Are misattributed comments worse than anonymous ones?

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Steve Hammer

A bit of a self-debate here, but I’m actually wondering if misattributing a comment is worse than just doing it anonymously. I’m certainly no celebrity, but I have seen a bit of attention lately. I also don’t have the most uncommon name. However, it’s more than a bit off-putting to see something with a semblance of your name as a comment. It’s part of a personal brand that’s hard to control.

The extreme version of this was the fake Steve Jobs blog. The difference though was that everyone knew it was fake, and appreciated it for the satire that it was. Online reputation is a very important thing, as I’ve frequently said. Comment spam shows no respect for attention, but pretending to be some one you are not is misleading.

The bottom line would seem to be that there is a real advantage to universal login systems like facebook connect, if its your reputation that matters. I always saw that as a convenience rather than a reputational benefit until very recently.

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Black Hat Marketing and why it is bad

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Steve Hammer

It wasn’t that long ago that I read this post by Max Kalehoff on SEO and Comment spam.  My blog gets hit by this mess quite frequently so I read it with fervent interest.  Max puts it simply: attention is a precious resource and such actions squander this resource.

I’d put it this way.  It’s a transactional matter and little else.  Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.  It is my supposition and philosophy that the best interactive marketing is a relationship and a conversation.  Listen, respond, improve, grow.  Business is sustainable, get rich quick schemes are not.

Within a couple of days, I’ve seen two more comments on this in various forms within my industry.  First Dave Evans posts about Comment Cowards, and then Marcus Frind commented on my personal blog about a bot which targets his userbase with spam. It’s pretty clear that there is no compunction about using these poor “marketing” tactics.

This matters very much for mainstream marketers because it adds noise to an already cluttered landscape of messages.  Legitimate comments add to the discussion and build community.  Spam erodes it and tears it down.  There’s an ethic to online marketing that’s very important.  The Internet isn’t anonymous.  Assume that your tactic will be on the front page of google search results with your name tied to it.  If you wouldn’t or can’t defend it, don’t do it.  It might seem cheap, but it won’t be in the long run.  It can get viral in a negative way.

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Perfect Product Placement in 10 items or less?

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Steve Hammer

Last night TBS aired an interesting experiment in blatant product placement last night with the new comedy 10 items or less.  The show was presented commercial free and with out interruptions.   The show was supported instead by two sponsors that were shoehorned into the story in awkward ways.  To TBS’s credit they were very above board and some what irreverent in the product placements.  The intro of the show more or less told there would be product placements and announced the sponsors.  The jar and bottle were taped to the main character’s shoulders during the announcement.

I’m still a bit torn about the effectiveness of the tactic.  On the positive hand, the show sponsor idea felt a bit like the old days of TV.  With the characters making product pitches, there was a feeling of continuity.  It certainly couldn’t be tivoed or skipped too easily. It will work just fine if distributed online.  The products were pretty omnipresent throughout the show, if only as backgrounds.  Frankly, a location of a supermarket makes consumer packaged goods easy to display.

On the negative hand, the product pitches felt completely inserted into the show.  Twice the characters found a sudden and extraneous need to use a product.  The pitch was all about the product and only that product.  It felt completely inserted.

I was also confused for a while about which brand sponsored the program. The pitches were pretty generic.  The lotion segment could have been any lotion, and the same was true of the mayo.  Compounding this was a lack of distinctive packaging for the brand sponsors, since the weren’t shown that close up.  To me, the Vaseline for men lotion bottle closely resembles the Nivea for Men bottle. In addition, mayo jars pretty much all look identical, so Hellmann’s could have been Kraft.

The two bottles

Nivea Packaging

Nivea Packaging

Vaseline Packaging

I tend to lean towards this as a failed experiment, but it’s still one to watch.

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What is local and what does it mean for my brand?

Posted on December 15, 2008 by Steve Hammer

I used to work for a newspaper company where the mantra was local, local, local.  The resources they had were in their area, including sales and content generation, so it was natural for them to focus in such a way.  The question in my mind is what it means for small businesses and other companies.

My answer is both everything and nothing.  The relevance of local depends on your strategy.  If you sell furniture, people in your area are likely the only sales prospects that you have.  People rarely ship furniture and to do so is quite expensive.  If you are a start-up brand with limited distribution as of yet, local may matter quite a lot.  Cooperative advertising with your distribution partners can be a cost effective means for building your brand.

For others it might mean nothing at all.  If your product can be shipped easily, and uses direct response channels like telesales and the internet, local media channels are nearly irrelevant.

The next question is what is the best way to tap into local.  Newspapers are obviously one, and even with their well chronicled decline they still reach vast numbers of people on a daily basis.  Split run advertising as with “zoned” products can bring the cost of entry to a reasonable level.  Outdoor is also a possibility, but messages need to be very simple to be effective.

The most interesting possibilities are those of event marketing on a local level.  Playing a memorable part in local events can both establish you as a member of the community and reach your target quite effectively.  Donating a prize to a Church raffle can reach quite a number of people and position your company in a positive light.  A table at a local street party can get people to sample your product and create new customers nearly instantly.  These tend to be high risk endeavors, as they either are very successful or go completely unnoticed.  The same advice applies here as with any other marketing.  Establish a concrete goal and be relentless about matching the tactic to it.  For one example, having your logo on a gift bag is superfluous if you want your product to be sampled.

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The Brands of the Big 3 Automakers

Posted on December 10, 2008 by Steve Hammer

Watching the plight of GM, Chrysler and Ford over the past several years has been a pretty depressing state of affairs.  Inevitably, people will say one of two things about the American automakers.  The first is that they no longer make cars that people want and the second is that they don’t have the quality of their foreign competition.  It’s likely that the first is caused by the second.

Unfortunately, many people are very wrong on the quality issue.  Check out this release from JD power on vehicle dependability, and look at the brands that are above average.  Lexus tops the list, but Mercury, Cadillac, Buick and Lincoln are all in the top 10, and all are above Honda. Ford is just above average.  I’ll admit that Chrysler still has issues, but compare that to Volkswagen or Volvo which seem to hold high esteem in many people’s mind.  What has gone wrong is at the root of branding.

Brands aren’t the most recent message a consumer absorbs about a product.  It’s the collective experiences a consumer has with a brand over.  If I say a word like newspaper, you’ll bring up not only the definition, but all of the parts of the experience.  You may remember stories, ads, a product that you can take with you to the restroom, or even delivering them.  You might also think of outdated media, bias, clippings you’ve made, obituaries or other personal encounters.  It makes what we define as a newspaper have a rich context, and it isn’t just shaped by the billboard you see on your way home.

The hard part is that negative experiences can be hard to erase.  This New York Times article references quality problems encountered with Oldsmobile in the 70′s. The companies have moved a long way since then, and Oldsmobile doesn’t even exist as a brand.  The attribution of poor quality is made to “American automakers” more than a specific car, era, or brand.  Even thought this attribution is logically no longer relevant, it still shapes the authors opinions, as I’m sure it does for many consumers.  I’ll personally admit that I haven’t owned an American car since the 1995 Dodge Neon that I bought just before finishing college.  That car self destructed well before 100,000 miles, and jaded my own opinion of the domestics.

This should be a reminder to all brand owners.  Even a momentary slip on your brand’s promise can cause you to lose a customer forever.  It’s hard to get consumers to resample a product after a dissatisfactory experience.  It might even be harder than acquiring a new customer.

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The PR value of management decisions

Posted on December 9, 2008 by Steve Hammer

The CEO’s of the big 3 automakers recently got plenty of flack when they flew to Washington to beg for a bailout in their private jets.  When they came back a second time, they all drove hybrids.  Neither was a very smart move in my opinion.  The first didn’t value money, the second was both pandering and didn’t show value for time.

It’s important to remember that as a business owner, you are a part of the representation of your brand.  There are restaurants that I no longer frequent because the owners were rude or arrogant to others even outside of the restaurant.  I’m sure that there are plenty of examples that anyone else can think of where a senior business person’s personal behavior affected your opinion of their products.

My simple rule of thumb is to assume that whatever you do gets published to the Yahoo homepage.  I used to use the newspaper, but they seem to lack the cultural relevance anymore.  That goes for everything from business deals to personal attitudes.  Consumers want to have a real relationship with their brands.  Make sure management behavior isn’t a reason they could choose to leave.  Living your brand is an important axiom.

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A basic point, new media is interactive, not just digital

Posted on November 24, 2008 by Steve Hammer

This weekend I met a fellow marketer who worked for a very old school company that shall remain nameless.  She used to do “digital” marketing for them, but they decided to turn that over to their agency and have her refocus elsewhere.  She went on to describe brand managers that didn’t understand the difference between paid and natural search results and a CEO that could barely use the Internet.  My mouth was literally open the more she described the culture.

While it’s hard for anyone to change a culture like that, it’s pretty clear that’s its wrong from the get go.  Marketing on the Internet isn’t merely digital, it’s interactive.  It’s a conversation, not a soapbox.  It’s not just a marketing channel, it’s a completely different medium.

However, it’s awfully hard to get people to understand the power of a medium they barely know how to use.  CEOs are just to busy worrying about other things to “surf” and learn to adopt a new behavior.

What would I do in this situation?  I’d bring up case studies both good and bad.  If it’s a competitive threat, it tends to get a response.  Take a look a blogs like the consumerist and see how often you’ve been listed.  It’s important to make people aware that people on the Internet will talk about your brand regardless, so it’s better to be involved than try to ignore it.

As I was writing this, I found this great interview about how ad agencies are changing their approach to interactive.  It’s a great read, especially for those that would call internet marketing “digital.” 

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Twitter and youtube brings down an ad campaign

Posted on November 18, 2008 by Steve Hammer

Johnson and Johnson pulled a recent print campaign for Motrin after significant online buzz revealed an underlying feeling of offense.  The campaign was intended to show they understood the pain that mom’s feel over raising their children with Motrin as the obvious answer.  The execution, however, showed anything but understanding.

By implying that babies are a fashion accessory, J&J insulted the bond between a mother and a child.  This video on youtube shows a number of people’s feelings about the insult. Advertising Age provides an excellent overview of the time line here as well.

To my way of thinking the failure was in not actually having anything to say.  Any pain reliever could have said the same thing.  If all you have to say is that you understand your target, you’d better make sure that you actually do.  In this case J&J and Taxi clearly did not.

Pulling the campaign was the right move in this case, not because of the critics, but because it was very unlikely to be effective.  I would actually say they were fortunate that people were as vocal as they were so they could avoid wasting hundred of thousands in wasted media buys.

There’s a lesson here about “common interest” campaigns and social media.  The buzz will say one of a few things.  “Wow this brand really gets me” or “I hate it”  With the instant communication options open today, it would be very smart to monitor the buzz and react quickly.  If you get the Wow, ramp up.  If you get the latter kill it and listen to the reasons why.

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What's in a name? The value of a good domain.

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Steve Hammer

Domain name sales have been with us for quite some time.  Since there can be only one yourname.com, the value of attractive domains can often go to the highest bidder.  However opinions vary as to the best strategy.

google and ebay are made up words that had little to do with their respective category until they became the dominant player.  Much like xerox or coke, their name eventually became synonymous with their product.

cars.com and weather.com are generic names that have taken on a brand of their own, but are very descriptive of the category in which they do business.

Plenty of sites do some work in between.  My ad agency name was created by removing the “ad” from advertising it and replacing it with ROI, (ROIvertising.com).  Since I made it up, it cost me $10/year.  This domain is a cute way to say escalate phonetically.  These take the approach of building a brand, even for small businesses.  After the initial purchase, all of the attributes will come from my investments into building a brand.

Others take the approach of using very descriptive phrases.  These are domains that you see and instantly have a guess to what they will deliver.  A couple of random selections:  I’m pretty sure that I’ll get apple rumors at macrumors.com and can buy lingerie through simplelingerie.com.  They are pretty good to be descriptive, and most of the work is done up front.  They also have some advantage through search engine optimization.

Even though my personal preference lies in building a brand, for many businesses paying the premium for a direct, descriptive domain can be worth it.  Natural Search traffic is “free” traffic after the inital expenditure.  Its possible to model the value of a descriptive domain by looking at the cost per click for the type of search and estimating the traffic.  Do the math and figure out your best path.  The answer won’t be the same for everyone.

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Small Scale Testing as a great way to improve

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Steve Hammer

The budget that big brands can spend on marketing and advertising can be startling.  Take AT&T.  Their 2007 us ad spend was estimated by ad age to be $3.2B.  Given there are about 300M people in the usa, that makes $10 for every man woman and child in the country.  It’s a startling number, but with my cell bill running over $100/month it’s still a small portion of their revenue.  Large brands tend to everything on a huge scale, but that makes them miss on some of the refinements they could make along the way.  If you were going to spend $3M for 30 sec of superbowl time, you really only get one or two shots at getting it right.  One big splash rather than a number of consistent dribbles.

The internet, however is an entirely different animal.  It’s possible to revise ads on a very regular basis, and test numerous combinations of webpage elements.  Its as close as a credit card and a bit of creativity.  There are even plenty of agencies that can help measure the return on investment of your efforts.

The smallest brands can play this game.  Bet it all on one backpage newspaper ad, or try to create a facebook page?  Experiment or go with tried and true?  Display or search?  Try it all in very small scale and pick the winner.  True results trump a focus group and the added benefit is the sales along the way.

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