Digital Influence Mapping Project

Welcome to Social@Ogilvy!

(this post is also found in s similar form on our new Social@Ogilvy site)

The Social Imperative

Brands will spend between 17-18% of their total marcom spend on social media within 4 years. They will spend more on social business solutions. They are seeing value and expecting more every year. 

The key reason? 90% of us look to friends and family for the most trusted recommendations on products, service and issues. 70% of us count on consumer opinions online above traditional media. And it’s only going to grow. Millennials are three times more likely than Boomers to look for a social opinion on choices they make. 

The future is brand advocacy. And it cannot be faked, gamed, or outright ‘bought.’

There are only three ways to connect with and build a strong relationship with customers and stakeholders these days. 

1. Deliver highly relevant content or service. This could be advertising, media relations or what we call ‘owned’ content (including valuable services). Now it’s all highly targeted and tailored. No more 360 degree ‘onslaughts’ of interruptive advertising. Now our messages must be deemed highly relevant to our targets to earn their attention. Lets use the ‘10 degrees’ that matter. Useful content to run a sustainable business from DuPont. Better ways to use member ‘points’ from American Express. 
2. Be discoverable in search. When people search Google, Baidu or Yandex, brands need to be there for all the topics that intersect between a person’s intent and where the brand can add some value. Ford on fuel efficiency. Hellmann’s on Real Food recipes. 
3. Earn our way into their ‘social graph.’  To succeed in social media, we must become genuinely valuable to the people we serve and earn their attention, their advocacy and their business.   Inviting people as VIPs into the launch of the new Ford Explorer in Facebook. Sparking a social conversation about the dreams of the next generation of Chinese from Johnnie Walker. Helping Hong Kong parents celebrate their baby pictures in a much bigger way from Huggies.

How we form opinions about products, services and issues is constantly changing. It’s imperative that we make social a new way we do everything.

What is Social@Ogilvy? 

Social@Ogilvy is the global, cross-discipline team of social experts from across all of Ogilvy’s businesses delivering social solutions to all parts of our clients’ business. This is new. This is bigger than before. We have been designing and executing social media marketing and communications programs for 7+ years as 360 Digital Influence – a specialty practice born out of Ogilvy Public Relations. We quickly grew to deliver social solutions for all sorts of marketing and communications clients. 

Now we have grown into Social@Ogilvy. We are a true global network with a common approach. 

Integrated Social Media Matters More 

The whole PR vs. marketing battle is moot. Social media will inform every discipline and deliver business value for the foreseeable future. Social media as a standalone specialty doesn’t make sense. All the power and potential in social based solutions comes to life when you integrate it into marcom and other functions. 

We design integrated social solutions that combine deep disciplines like crm, public relations and shopper marketing and rooted in what drives behavior.  We plan around owned, earned and paid media working together for a compound effect and at its heart our work is ‘social by design’ – phrase used now by Facebook but that captures what we do quite well. 

A Global Shift

We do believe there’s a new customer and stakeholder journey defined by the increasing impact our networks have on purchase decision and our behaviors. How we buy, vote, and form opinions has changed. We tap into our 130 friends (the Facebook average) to discover, consider, compare, decide and rave about products, services and issues.

This shift is happening in one way or another all over the world. Growth markets like China, Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey will define the next episode of social media use. They are all growing their social network use and outpacing western markets including the US. That’s why we have grown the world’s largest global team delivering solutions relevant in each local market.  

And it’s more than just marketing, we design social business solutions that use the collaboration and advocacy strengths of social media to drive value internally and in customer relationships while at the same time managing risk. 

 

Join Us

We will be participating or hosting 23 events in and outside of Social Media Week this week in NYC, London and Hong Kong not to mention a dozen other markets. Join us as we launch this new ambitious business. It's been a wild ride to get to this point and we would love to see you. You can find out more at our new Social@Ogilvy site.

Three Views on B2B and Social Media in 2011

More and more B2B marketers are blending social strategies with their digital strategies which themselves are just a piece of the overall sales and marketing strategy. This layer-cake approach to "strategy" is typical for the moment and represents an artificial yet necessary attention on digital and social as those disciplines are new-ish still. The cake will settle over time to be one, integrated strategy in the future.

Over the past year, I have noticed a distinct uptick in terms of B2B marketers developing experience and cases around sales enablement, content strategies, peer recommendations each with a heavy social component. 

Adam Holden-Bache over at B2BSocialMedia posted this nugget from eMarketer within a useful post on B2B stats: 

"B2B product marketers were spending an average of 3.4% of their marketing budgets on social media in February 2010, and B2B services marketers were spending 6.5%. Respondents expected those proportions to reach 7.4% and 11%, respectively, over the next year."

So, essentially the spend will double or near-abouts. That doubling is happening despite our deep dissatisfaction in how we measure the value of these efforts. Imagine when we all get better at that....

I recently published a post on the Ogilvy SellorElse blog about the B2B buyer journey. I wanted to share that plus two other strong posts from other marketers on the latest in B2B social media marketing and communications.  

The B2B Buyer Journey Is a Social One

by John Bell

"The buyer journey begins earlier and earlier. Even before a buyer knows they will be a “buyer” they are researching a need via Google, reading what their peers are struggling with, and forming ideas for how to overcome problems or accelerate their business.

We talk in terms of demand generation and lead generation in B2B marketing. Sales is a whole other matter. But the split between sales and marketing and the entire concept of “demand generation” leave out a big piece of what customers need: business problem solving...

...No big mystery that B2B business and tech leaders do what we all do when we have questions. They use search. We have become adept at finding our own answers and ultimately this leads to a much more informed customer base. Not only that but  business leaders wrestling with the overall health of their business are online as much as the tech leaders charged with implementing systems to meet those business objectives. Yet, only 29% of reps are prepared to understand business problems..."

Read the full post: The B2B Buyer Journey Is a Social One

I have been using custom apps at more and more events lately and really like how they not only consolidate the most useful information in one place but serve as a small, specialty community for the attendees. In this post, Eric Schwartzman covers off on this phenomena and I like is brass tacks description of a tactic that works. 

 

HOW TO: Market B2B Events via Mobile

by Eric Schwartzman

"Make no mistake about it!
The killer app for B2B social media at trades events is, believe it or not, the app.
But not just any app.  Mobile apps.   More and more, attendees are using iPhone and Android apps to network digitally at events, and marketing them in the process...
...So powerful is the prospect of mobile social networking at events that a number of conference organizers have already taken a stab at building their own, branded mobile apps. So far, the results have been mixed.  Because just like any other social media channel, those that go the distance prevail...

Read the full post: HOW TO: Market B2B Events via Mobile

 

Interestingly there is not ton of strategic thinking in blogs around B2B and social media. What there is a lot of are "list" posts which scramble together "11 things" or "11 Trends" or "11 cliches" and then there are tactical instructions which are often useful (e.g. B2B and SEO, Content Marketing 101, and so forth). The following post from Niall Cook struck me as simple, strategic and useful. 

 

Three Tenets of B2B Social Media Marketing

by Niall Cook

"...‘Social’ is not the same as ‘personal’ - if the social aspect of social media is about relationships – regardless of whether they are personal (friends) or professional (business contacts) – then the important thing for the marketer to understand is how people can switch between personal and work roles throughout the day. It’s a big factor in what GyroHSR’s chief executive Rick Segal calls the ‘at work’ state of mind. People can be physically at work yet at times mentally at leisure – and vice versa – but regardless of this, when they are using social media they are still social..."

Read the full post: Three Tenets of B2B Social Media Marketing

A Marketer's Look at Social Media in Vietnam circa 2011

I met up with Thu An Nguyen Ha at our Hong Kong Summit.  She leads strategy for clients out of from our Vietnam 360 Digital Influence team. I was struck from her by how fast social media is being adopted in Vietnam. Combine that with the economic enthusiasm in the country and I would guess we will see big leaps forward there. 

I asked her about what is hot and happening there now in relation to brands and social media.

 

Q: What would you say are 1-2 defining characteristics of the social media world in Vietnam today? 

A:  The social media world in Vietnam today is going through an experimental phrase for all those who embrace it: users, developers, and brands.  Adaptation from successful global entities kicks off with some interesting platforms like social network ZingMe (facebook inspired), linkhay microblog equivalent of twitter, two.vn answer to foursquare, and recently in the last 6 months we saw an aggressive development of group buying sites such as nhommua (similar to groupon).  

Vietnamese social media users are loyal to their platforms. This might sound obvious as we’re community creatures but this basically means individual blogs, bloggers and influencers don’t exist or stand out without being attached to a mass and popular community.  And yes it’s true, to be fair, Facebook has replaced the Yahoo!360 phenomenon and 'facebookers,' anyone really, who has more than 2,000 fans can be considered an influencer. 

Social media in the eyes of brands and marketers in Vietnam today is starting to be ‘noticed’ – with the same mentality of discovering what platforms can bring to their integrated digital communication plan. There’s a feeling of almost ‘testing the water’ and trying out different ways to engage in social media effectively.

The majority of social media ‘pro’ brands are the FMCGs or consumer goods companies such as Unilever, Dell (technology & communication industry), Coca-cola, etc. All the development seem to be in-sync together: platforms are setting up while brands are also still figuring out which are the best and where audiences and users are also choosing to base their own social graphs. Although I must admit Facebook in most cases still wins over the mentality of the current ‘best’ preferable platform. If we didn’t suffer the limited access, I have total confidence that Facebook would have grown well beyond the current limited 1.4mill users. 

Q: More and more brands are experimenting with social media for marcom purposes. For a typical B2C marketer what would your top three recommendations be? 

A: I can't stress enough the importance of developing a strategic approach to social media. Some brands consider it’s just production, an add on to their digital communication plan. Most don’t have a clue what the role of their Facebook page should be, while others can't think of anything else but creating a Facebook page.  The normal pattern we see would be brands jumping straight onto the social media wave without understanding the nature of it. So I would say think hard on a strategy and the objectives that would help a brand drive their total brand goals or communication goals. 

Secondly, content. Brands, by large, are still thinking of one-way communication and not really thinking from a consumer perspective. The standard behavior of wanting to push out messages, campaign and programs without having a good story or asking the basic questions like how can I involve my audiences, what value do I bring to them, and how can I be a part of my consumers' conversations.  Conversations in social media require solid, interesting, relevant and almost unique type of communication where content is at the core of everything. Develop a social media conversation/content plan to tie in with your audience's behavior and preferences and then marry these with your branded content. Alternatively, create content uniquely for social media as those are actually quite cost effective.

Be Brave – I would say. Brands should at least start to realize and take up the belief that social media is changing the way they’re operating, do business and communicate with their audiences and customers.  Companies who are already doing digital work, especially great work, need to move fast into the area of social media, get a good advisor/agency and embark on the social media path. 

Typically PR managers – who would normally view digital as a brand manager or marketer job, should have the courage to do ‘social’. The ‘social’ territory might seem vague and mysterious, probably due to the fact that PR managers are not familiar with the possibility of having proper, effective measurement for social media programs. In addition, brand managers can start to venture into the area of applying social media to drive business impact that goes beyond brand awareness. 

 

Q: Which brand(s) is doing something interesting in social media in Vietnam and why? 

A: I would say Coca-cola (Coke). Instead of using the globally aligned Facebook platform, Coke in Vietnam has identified its target audience locally: targeting a younger crowd, focus on a teen to the first-jobbers market that is also the biggest internet users segment in Vietnam. 

Coke connected with the young spirit of online users and most of the population who loved to be entertained, via the most popular SNS platform ZingMe. Using the already massive user database and network, Coke built a site that sits within the community. With the new direction of ZingMe going less gaming and moving into more communication, it would be interesting to see how the Coke community within ZingMe grows. 

A few international brands in Vietnam have started to plug-in their global/regional program of establishing Facebook counts despite the difficulty in access. We see Dell, Adidas, HTC, Ford, Vietnam Airlines etc… operating here. Hence the question very soon would be which brands have the successful Facebook cases and doing great things in this platform.

Q: Any new technology/platform  that excites you?

A: To be fair, ZingMe development kinda excites me a bit as they will be growing more towards the direction of communication rather than just games. ZingMe has a perceived perception as a very young, teen-like platform where nothing serious is going on there, this will soon change. We already see a few big brands taking the interest in building brand presence within the community and I would be keen to see. 

Geo-location based is another one that I keep my eyes on. Since Foursquare we now see services that mimic this global trend being adopted here. Brands have not been ‘brave’ enough to invest in this, but Vietnamese users favor location & activities sharing and the mobile communications, and this will push these platforms forward. I do hope to see great mobile campaigns!

 

Will Data, the Crowd or Personal Guides Deliver the Golden Age of Travel?

Is it just me or is the social Web alive with travel innovation? This coming from a guy who diligently fed data into Dopplr for years without any apparent pay-off. So, I am a bit of a sucker for anything to do with travel. Still, I think there is reason for even more critical folks to be encouraged, excited even, about what is coming in travel innovation. 

A month ago, I met the CEO of Jetsetter when we both spoke at the Digital CMO Summit. That day, he introduced the new Jetsetter iPad app which is a beautiful gem. I love all of the Gilt group deal offerings. They are so not-Groupon. Essentially, the app takes a great idea and makes it look and navigate terrifically. It doesn't change it. That's where the personal guides come in.

Personal Guides

It's probably more accurate to call this new category of service 'personalized guides." Drew Patterson revealed that Jetsetter was starting a service for a fee where travelers could query Jetsetter experts from around the world for personalized itineraries in certain locations. Of course I lost my magic postcard which held my invitation to take advantage of that service. Still, I love the idea. 

Now you can do same through Fortnighter. For somewhere between $100-$250 you can get somewhat personalized recommendations from hotels to restaurants to activities. The service only lets you personalize so much. And it caters to the single or couples traveler. That leaves me and my family a wee bit left out. Still, I like the notion of concierge-like service and I believe in the premise - if I am going to invest a chunk of money and time to go to Istanbul with my family (true - going this July), then I would be willing for some local guidance on what to do there that deviates from the beaten tourist path while letting us find the really good pizza in town.

Still another example is really not an example fo a social enablement. Its more an example of how niche travel may find an audience. Political Tours offers travel itineraries around political history. A tour focused on Turkey Elections 2011 would include really cool events like this one:

"Day 3 Turkish foreign policy – moving eastward? A panel discussion with leading Turkish commentators. Lunch at Imroz in Nevizade with an introduction to the Tarlabasi district: urban projects and gentrification. Guided Walk through Tarlabasi with Constanze Leitsch, a migration expert. Visit to Kürt Kav, a Kurdish foundation, a Greek Church with Father Dositeos. Meetings with local artisans. Dinner with NGO activists"

I love this experiential approach to travel and wish I could "sample" it while there. My family would not appreciate a full immersive, multi-day focus on politics. Nor would they agree to me slithering off to do this on my own. 

The Crowd

While still people-powered, another way to go is Wizard Istanbul (thanks, as always, to Springwise) The service operated by the Culture and Tourism Ministry of Turkey, lets me ask a question via Twitter and Facebook and someone - presumably another traveler, resident or the Wizard, him/herself will answer. I submitted a couple of questions around whirling dervish ceremonies/performances and pizza. We will see what the crowd comes back with.

The service recruits writers willing to answer the questions. This is a terrific service from a forward-thinking ministry. I suppose it's possible that the service will get overrun by spammers or folks with commercial interests (disappointing to realize that most hotel concierges make recommendations for places that kickback a fee). For now, I prefer to keep my naive hat on and will plan on using the service before and while I am there.

Data

Marketers get frothy just thinking about how new access to data can deliver value for customers and brands. I remember a financial services company had an ambition to let member's access aggregate member data on the restaurants they most frequented - "X  members prefer Le Cirque over the Jockey Club." It fell apart when data revealed that most members went to McDonald's.

I tend to like to think of myself as the travel who shuns the usual touristy destinations (yes, same guy who asked about Whirling Dervishes in Istanbul). Aggregate data scares me as it suggests using the great median as a guide. 

 
But there are exceptions. These maps from Eric Fisher (and collected here on the Dohop blog - thanks to Datamining) plot out photographs from Flickr on top of city maps. Blue dots are from locals and the red dots are pix taken by visitors. This one is from Sydney where I just returned from. 

Here's why this particular data is helpful. We take pictures of memorable or remarkable scenes. Sometimes this is highly personal. Other times what I find photo-worthy, you will too. These maps tell me what others have felt worth a photo - something they found remarkable or memorable. As a traveler, I could use that. Imagine taking this data and mapping other data about the images (thumbnails or tags?) or from another source like FourSquare. Could we come up with maps of remarkable moments and vistas that others could tap into easily?

 

I tend to think that the more personal, human-powered services offer the most cool innovations currently. But data is on its way. We just cant forget that cool data can only get you so far. One must have a business model to support the services rendered, as well. 

Digital and Social Innovation in Asia

About 60 of our Digital Influence strategists from across Asia descended upon Hong Kong last week for our Black Belt Summit. We had worksessions on a boat, a great meal on a "Thai" beach, and even bet on the ponies as we say in America. This is our 4th Summit in about as many years and I was struck by the following highlights including the appetite for iPads:

Integrated Social Media on the Rise

Our strong hubs in Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing/Shanghai and Australia are pleasantly infecting all of our business in those markets and the region. That means that we are truly walking the walk of "integrated social media" which blends paid, owned and earned media to deliver a bigger impact. 

Fast Growth

The rate of growth in Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Taiwan, and the Philippines confirms that these markets are firmly in the "experimentation" phase of social media adoption and will start to evolve into operationalizing this year. The rate of adoption in these markets and others worldwide is the x-factor that make it impossible to make accurate predictions about social media spend. In general, we all underestimate how fast social media is getting applied to marketing and communications in these markets. 

• Check out these posts on social media in Vietnam
• And this wiki on Malaysia (and other parts of Asia)

China Social Network Map

Most markets have embraced Facebook pages as a cornerstone of their social strategy. Our teams and clients are actively managing these spaces via conversation calendars. The 700 million-pound-gorilla known as Facebook has proven its relevance in all but the Chinese market. There, market conditions still favor the home-grown social networks. See this China Social Network map from our team. 

iPad for Business

While the US is known for its endless device hunger - we adopt more varieties of devices that some other markets - about 1/6 of the 17 million Ipad 1&2's were sold in Asia. You can actually learn a bit more of how brands are using iPad-based solutions by checking out our iPad for Business presentation which includes work from Cathay Pacific, Burberry and my personal favorite, Jetsetter.

Making Products Speak for Themselves via Mobile & Social

Purpose-driven marketing is gaining in popularity amongst major marketers. Phillip Kotler outlined a clear view of it in Marketing 3.0 and big consumer products companies like P&G and Unilever are making hay with the concept. In short:

"...Part of that is rise of "purpose-driven marketing" which is a thesis about the strength of a company that has a higher mission when combining its community mission with its business mission. Brands see a future where the constant product variation that fueled sales in the FMCG world - new flavors, new packaging, new brand positioning - will not drive sales nor loyalty from customers going into the future." 

As marketers look for more ways to be 'of-use' to consumers at retail, they could help us all make product decisions at that moment we stand in the aisle by letting us review the pedigree of the product via our mobile device. 

Access to the 'Purpose' at the Shelf

The IOU Project is about to launch and aims to outfit clothing with QR Codes that will reveal the story behind each product. Now, they have a very particular platform that is very pro-craftsman. You will be able to trace the provenance of your shirt back to the individual weaver. That's one way to make the idea of product provenance come to life. 

But what if a major consumer products goods company used their QR Code (or even a branded visual target) to give instant access to:

1. the sustainability story behind the product: connects the broad sustainability activities of a global brand with the product that people choose

2. an introduction to some of the people behind the product: builds a personal connection with the big, faceless enterprise (here's how a small example of how we did it with Ford Explorer)

3. suggestions for how the consumer could be a part of a larger solution on a relevant issue: acknowledges that we are all in this together and invites the consumer to take part

Using your smart phone and your code reader, you could quickly point and get a baseball card-summary of the story of your products with links into more - like the video of the creators - and a way to bookmark or save these product summaries in a way that would be useful to you.

And once you have done 1-3, there is no reason you couldn't offer more information about performance and benefits of the product. Sound backward? Shouldn't we lead with that type of information ("more scientifically-proven moisturizing globulets..," "heated steering wheels..," "New 100 mega-pixel camera!")? Maybe, but if you buy into Marketing 3.0, it is these additional attributes that feed our heart and spirit that may drive product selection more and more. 


From a Presentation by Phillip Kotler on Marketing 3.0

Jumpstart your UX Team for Mobile

Thanks to my regular read, Springwise, I saw these awesomely handy design templates for all types of user experience/interface design including smartphones. I am a digital creative director by background and have spent many years sweating over interface design issues for brands like Discovery, Microsoft, Viacom and others. There is so much art and science in UX design that those with years of experience learning the subtleties of what is likely to work best are really more valuable designers. 

Then why do I want to buy pads and pads of these templates and hand them out to not just the UX teams but the account teams across the agency? Sacrilege! Chaos! The downfall of all that is orderly and tight! Possibly. 

This simple innovation democratizes design of a user experience. At the very least it may motivate the "web design" team to stop forgetting about the mobile site that should always be created at the same tome as the main site. 

Making Mobile Interface a Default
Imagine these little pads on every designers desk. Suddenly its harder for everyone to "forget' that mobile is the preferred interface for many of us. I would love it if UXStickyNotes came out with a couple of non-smartphone templates too. As my brothers & sisters at Iconmobile will testify, the possible handset configs in terms of screen size et al are too numerous to bother sketching. Still, having a pad to remind you to design for smartphones, for mobile web browsers, as well as, PC-based access at the same time is a good discipline. 

Opening Up the Tools of Design
Give it to account people? Really? Well, it would be great if someone like Steve Krug or Joshua Poter would create the "10 Truths of Internet Interface Design" (No more than 10 pages, please; one idea per page; easy to visually scan format, please). At the risk of suggesting that years of experience and process can be boiled down into 10 pages and a UXstickynote, the effect of making all of this available to more people may be an accelerated flow of ideas. I am not suggesting that untrained or unproven designers design the final version of your next mobile web site. But they may have strong ideas that can more easily be captured and conveyed by sketching it out vs. being interrogated by a 'requirements-capture' team. 

I actually don't know the affect of making these templates available to more people in the organization. All I know is that I just ordered a bunch and am willing to see.  

4 Killer Slides for your Mobile Strategy

I was re-reading a presentation from Mary Meeker and Matt Murphy from Kleiner Perkins on mobile trends and found 3 killer slides that articulate why we are taking mobile so seriously this year. Often research reports from VCs like KPCB are designed to guide investment choices that will pay off down the road. That runway gets shorter and shorter. These slides tell me what we need to do today rather than 12 months from now. I encourage you to view their full presentation and hope KPCB is comfortable with me sharing three of their great slides. 

 

Social Network Use Accelerating the Use of Mobile

Roughly 30% of Facebook's 600mm+ membership are mobile active users of the service. Even more interesting - these mobile users are 2 times more active than the desktop users. There are all sorts of implications here. "Using" Facebook often means publishing pictures, identifying your location, event posting videos. This is over and above the text-base updates, chat and simple, gestural interactions with friends. Partner apps like Instapicture which help process mobile phone-snapped images into a richer image start to drive their own behaviors (taking "artful" photos). 

High-bandwidth content like video and streaming music are changing services like Pandora which sees 50% of their use base subscribing via mobile. We will take our experience with us and expect it to seamlessly follow. That is why I love my Ford Fusion Hybrid (cl) - my iPhone connects when I step into the car and starts playing my playlist with no effort on my part. Hands-free calls drop back to the handset as I get out of the car. Brands who are not creating useful and frictionless mobile content and services will not only not reach people, but people will drop their service or avoid their content just because they find it too hard.  

Mobile "Device" Doesn't Mean Phone

 I don't know how many handset types and manufacturers their are but I know its a lot. Even with the growing domination by Apple, Google/Android and Blackberry in the smartphone space, there are all the many more Web-enabled non-smartphones as well. That's a lot of devices for brands to make content or applications for. Now add to that tablets, cars and new home appliances and there is a lot more to device types to think about. More importantly, there is a lot more user behavior and intent to think about. What I am trying to do from inside my car (not while I am driving, of course) is likely very different than when I stand in the sile at the pharmacy. Brands must continue to hone their skills at understanding the "user journey" and the different intents all along the way to successfully deliver content and services. 

 

Location-aware Shopping Will Earn Loyalty

I was reading a great study a while back on what engenders loyalty from customers. The assumption that "delighting" customers with great service or imported chocolates quickly gave way to the reality that we really appreciate simplicity. If you can reduce the number of button clicks it takes to submit a claims form or get through a checkout line (I would pay good money to get the Barnes & Noble cashiers to stop asking me if I have my member card each time. I always say no. They always say would you like to open an account. I always say no. Meanwhile, an unnecessary :15 seconds has slipped by. Before you say "get over it," time is all I have; that's my scarce resource). 

Smart brands are jumping on location-aware commerce and hopefully many of them have it in their head to simplify and streamline the customer experience. That will earn more loyalty.    

 

The High Relevance of Mobile Ads Done Right Will Outperform All Others

Let's face it, advertising is changing dramatically everyday. And I am not talking about the growth of digital. More and more advertisers see advertising as a way to extend the reach of their efforts to provide something of additional value via utility or entertainment. Advertisers agonize over whether the content they create to market a product actually meets some genuine need for the user. Not the product, itself, but the advertising supporting that product. Mobile advertising must serve a purpose for the user, and it must resist the temptation to fall back to ways interuptive just because it can. The demands and high performance of mobile advertising will do more to change advertisers (and their agencies) than anything since the emergence of 'social media.'  

Three Ways to Make This Your "Year of Mobile"

Nothing says "Doh!*" like the statement that this will be the "year of mobile."

We have heard it (and said it) for years. Some very smart people I know do believe that we are really at a watershed moment with mobile. They say the equivalent of "this is the year of mobile" with a quick follow-on apology acknowledging that every year since 2001 (year that the 3GSM World Congress was held in Cannes, France; precursor to World Mobile Congress) has been the year of mobile.

This year is special due to four trends coming together:

• 3G/4G device connectivity speeds (We really can watch video now)
• Increase in unlimited data plans (except when I am roaming overseas - watch out!)
• Growth of smartphones (apps make it all easier)
• The fast growth of the iPad (stretches our thinking of what is a mobile device)

See how three of these come together in the US:

We really can do more with our phones in the US, Europe and Asia. That these four factors vary around the world as do socio-economic conditions is a testament to how market-specific strategies have to be. It's not as simple as launching a Web site even one that is localized in 20 markets. ComScore has a great Mobile Year in Review report. (I would also point you to Mary Meeker's preso for Kleiner Perkins) There are great differences in use even between US and EU as seen in the ComScore report:

People using phones for a growing number of purposes has a reached a critical mass. Now, what do I have to do to be successful as a marketer in 2011 and going forward using mobile?

Study People Behavior 

I have this great Powerpoint deck on mobile marketing. It's exhaustive. It covers global stats and all the variety of mobile media use from SMS text messaging to mobile couponing to location-aware services like, well, just about everything these days (How many apps do you have that are able to combine your location with some useful service?).

Don't get me wrong, its a great deck but it doesn't really help start to anticipate or really understand behaviors. It can inventory what people are doing like interacting with Cityville (game), reading the New York Times, or texting but it doesn't connect that too what people are doing in their lives off of the phone. Are they standing in line at Barnes and Noble?  When traveling and finding they are a bit short on wardrobe, are they shopping for a pair of black Hugo Boss Alabama-style jeans (why is that so hard)? Are they guilt-ily trying to squeeze in a few emails at their kid's soccer game?

Mobile will enable more and more behavior change. While 10% of Japan's mobile users (10mm of 100mm) use their phones to make payments, we, in the US, crave that experience. It will change how we checkout and maybe how we shop and decide what to actually purchase. 

To be really successful, we need to think about context. It's not enough to consumer data as if the mobile device were just a channel. Luke Wroblewski at Benchmark Capital focuses on mobile design and puts it this way:

"It's hard to find advice about mobile design that doesn't emphasize the importance of context. While many people are quick to point out understanding mobile context is key to delivering a great mobile experience, few define context explicitly enough to make it actionable. That's why I'm always excited to find concrete insights into how people are using mobile devices."

We need to mix anthropology, psychology and sociology and apply it - again - to marketing to understand this "context." There are not enough studies about this mostly cause it's hard. It requires more than aggregating data. We need studies like Novarra's. They segmented users in 5 groups and came up with this useful nugget about multitasking parents: 

"The study found that multitasking parents rely on their mobile devices to stay in touch and stay organized, never leaving home without their phone. Novarra warns marketers to remember that multitasking parents are more tech-savvy than given credit."

Design Experiments

If all you want to do is shoot out a mobile coupon to the right users, you should barrel ahead. Most other promising uses of mobile have not been codified yet. They remain a little unpredictable which is fine for the marketer willing to innovate (take calculated chances) but drives the hard-core 'optimizers' ("I need a 5% improvement on my CRM ROI before I will do it...") crazy. 

To succeed in mobile, I must adopt an experimental mindset. This is a little different than what Ogilvy calls "agile marketing." The latter tells me to set up a program to be evaluated in the fly to allow for constant optimization. Experimentation is a bit more bald-faced, "let's try some things."

This will work if I do three things:

1. Set aside a modest budget for experiments. Walking around Facebook HQ last week, we were all struck by the slogans on the wall encouraging "failing fast." By identifying that experimental budget I am embracing the ok-ness of failing

2. Define how I will measure the success of a series of programs. That way I can gauge the efficacy of each experiment. It is the only responsible thing to do. 

3. Make post-mortem's de facto standards. I would love to get another Latin term in there. But suffice it to say that beyond just evaluating KPIs, we need to learn as an organization for every mobile experiment. What did we learn about our customer, our business and our organization? How many times have you sworn to do a post mortem examination of a project and then let it slip away? 

Integrate Everywhere

Mobile, like social, is not a standalone strategy. Using mobile devices to engage people can be apart of many, if not most, relationship marketing and even campaign marketing efforts. Treating mobile separately is a short-term neccesity. It is kind of "stimulus-package" approach to jumpstart the organization's use of mobile. In the long run, mobile will just be a part of everything we plan in marcom. 

From the very beginning of these experiments, I need to be looking for ways to integarte mobile into the base level planning on every marcom inititaive. We have gotten pretty good at doing that with social media and are now applying some of that success to integrating mobile.  


*("Doh!" is that Homer Simpson expression that telegraphs disappointment usually in oneself like getting caught doing or saying something stupid. It has a nice self-effacing quality. This is not to be confused with "Duh!" which is usually said about someone else ad in "that is so obvious and you are so stupid for having said it." This is too negative for my blood.)

Google and Facebook Become The Electric Company and the Water Company

What is a media company? What is a tool? What is 'technology? 'And what is a Utility? 

More and more Facebook is growing beyond a simple social network into serving as a virtual operating system (is that an oxymoron?) for our lives. We access Facebook functions via our smartphones and anything we still call a 'computer.' our group updates and friend requests show up on our inbox. the blue "F" is embedded in web sites and out-of-home billboard ads. Facebook open graph is a doorway to into many Web sites. The list will just get longer. 

Jeffrey F. Rayport at Castanea Partners shared about the absence of Facebook at a C-suite summit of media executives. He does a great job of showing how Facebook transcends the job fo simple "publisher."

"Connection is a human imperative. Technology that hyper-enables it should, logically, thrive. Because Facebook enables it better than any other social network, it has metastasized throughout the Web and beyond — into our mobile devices. (Install a Facebook app on your Blackberry, for example, and you'll see Facebook features integrating themselves mysteriously throughout the functions of your device.) As Facebook expands inexorably, perhaps we should focus less on the asset and more on the impact. By extending its seemingly endless tendrils online, Facebook is surely changing business; it's also changing us in ways that are arguably out of anyone's control — including that of the gifted entrepreneurs who actually run the "site" itself."

 

This level of embeddedness and how we take its presence and role for granted, help define it as a true utility. Add to that its commercial mission and now it is a capital "U" Utility delivering a precious resource to us albeit one without the limits of resource like the Water Company. 

"in the last 24 months, Google's top search term was "Facebook." Of the top five terms in 2010, two were "Facebook.com" and "Facebook Login." If Google has built a "database of intentions," Facebook has built a database of connections. One in every 13 people on earth uses Facebook. With "Friend Finder" — a sometimes controversial feature that automatically suggests people you might want to "friend" — Facebook operates a connection engine of unprecedented scale and scope."

I am less intrigued by any 'search war' between Google and say, Bing, or rivalry between Google and Apple or even Google OS and Microsoft OS, than I am with how Google and Facebook coexist in our lives 3-5 years from now. Between Google Android and Google Chrome OS, there is a good chance that Google will become the fabric on which many of our Internet interactions will play out. Browser-based Web access will continue to dominate even as mobile access eclipses PC access in the next 3 years. Chrome now has 10% of the market - much of that taken from Microsoft's IE. Meanwhile Android closely trails (25%) Apple iPhone (28%) in market share in the US and shows strong growth amongst new users. Google has its hooks in us via search and now via the logic enabling much of our access to the Internet.

The question may be whether Chrome or Android dominate but not whether Google will. One way or another, Google is the new Electric Company.  PCWorld has a POV on which will dominate:

"Thick client or thin, I think Android's hybrid model will be the real future of software development, and not Chrome OS's browser-centric model. Last week, I lamented that the HTML standard seems to have fallen under the control of the browser vendors. The most unfortunate aspect is the implicit assumption that browsers will be the primary consumers of Web content for the foreseeable future. Efforts such as Tim Berners-Lee's semantic Web strongly suggest that this won't always be the case; the evolution we're seeing in the mobile software market all but proves it."

A couple of years ago, social media pundits scoffed at marketers who wanted a "Facebook strategy" as too tactical or too platform specific. They should start with a higher-level social strategy. Now it seems that a Facebook strategy is not only warranted but essential. Add to that a Google strategy. What will your business look like as these two platforms weave their way throughout our lives?