-brands) who have had success at moving their audience from one end of this spectrum to the other, Armano is one of the first examples that comes to mind. This is why he was able to raise over $15,000 in one night for a friend in trouble. And it’s why thousands of people offered up congratulations when they heard he had taken this new job.

Look at what most brands are measuring in this space. It rarely goes much farther than the first tier, Passive Interest. We count visits, friends, fans, followers, etc. Unfortunately the reasons for these limited metrics have more to do with efficiency than efficacy. These metrics are the easiest thing to measure and they return the biggest numbers. But, as you can see there’s so much more value to be had as we move beyond those basic actions.

Your online ambitions can only be as grand as the quality of the relationships you foster. What would you like to accomplish online? As you move your audience from Passive Interest to Investment the possibilities grow.

Caveats:

* In the digital world, none of these behaviors, even dialogue, requires a reciprocal feeling of friendship on your part. I can be your friend without you being my friend.

* These phases are not absolute gateways. It is possible occasionally to skip over one action or another and to advance to the next phase.