• Well-defined (easy to describe)
• Fresh (new / different)
• Accessible (easy to do or replicate)
• Immersive (engages multiple senses)
• Significant (is a big deal)
• Transformative (changes the way you think / feel)

Drori talks about how tired brands often use the medium of advertising to convey the compelling experiences that people have with their products and services. Take this recent EuroDisney TV ad, and see how the focus has been shifted from the facilities in the theme park (which everyone knows about) to the moment the kids actually hear their parents have booked the trip;

The moment when parents reveal a planned family trip to EuroDisney is always a compelling experience for everyone in the family, even more so because of the manner the parents undertake  the ‘reveal’ in the scenario depicted. EuroDisney is inviting parents to create their own compelling experiences for themselves and their kids around their product. Compelling experiences such as this have a high degree of memorability and talkability. These are the real fuel for your communications objectives.

Too often brands spend valuable communication budgets harping on about how great they are. Wouldn’t it be far more impactful to share the compelling experiences that customers are having thanks to your company’s product or service offering? Michael Schrage, who lectures about digital business over at MIT, writes today on HBR that when running a company event:

Customers — not your company’s products and service innovations — should be at the center of customer events. Make their engagement — not your messaging — the core of your event planning.

This applies equally to all engagements that you have with your customers.

Here is an alternative way of thinking about your ‘social’ customers’ journey:

Consider –  Customers commence their purchase journey with a list of  brands and products that are in their consideration set. Generating awarness amongst potential customers traditionally focused on establishing brand recognition through advertising and PR activities. These are still valid activities but increasingly the power of word of mouth is being tapped into with brands using social media tools to enable both employees and existing customers talk about and promote their offerings.

Research – Next, customers proactively research product and brand options in the marketplace, using the range of search and consultative tools now available to them online. To support the research step, marketing managers need to focus on search engine placement, visibility on comparison websites, specialist product review sites and blogs, affiliate marketing and increasingly the questions customers are asking within and through their social networks. Brands are added and subtracted from the consideration set at this stage.

Decide – This is the moment where customers actually decide where to purchase. Their decision will be 30% rational and 70% emotional. While price or value may be the trigger for arriving at a particular website or store, there are a wide range of other factors that convince, including; brand perceptions, demonstration of expertise, trustworthiness, service reassurance,  a compelling proposition and of course the views of other consumers. A merchant’s challenge is to present all of the information and reassurances that a customer needs in once place; incorporating rating and reviews and seamless integration with the key social networks.

Act – Having decided where to purchase the customer now proceeds to complete their purchase transaction, in the manner and at a time that suits them. The purchase decision can quickly unravel if the customer is not facilitated with an easy, fast and convenient transaction process. Channel managers must use all of the analytics and customer feedback mechanisms at their disposal to continually optimise conversions.

Enjoy – Having purchased a product or service, customers receive, use and hopefully enjoy their experience. Early interactions are key in confirming satisfaction with the purchase and will drive future brand engagements. What was the delivery experience like for the customer? How was the product packaged? Did the product function as expected? If there were problems was the support adequate? Were there staff experts available to assist or was there a peer support forum made available where other customers could offer their tips and advice? Were customers’ expectations actually met and did you manage to surprise them and make them smile?

Refer – Consumers have always talked about their experiences, both good and bad. Thanks to social media, each individual customer’s voice is greatly amplified. Clever marketing managers are both listening to and engaging with customers’ conversations about their brands. They are effectively  managing customer service issues seeing negative feedback as opportunities to demonstrate their responsiveness and committment to customers. But they are also encouraging, faciliating and even incentivising positive social referral; rewarding both the referring customers and their referred friends.

Repeat – Astute sales managers understand that sustainability is created through repeat purchase, renewal and recurring income. Think about it. You already know a heck of a lot more about your existing customers than prospective ones so you should be in the amazing position of being able to talk to them in a relevant and timely way about new product offerings. Furthermore, with existing customers you can bypass those expensive Consideration and Research steps by bringing them directly into your purchase funnel. Develop an integrated CRM strategy which rewards loyalty and offers a deeply personalised customer service experience.

Put the customer journey at the heart of your marketing and sales activities. Start by developing  a deep understanding of the journey your customers take.

There have been a few notable attempts over the years at developing interactive video. Remember that viral from Poweraid which had Paul O’Connell shouting your name at you because you were not fit enough.

A rather innovative video viral was released earlier this year by TippEx; a brand that you wouldn’t expect to be at the cutting edge of new media. Does anyone still use the stuff? This viral begins as just another video on the YouTube platform, but at the end of the initial video sequence, interactivity is built in that leads to a level of deep integration with YouTube that I certainly haven’t seen before. Check it out here:

The video has received nearly 14 million views in just four months, thanks to its inherently addictive nature and the large amount of comment it received online. I came across this particular viral through a recent Mashable article The 10 Most Innovative Viral Video Ads of 2010. If you have a little time on your hands head down nostalgia lane and see what The Times considered were the Top Ten Viral Ad Campaigns in 2007.

Google owns YouTube and also owns AdMob – a company that provides interactive video ads on iPhone and Android smart phones. So expect even more commercialisation of interactive video over the coming months. In other words, watch this space…

Yesterday saw the launch of PricewaterhouseCoopers 11th annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2010-2014. This report addresses the current state of the entertainment and media industry globally and offers predictions for future growth/retraction.

Bartley O'Connor (PwC), Minister Eamon Ryan, Susan Kilty (PwC) launching the Entertainment & Media report.

Globally, 2009 saw a 3% dip in revenues generated by the entertainment and media industry. This was actually healthier than the -4% predicted as there was larger than expected growth in Internet access and advertising. Between now and 2014, the PwC report predicts that there will be growth but that the levels of growth will remain behind GDP. While growth in digital revenues will probably exceed GDP, the spend in digital is traditionally lower than non-digital spend.

The migration to digital is the big story in this report. Internet advertising will probably overtake newspaper ad revenue by 2012, the latter remaining flat till 2014. This year in Ireland we will see a 12.2% growth in Internet advertising, while radio advertising will be down 11%. Within the next three years, PwC predict that 1.4 billion people globally will be using smart phones. Mobile consumption of digital content and services represents a step-change in how we will be using the Internet.

For those businesses operating in the entertainment and media space this migration to digital and mobility represents an enormous challenge. Existing business models are simply not working any more. The majority of consumers are still unwilling to pay for entertainment services online. The widespread acceptance of piracy coupled with the tsunami of user-generated content is satiating our appetites for now.

Eamon Ryan TD, Ireland’s government minister with responsibility for this sector, attended the launch of this report in PwC’s Dublin office last night. He highlighted the court case between UPC and the various recording companies which attempted to find a resolution to the issue of piracy. He suggested that “legal approach results in us missing opportunities” which could be realised by gathering the music industry, ISP’s and other stakeholders together to think collaboratively about the impacts the Internet is having on their businesses.

In highlighting this case, Minister Ryan drew attention to the bigger question of how to tap into and benefit as a country from the global digital economic revolution? In order to address this bigger challenge he is proposing to establish a Digital Futures Forum this autumn which would be comprised of a mix of representatives from all the various sectors and ordinary citizens. The remit of such a forum would be help inform government policies around:

1. Improving digital skills
2. Improving networks
3. Protecting privacy and promoting security
4. Addressing public service issues around digital (RTÉ etc)
5. The need for a European market for digital content and services

While such a forum, if it could be prevented from spiraling into yet another government-backed talking shop, would have merit in fostering greater understanding  between industry players and government; those players will still be faced with the day-to-day challenges of a rapidly changing marketplace.

Those in the business of entertainment and media are rooted in a paradigm where originators of content are entitled to be paid. While this paradigm is not incorrect, there are now greater numbers of content originators (me for example writing on this blog) who have no expectation of receiving payment for content.

Therefore those in the paid-for sector now need to find differentiators that people will be prepared to pay for. Quality, trust, reliability and predictability are perhaps no longer enough. New monetisation opportunities do exist as more of us are consuming more media than ever before. Apple has pioneered a paid-for model for music. Sky has championed the premium TV subscription model. In Ireland last Saturday evening, Tv3′s website received over 120,000 visits per minute as people searched for premium telephone numbers to vote for xFactor contestants; thus highlighting a definite appetite to pay for engagement with traditional media.

The entertainment and media industry is facing a period of unprecedented change. In the shake-down that will happen, those existing businesses which can identify sustainable new revenue streams will survive. Meanwhile, such a period of change creates massive opportunities for new entrants with offerings and business models which are responsive to shifting consumer expectations and behaviours.

The MyShoppingGenie was launched here in Ireland in August at two evening events held in hotels in Galway and Dublin. At the launch the audience was told how MyShoppingGenie was going to transform the way people bought products online. They were told that the first five pages of Google were sponsored listings and that you couldn’t use Google to find the cheapest products. However, one of the key features they highlighted was no more than a link to the Google Shopping search feature.

I wasn’t at this event but the half-truths I heard from people who did attend raised some concerns. These were to deepen as it was explained to me how My Shopping Genie intended to spread the word about the application.

Each attendee was promised that they could make money by telling their friends and family about this great new application. In order to make money however they needed to become a distributor – at a cost of $199 plus a monthly payment of $29. Upon paying this sum, the distributor is given a unique number which they then send round to all of their contacts. When anyone downloads the application they are asked to input a distributor number. Each time a user searches for a product using My Shopping Genie, the distributor receives a small sum of money.

Furthermore,  each time you as a distributor recruit another distributor you receive $50. You also receive money when they introduce new distributors, and so on. Thus each distributor is financially incentivised to get people to use the application and to then become distributors themselves.

Is the My Shopping Genie marketing tactic essentially a pyramid scheme? A pyramid scheme, as defined by Wikipedia, “is a non-sustainable business model that involves promising participants payment primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than from any real investment or sale of products or services to the public. Pyramid schemes are a form of fraud.”

Pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries. In Ireland, as reported on RTÉ’s Primetime tonight, any emphasis on generating money from introducing others into a scheme is illegal.

Primetime also reported tonight that one of the founders had been previously imprisoned for fraud. And Primetime’s legal expert suggests that under Irish law the founders could face further prosecution, under the Consumer Protection Act 2007.

UPDATE (24/09/2010): The National Consumer Agency today published advice for those concerned about pyramid schemes. Giving “tips on how to spot this type of scam, the penalties if you recruit others to a pyramid scheme” and instructing people to contact the Gardaí or themselves if you are approach about joining a pyramid scheme - http://bit.ly/cJXSfp

The most popular Irish Facebook pages include musicians, alcohol brands and Ryanair

A visitor to this blog asked where she could find out which Irish corporates had the most popular Facebook pages. The answer wasn’t immediately clear to me and a after a little digging I discovered that this information isn’t readily available.

Here is my best stab at the most popular Irish brands on Facebook ranked by the number of people that “like” their page. I’ve only included the pages that are managed by Irish brands. The data has been pulled from a number of sources but principally from a search of Facebook’s pages directory.

1. U2
   http://www.facebook.com/u2
   3,364,402
2. Baileys
   http://www.facebook.com/Baileys
   850,305
3. Westlife
   http://www.facebook.com/Westlife
   410,063
4. Guinness GB
   http://www.facebook.com/Guinnessgb
   289,963
5. Guinness Ireland
   http://www.facebook.com/GuinnessIreland
   129,026
6. Oxegen
   http://www.facebook.com/oxegen
   102,714
7. Jameson Whiskey
   http://www.facebook.com/jamesonwhiskey
   90,171
8. Captain Morgan
   http://www.facebook.com/CaptainMorganIreland
   59,918
9. Ryanair
   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ryanair/24694184960
   46,454
10. The Saw Doctors
    http://www.facebook.com/sawdoctors
    47,321
11. Hostel World
    http://www.facebook.com/hostelworldcom
    42,937
12. Electric Picnic
    http://www.facebook.com/ElectricPicnic
    41,278
13. Munster Rugby
    http://www.facebook.com/pages/Limerick-Ireland/Munster-rugby-club-fan-page/36613502000
    30,733
14. Smirnoff Ireland
    http://www.facebook.com/SmirnoffIreland
    28,346
15. Pogues
    http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pogues/
    25,910
16. Spin 1038
    http://www.facebook.com/spin1038
    24,543
17. Guinness Rugby Supporters Ireland
    http://www.facebook.com/GuinnessRugbyIreland
    24,118
18. Irish Cancer Society
    http://www.facebook.com/IrishCancerSociety
    23,812
19. Tourism Ireland
    http://www.facebook.com/Ireland
    23,452
20. Leinster Rugby
    http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dublin-Ireland/Leinster-Rugby/25793755239
    21,533
21. Discover Ireland GB
    http://www.facebook.com/DiscoverIrelandGB
    19,409
22. Starbucks Ireland
    http://www.facebook.com/starbucksireland
    19,232
23. Allhorse
    http://www.facebook.com/Allhorse
    18,735
24. Jagermeister Ireland
    http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jagermeister-Ireland/184728954003
    18,020
25. Ireland Deserves Sun
    http://www.facebook.com/IrelandDeservesSun
    17,967
26. Barry’s Tea
    http://www.facebook.com/BarrysTea
    17,220
27. Mr Tayto
    http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mr-Tayto/6763632581
    15,690
28. Irish Blood Transfusion Service
    http://www.facebook.com/giveblood
    15,669
29. Special Olympics Ireland
    http://www.facebook.com/SpecialOlympicsIreland
    15,181
30. IRISH RUGBY TEAM
    http://www.facebook.com/pages/IRISH-RUGBY-TEAM/50621768957
    14,907
31. Amnesty International Ireland
    http://www.facebook.com/amnestyinternationalireland
    13,736
32. Meteor
    http://www.facebook.com/meteor
    13,557
33. Topflight Holidays
    http://www.facebook.com/topflight
    12,438
34. 98FM
    http://www.facebook.com/pages/98FM/70730467584
    12,433
35. Champion Sports
    http://www.facebook.com/championsportsireland
    11,736
36. Pigsback
    http://www.facebook.com/pigsback
    11,460
37. Ben & Jerry’s Ireland
    http://www.facebook.com/BenandJerrysIreland
    10,470

I’m bound to have missed plenty, so if you know of some that I’ve omitted please leave a comment below and I’ll update the list.

Even the little ones are getting excited about Weedle

Increasingly, social media tools are being used by everyone to connect skilled professionals with the people who need them. Business owners and managers are creating Facebook pages to seek to spread the word through the largest global social network. When informing our purchase decisions we increasingly tap into our online networks, such as Twitter, to ask our contacts there what products or services they recommend.

Currently there is no single large-scale way of harnessing the power of word of mouth referrals for people offering skilled services. This is one of the big ideas behind Weedle and one of the main the reasons I joined the company last February.

Weedle enables you to create a personal web page where  you can showcase any skill, expertise or talent that you have. You can add text and rich media such as images, video, presentations, documents and many other file formats. You can then promote your skill page to your family, friends and contacts. This means that in the first instance they will be more likely to use you in future. But it also means that they will be more likely to recommend you to their friends.

The next time someone searches for your skill on Weedle they will immediately see in how many ways they are connected with you; for example if you both grew up together, attended the same college or university, worked together or have a friend in common. We all prefer to do business with people we know. Furthermore, anyone who views your skill page will immediately see the recommendations for you from people whose knowledge and opinions they respect. We are more likely to trust what people we know say before the ratings or reviews of anonymous strangers.

This is the thinking behind Weedle and already people from over fifty countries around the world have started showcasing their skills, expertise and talents there.

One of the early benefits of creating a social platform such as Weedle, where skills are the focal point, is that Google returns Weedle web pages quite high in the rankings when someone searches for a skill that happens to be listed there. In the same way as other social platforms optimise for your name (search for your name on Google and there’s a good chance one of your social network profiles will appear on the first page) Weedle optimizes for your skill. People who know you by name will search that way, but people who don’t know you but who need your skill, will search for your skill title. This is Weedle’s initial SEO (search engine optimisation) benefit.

You can connect with me on Weedle on my personal page weedle.com/brendan.hughes – anyone who joins early can claim their personal web address before it is gone. I would love to hear your thoughts on the concept behind Weedle and on how we have implemented the platform to date. Join Weedle today to see how it works and please, please send us your feedback.

Traditional approaches to online sales seek to draw as many customers as possible into the top of your funnel and then focus on optimising the sales funnel to maximize the numbers coming out the other end. Strategies to pile the volumes into the top of the funnel typically rely on expensive marketing approaches that are focused on critical mass. Since the funnel can only be optimised so much, the imperative is to push as many into the top as possible. But isn’t there something terribly frustrating with losing ninety-nine out of every one hundred customers that come to you?

The traditional conversion funnel, with volumes driven by expensive marketing.

An alternative approach is now made possible by the social web and the social media tools that are readily available to new marketers. Stop spending effort and cash on the large volumes, but focus instead on the one happy customer. Each individual’s sphere of influence has grown exponentially thanks to the social web. Your task now is to harness the power of this and enable and support your fans to spread the word to their networks. Optimise your megaphone:

The megaphone approach; enable and reward your fans to share

This approach doesn’t cost you marketing bucks. One happy customer will readily share their satisfaction if you provide the right conditions:

Hot Sharing – Forget hot leads and focus on hot sharing. At the point when your customer is happiest with you, provide them with easy to use tools enabling them to share their positivity towards you with their friends. Only you will know what a happy customer looks like for your business. Leverage all of the social tools that exist to enable them to tell the world about you. This type of word of mouth endorsement will be far more effective than all of the advertising that you might pay expensive agencies to create for you.

Reward Positivity – If you want to encourage positivity and sharing, reward it. Your happy customers will do it anyway but by showing them that you appreciate it, more of your happy customers will be likely to do it. Find appropriate rewards that suit your product. Give them discounts. Give them increased profile. Or maybe just say “Thanks”.

Engage with Your Biggest Critics – Believe it or not, your biggest critics can often become your biggest fans. Vocal critics online can have a damaging effect on your reputation. Often these are happy customers that have been turned by something in your processes into frustrated unhappy customers. Where they have legitimate reason to be annoyed, engage with them and show them that you are listening and attempting to fix the problem. There are so few businesses doing this in an authentic manner, that you might be surprised at the positive response you get. Where they are being unreasonable, your reasonableness will become very obvious to everyone else who is watching the conversation.

Stop spending a fortune dragging those thousands or millions of customer into fundamentally inefficient funnels. Spend time making it easy and interesting for your happy customers to become megaphones for your business.

—— YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN: ——-

TechCrunch Disrupt NYC – Attend for Free as a Guest of Weedle

I am attending, on behalf of Weedle, the TechCrunch Disrupt event which is taking place in New York  between Monday 24th to Wednesday 26th of May. If you are also attending drop me a line and I’d love to hook up for a chat. We have a second ticket for the event that we would like to give to readers of our Weedle blog. All you have to do is tell us why you’d like to attend and the ticket goes to the first name out of a hat this Thursday. – B

———————————————————————————

Social media purists will balk at the notion… using authentic person-to-person communications merely to game the search engines. Realistically, the businesses that are using social media in this way won’t see much return for their investment; since the SEO (search engine optimisation) benefits are fairly limited.

A blog is certainly a good tool to have in your search engine marketing strategy. However it is not the fact that it is a blog per se, but more that it is a part of your website that is regularly updated with fresh content covering a wide range of topics. You could achieve this without actually using blog software.

I haven’t heard too many talk about the identifiable SEO benefits of Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. That’s because there are not too many. Having them will certainly ensure that your tentacles on the web are wider. Ideally you want as many of the search results for your key terms to be occupied with properties you own.

It would be remiss of me not to mention Weedle here. Already we’ve seen some surprising results for people who have created skill profiles on the platform which has been live for just six weeks. For example, undertake a search today for “tax specialist San Francisco” or “carpenter, joiner or kitchen fitter Ireland” on Google.com and note that the number one organic result in each case is a Weedle profile.

The search benefits from engaging with social media are important but they should not be the reason that you engage with it. Social media, gives you the opportunity to engage in word of mouth marketing of your business. It enables you and others on social media platforms to talk about what’s good about your business, your products or your services.

Social media provides you with opportunities to enable your fans to testify to your greatness. In doing so, and because they are doing it on social media applications, they are telling all of their friends directly what they think about you. They are marketing you to their friends. facilitate, encourage and reward your fans who share what they like about you. This is what social media engagement can do for you and it is far more powerful marketing than SEO.

Facebook this week announced some changes to how they make this process easier for your fans. CNN covers it here. They have changed the “Become a fan” button on your business’s Facebook page to “Like”. Facebook know that “like” is going to get more clicks for you than “become a fan”. As you know, when someone “like’s” your page, all of their friends can see that action. This is the nub of how social marketing works.

Facebook also announced that it is stretching its own tentacles beyond its own website and is going to follow you wherever you go on the web. Each time you visit another website, Facebook will know, without you having to log on to Facebook each time, and will let your friend’s know what you think about the various websites you visit. Facebook naturally needs to take its application to the next level and with 400 million users globally has the scale to do this. Many have already expressed privacy concerns about this move, but Facebook’s scale means that regardless of these concerns you will start to see your friends’ Facebook faces, and they yours, on very many of the websites you visit from now on.

The social marketing opportunity for website and businesses owners with these developments is very clear. Old school digital marketing agencies now need to catch up.

Increasingly people are watching TV while tapping away on their laptop or smart phone; and typically they are engaging with friends on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and maybe even Google Buzz. Naturally conversations turn towards what is happening on the box and very quickly self-forming groups emerge of people commenting online about TV programmes. This has the effect of drawing others towards these TV programmes, and so the conversation grows and viewership of the programmes grows.

Last night was a great example of it here in Ireland where the Late Late Show “trended” worldwide on Twitter. This means that throughout the world more people were talking about the Late Late Show on Twitter than any other topic. Tweeters included the phrase #latelate to their tweets to show that they were taking part in the open converastion about the programme.

This way of watching TV is not new. We always chat with our family and housemates about what’s on the box. But the new technologies have made it really easy for hundreds of people located anywhere to engage in the backchat. In my house last night we had fun chatting directly about the show, but also reading and interacting with others online.

As usual, I particularly enjoyed Headrambles unique take on things which included some gems :

“Shoulda gone to the dentist. Less painful. #latelate“

“Had to leave the room. Missed Logan singing. There IS a god! #latelate“

“I’m voting for song 6 #latelate” (There were only 5 entries)

“To the people of the world who are wondering what #latelate is – you have missed NOTHING.”

“The only original thing about that lot was that John Waters has lost some more hair. #latelate“

“Someone please shoot Dana [and Logan] [and Whelan] #LateLate“

The Late Late Show trended last night, but there are many other popular TV programmes that regularly take over the Twitter-streams including; Frontline #frontline, Primetime #primetime, X Facto #xfactor, Glee #glee, Greys Anatomy #greysanatomy and sports such as Rugby #rugby, GAA #gaa and Boxing #boxing.

Plenty of opportunity here for creative-types to tap in to a new type of captive audience.

If you think you missed anything from last night tune into the still ongoing conversation on Twitter or here is the winning entry – if you must