Every so often, a new way of looking at reality comes around which might be the real came changer

I think this might be it.

http://adage.com/article/trending-topics/mountain-dew-fans-top-tv-shows-talk/229249/

What a great way to understand a consumer AND plan media AND create better, more persuassive messages!

Here's the Ad Age Article:

'Problem Solverz,' 'Dude, What would Happen?' and 'Empire Records' Get Them Talking

Last week in this space I shared some interesting data about advertising-as-media -- data generated exclusively for Ad Age by Bluefin Labs, which looked at the social-media response to two "Summer Time is Pepsi Time" spots. I was interested in the fact that people who are engaged with social media are prone to treating both TV shows and the commercials that air during them as, well, content -- content worth commenting about. (As I pointed out last week, while everyone in the business continues to obsess about time-shifting via DVR, Hulu, etc., most people still watch TV shows when the networks first air them.)

Cambridge, Mass.-based Bluefin's expertise is in providing brands, agencies and media companies with real-time TV-audience insights through social-media analysis. It's been building a massive database called the TV Genome, which it defines as "data created by mapping social-media commentary back to its stimulus on TV." The science behind Bluefin's research is pretty heady -- Deb Roy, Ph.D., the co-founder and CEO of the company, is director of the Cognitive Machines Group at the MIT Media Lab -- but it gets really interesting (and accessible) when you dive in looking for relationships and affinities.

The chart below represents an exclusive first look at a fresh-out-the-labs Bluefin data-mining project. It shows brand-to-show affinity: what the people who talk the most about a particular brand -- in this case, Mountain Dew -- in social media (primarily on Twitter and Facebook) have also been talking about when it comes to TV shows that have aired year-to-date. Some notes:

• First, you may be wondering what exactly people tend to say about Mountain Dew in the social-media sphere. I was curious myself, so I culled several examples from Twitter this morning: @earthtoanneh: "Things i've bought this holiday: mountain dew, mountain dew, bag for ipad, mountain dew. #yay"; @wh0isjack: "Mountain Dew > Every other beverage"; @miaashamiss: "They don't have mountain dew?! Oh, my god. What am I supposed to drink?!"; @rstevens: "Captain Beefheart, Mountain Dew and Photoshop. Any sufficiently late work night is indistinguishable from college." (I can definitely relate to that last one.) It's pretty clear that people who think to tweet about Mountain Dew are generally fans and consumers of the product.
• According to Bluefin, over 2,700 different shows (including made-for-TV and theatrically-released movies) have aired in prime time across all U.S. broadcast and cable networks year-to-date. Which means the top 15 shows below -- the shows Mountain Dew commenters commented about the most -- comprise a very select list. The rings of the circle represent the social-TV rating scale: If a spoke tip approaches the outermost ring -- if a blue-green line is long -- it means that the show has a high level of social-media engagement in general (not just among Dewheads); short spokes represent a low level of social-media engagement in general. The 1-through-15 numbers rank the shows most commented on by Dewheads, with the Cartoon Network's comedic cartoon "The Problem Solverz" in the No. 1 spot.
• In the case of Mountain Dew, the top 15 affinity show all have middle-of-the-road social-TV ratings -- which means that although people who are prone to comment about Mountain Dew are also excited about commenting on these particular shows, the general population of TV viewers is not nearly so excited about doing so.
• The tightest clustering for Mountain Dew commenters is around comedy shows. This isn't a huge surprise -- Mountain Dew is positioned as an irreverent brand with a goofy, quasi-comedic subtext (and of course Mountain Dew buys advertising time on irreverent networks and shows) -- but taken together with the other shows and the kinds of movies Dew commenters comment about when they air on TV (including indie-ish coming-of-age flick "Empire Records," the Mickey Rourke drama "The Wrestler" and the Johnny Knoxville comedy "The Ringer"), you can get an almost instantaneous sense of the psychographic at play here.
• "We see different dynamics across different brands, even when they're in the same sector," Bluefin's Tom Thai tells me. "For example, the Diet Coke brand has tight clustering around reality shows, while Sprite has tight clustering around movies."

The Wisdom of Social Media

Is it this?

MS

So stop asking for experience in resumes already!

Just saw this on Twitter

I guess experience doesn't count; or learning from someone else's experiences.

This is the kind of thinking shortcuts that many people use all day long. Horrible.

This is what happens when someone takes the same deffective line of thinking and comes up with a phrase that only "sounds" profund but that disintegrates when you shine some light to it

Really? The things we make make us? Not our actions... even if we don't make something? Not our thoughts? Or how we act towards others?

I am not buying a Jeep ever because when I had a Grand Cherokee Laredo Limited I had problems with the steering, the brakes and the service. But, if I had never owned a Jeep this is the kind of pseudo-profound bullshit that would make me stay away from it.

I'd rather go back to the dream that I would someday take a Jeep into the forest or the desert or somewhere that was not my office parking and the local Publix. At least that got my juices going.

Bill's not alive

With the promising title "139.6 inches. Every one tells a story" the Fiat Cinquecento proves that, nope, you can't go back home again.

When the Fiat Cinquecento (500 in Italian) launched, they made a huge fuzz about "heritage". I guess they had some parallel universe in mind because, in ours, the 500's real heritage is being the cheapest car available in Europe. Our Tata Nano, essentially.

Creatives talking to each other but not to the potential buyers?

139.6 inches. Every one tells a story... plus... "simply more" yet, not a single thing explained or expanded. Odd, thinking that it is published in a daily paper. A very text-heavy daily paper. And you'd think that, by now, with dwindling readership and circulation, most people would realize that, if you choose to read a papaper, you want to read. So. Why not give me something to read? Something to pay off the story line?

No. Not exclusively creatives. Media people too!

The target, as explained in some of the initial press releases, is young. Newspaper readership is old. Oops.

Could it be that the ad is aimed at people who might consider buying the car for their sons or daughters? I bought a Mini, then a Jetta for my daughter. The push came from her. I just validated the decision (and signed the check). So, how about giving me some reasons to sign the check? Gas mileage? Price? Safety features?

There's still time to fix the Cinquecento's foray into the US market:

1. Give me something to sink my teeth into! It is not enough, today, to go through life with a few vacuous phrases like "simply more". Tell me a story. Show me why I should sign the check.

2. Talk price. Really.

3. Where do I find this? Mailbox? Dealer? Are there even any dealers around me?

4. Get your story straight -- heritage? more? stories? smoke & mirrors?

5. Get realistic about how you contact me: web works, mobile works, anything interactive works. Perhaps lend a few cars to Road & Track, Car & Driver, Automobile.

And, don't imitate the Mini so much. You can only do cute once

Is anyone actually listening... American Airlines and Customer Feedback

So I have over 4 1/2 million miles with American Airlines alone.


Most of my friends joke that "I should sit with the pilot". I'd wish. American basically doesn't care... or seemed to not care at all.


Recently, that changed, an AA created something they call a "Brand Forum"


In this "Brand Forum" we get asked cute questions (if American Airlines were a person, who would he be?), some serious ones (what do you like about us? What do you hate about us?) and everything in between. And, yes, we do "have our say"

However...


1. American never, ever, ever responds to anything whatsoever. So, rather than a dialogue, AA missed the opportunity and turned it into a monologue. And it shows, as the forums advance (we are now on the 7th and I keep following it the same way people follow an accident, to see if there's blood) they get darker, more unfriendly, uncivil and vitriolic.


2. Even among participants... it is not a forum, it's a collection of monologues, where we all write to see what we wrote and, why not, to vent. But really, no one cares, or reacts, to what others wrote.


3. There's no even a "past forum synopsys" which would have been easy to do by having some college intern summarize the key points.


The value of what we are giving AA is google-nesque in proportions: they are talking to their elite passengers, gathering the most heart-felt information and learning. But... they are missing the chance to transform the 60% of us in the forum who think that AA sucks and turn us into salespeople.


Fail!

Francesco's Restaurant and Social Media Gone Wrong

So I decided to start posting again. What better way to re-join the Bloggers of the world than by featuring a brilliant example of old-school thinking applied unsuccessfully to new-media platforms.


Francesco's Restaurant, near my office, is my favorite restaurant in Coral Gables, bar none. The tuna tataki salad is fantastic, the service is great and the ambiance (if a bit cramped) is friendly and warm.


So Francesco's runs a promotion saying that the 600th fan wins a free lunch for two.


And I see that #600 is there already:

Why would I click?


1. I am not going to be #600, a woman called Maritza won that.
2. I don't see that they have any on-going special offers.
3. I don't see that they give any loyalty discounts


They offer nothing... I give nothing


Yet, they could have had my name in the database to send me a coupon every so often, or a text message, anything.


But no, the application of old-school thinking, where there was only one winner to a promotion killed them. In today's economy my contact data has a value. I don't give it freely... I expect to get something out of it.


MS

It's social... but is it media yet?

No phenomena has caught fire so quickly among “regular folk” as social media. After all, here’s an opportunity to stay in touch with long lost friends, ex-girlfriends, people in your industry… all of it with a certain degree of intimacy (you get to see pictures of their babies, their dogs, their parties) and free to boot.

Social media had three promises going in:

• As a “regular folk”, it would allow me to keep in touch with people that I wanted to be in touch with.
• As an advertising professional, it would give me a platform from which to reach out to consumers in a more impactful way because it would be customized to the needs and wants of my target consumer
• As a brand, it would give me an opportunity to interact with zillions of consumers in an open, friendlier environment

So… what happened?

1. Social platform. 

Solid yes. In the past week alone, I learned that my ex-planner in New York just had a baby (Massimo Joseph), that the kid sister of one of my best friends just went through a painful divorce and that Steve Sternberg is in a 3-day Nielsen conference in Las Vegas.

2. As an advertising platform. 

Mixed at best. In two different polls I conducted, barely 15% of all respondents reported clicking on any ad in a social network. 

The very size of the respondent base (less than 100 people) is, by itself a sign of the consumer interaction. Anecdotically, most of my friends and acquaintances also report low interaction with straight advertising in social sites. 

Historically, CTR’s have been sliding so that today we probably do not see even a 1% CTR across the board.

As a “regular guy”, I’m also apalled at the advertising I am served. Some of the jewels I’ve collected in the last 2-3 months:

• New Power Link Generator: “Why do 99% of all Affiliate Marketers loose (sic) money…?”
• Mafia Wars: “or you could wind up sleeping with the fishes (sic)”
• From “Wanta (sic) know the truth” – “if your (sic) sick and tired”…

In addition to dozens of illiterate ads, I’ve also been served with: fat-burning snacks, “computer accelerating” downloads, services to “legally remove 80% of my credit card debt over $10,000”, a cholesterol-blasting drug, a shocking new remedy for joint relief, an offer to sell solar panels, anonymous STD testing services, drug discount services, an overnight girlfriend service, an artery-clearing secret, quantum back pain relief and… no, no snake oil. So far.

This is random targeting at its best. Indeed, when I created an ad for a photo product and decided to play around a bit with the targeting, this is what I got:

254,220 people

• who live in the United States
• who live in Florida, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut or California
• between the ages of 25 and 54 inclusive
• who like photography, canon, nikon or photographer
• who graduated from college

Bottom line: mixed at best. Definitely some targetting (a quarter million people might, after all, not only be a great group, but also influence another couple of million) but not all that great. 

3. The acid test: Brand Interaction

This is, after all, what social media are all about. Right? Again: Mixed.

Let’s talk size:

• There are huge groups (pages) in Facebook: Coca Cola has 5.9 million fans, Pepsi Refreshes has 757,000 fans, Doritos has 849,000 fans, Nike has 2,248,000 fans, Ferrari has 959,000 and Louis Vuitton 1,088,000
• Many of the groups, however, are so small that they can’t conceivably move the needle: Colgate Wisp has 3,738 people, American Airlines has 61,656 and Comcast has 6,349

Let’s talk environment now.

Many “fans” join brand pages or groups just to complain (and loudly). Others have the most inane comments ever. Among some of the comments I saw today:

UPS - 8,371 people like this.

• Inger Elise Latterkrampå Ackles: UPS SUCKS major
• John Terry: I will now being using FedEx for all of my deliveries. UPS is giving $750,000 to La Raza, a racist, pro-illegal immigrant group
• Patty Moraites Apkarian: I "liked" this just to post! Fedex is so much easier! Todya I got transferred 7 times while trying to figure out as to why I couldn't do an online shipment

Colgate Wisp - 3,716 people like this.

• Colgate Wisp: At the mall, at the movies, in the car after the drive-thru. When and where do you use Colgate® Wisp®? Tell us!
• Tonia Tucker Kirven: All the time. I love them
• Gabriella D'Innocenzo: While driving, after i eat, before bed
• Melody Noemí Ramos: while traveling, specially when i'm on airplanes.
• Anneliese Thyer: I would never consider using such a wasteful disposable item

SAMSUNG - 47,238 people like this.

• Junaid Zaheer: I want info about SAMSUNG Air Conditioners prices in Pakistan.
• Benjiro Weiss: I love the Home Theater Systems you guys make
• Jarrell Prichard: Paul's Certified Appliance - Fresno won't honor their agreement w/ Samsung to fix my fridge w/o gouging me for +$105 (beyond what Samsung pays and I'm not required to)

In addition, many of the groups show a complete lack of activity. People “fan” them, but never come back, negating the social interaction component.

Bottom line: tons of small groups that don’t move the needle –can 3,000 people really affect Wisp sales—and where many of the fans join to loudly critize the company with some great exceptions thrown in. Not great.

Being an extroverted, early-adopter, highly-active social media user who happens to do strategic planning and buy media for a living, it was inevitable that I would draw some conclusions:

1. Social environments (e.g., Facebook) are here to stay. A zillion people can’t be wrong and every single piece of research I read points out towards two trends: increasing user base and more frequent use of social media
2. I don’t think any advertiser has really cracked the code yet. For every dyed-in-the-wool fan there seems to be 2 inane boring ones and another one that just wants to tell the company “you suck”. Evidently, some companies are doing well: Coca Cola, Nike, Ferrari… but go deeper into the walls and you’ll see that easily 25%-30% of the comments are really negative.
3. People are selfish. Groups that attract fans, get them to interact possitively and keep them coming back all give something, whether it is a preview of fluorescent shoes (Nike), the possibility of winning a $20,000 grant to follow your heart in a project (Pepsi), or winning a shopping spree for sharing their Father’s Day story (Pampers)

Social? Yep! Media? Not quite yet.