Last week, Kelsey and Jason attended the Digital Media Summit, New York to take in panels about digital media and the urban market. They live tweeted the event at @Tattletech. Since there were multiple panels going on at all times, the two split up to cover more and this weekend, they exchanged emails about their takeaways from the Summit. We reproduced the emails below.
Jason Oberholtzer: So, let’s start simple. Highlight and lowlight of the summit? For me, the highlight was probably the Day One keynote, which indirectly taught me a bit about the “urban” market’s relationship to the Internet. There are some interesting social angles there, but I say “indirectly” because the conversation (in a manner that foreshadowed the whole conference) focused mainly on the strategies to sell to said market, without seeming too interested in exploring what was interesting about the people involved. Clearly, that is just my interest bias speaking, but it also serves broadly as the lowlight of the event.
Kelsey Barry: My highlight was learning the opinions of the VPs and CEOs of companies and their point of view. It was interesting to see them answer the questions with such confidence, while making jokes and keeping it real. Also, they brought up a lot of states that were interesting to think about and made me realize technology is constantly changing.
The lowlight was not meeting Adrian Grenier (obviously).
JO: They cracked jokes in your sessions?! I’m jealous; mine were pretty dry, with the odd bit of industry-specific irony. Any big-wig stand out to you as particularly good at fielding questions? Is it weird that out of anybody, I was the most impressed by how Kurt Loder and Owen Gleiberman handled themselves?
KB: Oh God yeah, they had the whole room chuckling and me with my obnoxious loud laugh made them feel extra funny. I thought Kelly Egan VP of Fanhattan and Emil Rensing from EPIX were a good pair. Emil enjoyed saying what was on his mind, whether that included a swear or two, which shows he is comfortable in front of a crowd. I wasn’t able to catch Kurt Loder’s session, was too busy looking pretty, taking notes at another session. What was most interesting?
JO: Loder and Gleiberman’s section analyzed trends in film consumption (e.g. 3D, home theatre, marketing). What was most interesting to me was the crowd, or more specifically the way Loder and Gleiberman responded to questions. It is easy to forget (see: other panels from the event) that an “audience” is more than just numbers and that predicting their behavior should involve an aspect of empathy. Watching Loder and Gleiberman spin questions which were, to my taste, too personal to be of any use (“Well, I think this about this movie and it’s just so wonderful”) into insights about the whole industry was rather inspiring. Again though, my bias is incredibly clear here.
Did you get any sense of what Egan and Rensing thought about the “audience” trends, since Fanhattan and EPIX are also in the movie business?
KB: They knew that addressing the audiences preferences is key. Since consumers are constantly changing their views and want whatever is “in,” it’s important for companies to keep ahead of the game and already know what consumers want far before they even know themselves. Content is key. And the rest of the panel included a guy from Verizon who talked about Fios and how it tries to meet all needs.
JO: I was actually happy to hear so much being said about “content” at the summit, even though I hate that buzzword. I heard very few “magic bullet” answers to questions. Content is indeed key. Content, empathy … talking about it, maybe the event wasn’t as stodgy as it originally came off to me. That said, how did it feel to be the youngest person in that room by about a decade (myself excluded)?
KB: Haha. Well, considering I look like I’m 15, people gave me some looks. Or maybe it was because I was wearing a bright blue blazer! But lots of people did approach to ask about Tattletech, so that was good to get the word out and inform people. How does it feel to look like Justin Timberlake?
JO: It feels about ten times as good as it must feel if you look like Chris Kirkpatrick. To step back though, I think there is something important in to be found in the demographics of the event. Is it just me, or does “urban digital media” necessarily imply “youth”? I would have liked to have seen some younger people there. Am I off base?
KB: Well I agree. Some topics were generated around youth, but at the same time the wiser and older generation needs to come up with solutions to urban issues that arose, which I took as lower income homes and younger generation growing up in urban areas that don’t have the ability to access devices such as smartphones and the Internet. But at the same time, we can’t come up with one magical solution. There are many steps and precautions to be taken into consideration and this was simply to get other opinions, including myself as well as the panels and the audiences, so we can see other points of view to help those lower income neighbors gain access to the Internet.
JO: That’s all well and good, but let’s be realistic about the problem here. You can talk about digital media and tablets and reaching out to urban markets all you want, but shouldn’t you (1) invite people who have personal insight into that demographic outside of the business world (2) be good at using digital media. Point two was the elephant in the room all weekend. I like the idea for the conference, I mostly liked the execution, but their digital media presence, at least where social media is concerned, was a half-decade (at least) behind the times. And it was a reflection of their choice for speakers. The website was nearly unreadable, the schedule unclear and social media outreach nearly nonexistent. I mean, you and I basically invented their event hashtag. I tried looking up the speakers and most didn’t even have Twitter accounts. Some didn’t even have LinkedIn accounts. And these are VPs and CEOs. I just … don’t get it.
KB: True, true. We were the creators of the hash tag! I feel like this whole conference was more about opinions and tactics the companies have overcome, but not really a conference about how to fix the issues of urban media. I did enjoy sitting in on the different sessions and hearing their opinions though, so no complaints there. Also, free wine the first day, who can complain about that?
JO: I don’t know. I guess I was looking for something else. But you are correct, free wine is fine with me. Somehow this seems like a poetic place to wrap this up.
Tags: digital media summit, media conference, urban media
Michael Rheaume worked at a marketing firm in Boston until it went the way of many businesses at the beginning of the Great Recession. Now, he is applying his marketing acumen elsewhere, as co-founder of the wedding photography directory, SnapKnot, where he is showing that marketing savvy and a willingness to bootstrap can take you a long way.
In February 2010, Rheaume and co-founder Reid Warner launched the site, the idea for which came form Warner’s own experience planning his wedding and the particular difficulty he had finding a good wedding photographer.
Warner posited that the problem with other, larger wedding sites is that they are overwhelming, lack focus, have too much advertising, and leave a lot to be desired in their photography section. Shockingly, many sites don’t offer anything more than thumbnails from which to choose. So, Warner and Rheaume set out to provide the wedding photography resource that was so clearly missing, and SnapKnot was born.
SnapKnot endeavors to simplify the search for a wedding photographer by literally simplifying the search. Search by location and price range and get accurate results—easy. Then, browse high definition pictures to find photographers you like and go through the provided links to their website, social media, contact info, etc.—easy.
People like easy, and so, thanks in large part to a strong social media push, SnapKnot is doing quite well. At this point, Warner and Rheaume still have not taken any money, but are in the process of scaling up. The usership and roster of photographers are growing exponentially, they are working on a few potential industry partnerships and have just released a new iPhone app. SnapKnot is proving once again that clean design, a smart, simple idea and intelligent use of social media can be a recipe for success.
Tags: Boston, Business, Photographer, Photography, social media, Wedding, Wedding photography
It has been less than a month since I decommissioned my Nokia C6 as my principle business phone. After many years of carrying three devices, it felt a weird but slightly liberating to consolidate down to two—my personal iPhone and my backup “warhorse” BlackBerry. Having been a hardcore Nokia user for the better part of *gulp* 20 years, finally letting it go has made me come to a few realizations. Not only have I not missed my Nokia one bit, this will quite possibly be the last Nokia I will ever own. Moreover, I feel no sense of loss whatsoever (I achieved final closure while disposing of the drawer full of now defunct Nokia chargers amassed over the years).
In spite of the many endearing “come as standard” Nokia device attributes (reliability, great signal quality, battery life, camera, maps, general indestructibility etc.), looking through the current Nokia range, I do not know whether to feel depressed, incensed or a little of both that currently there is not a single device that I would be excited to buy. How can this be?
Next to the dazzling array of big-screen smartphones on display at my local Carphone Warehouse, Nokia definitely seems to be the ugly duckling. But are my negative feelings towards Nokia motivated by the quality of the product or something else? Am I just prejudiced? Have I become one of the ever-swelling population of “app addicted” victims of Apple’s Ministry of Spin, smitten with the glitz and glam of the iPhone and all the wonders of the vast iTunes universe? I am really starting to wonder.
Ordinarily I consider myself to be a creature of habit and I do not normally switch brands without a pretty good reason. The problem with Nokia though is that as much as I wrack my brain, I cannot really put my finger on a defining moment when it all went wrong for me. But, obvious ecosystem limitations aside, the fact remains that my love affair with Nokia fizzled out a long time ago.
Thinking back, when I unboxed my C6 a year ago I did get that same kind of sinking feeling you get when you buy an expensive pair of designer jeans, only to discover that the particular brand or cut went out of style five minutes earlier. The feeling got worse every time I used my C6 around my iPhone and Android totting peers.
So maybe my emotional shift away from Nokia is purely an image thing. Is the Nokia brand itself just uncool? If so, Nokia is in big trouble because, like the demise of flared trousers, being uncool is a brutal, unstoppable downward spiral. Being an industry insider, it really has become impossible to ignore the abundant positive media glam surrounding the iPhone and Android. It stands in stark contrast to the overwhelmingly negative media coverage of Nokia’s fall from glory, the demise of Symbian and the huge question marks hanging over the value and viability of the Microsoft collaboration.
It seems Nokia will need a nuclear powered marketing and branding team to reverse their negative image and to reinvent the winning brand needed to restore Nokia’s street cred to its former glory. So until the likes of Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and major tech circle influencers start being photographed using the latest Nokia Smartphones as their principle devices and lauding its praises on Twitter, I fear Nokia will continue to slip further into mobile B-List celebrity status.
In the meantime, I will be counting myself among the impatient masses fervently awaiting the launch of iPhone 5.
You can follow Geoff Casely on Twitter @geoffcasely
Tags: Apple, BlackBerry, Carphone Warehouse, Geoff Casely, Innovation, IPhone, iTunes, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Marketing, Nokia, Symbian
Last week AdAge reported that Google has big plans for a data-exchange. This was seriously important news but two things conspired to bury it. First, there was all the Google+ hype and second, it was story about data.
I know – data? Snore. New accounting rules make for more compelling reading.
But the biggest digital advertising story you have never heard is data. Never mind mobile. Never mind video and real-time bidding. Gathering info about you as a consumer and finding ways to use that info, across different media, is the future of advertising. Everything else is just details.
From the beginning, the Web promised advertisers a utopia where they could show the right ads to exactly the right people. No more aggregated, generalized audiences, they could target individuals.
But digital advertising still does not differ significantly from the way Don Draper did business. Despite oceans of data being available, targeting and segmentation are still based on the media, not the user.
One problem is that data and content are both very fragmented. Publishers know about your habits on their site but little about your media habits as a whole.
Companies like BlueKai or AudienceScience attempt to address this by providing aggregated user surfing data.
This third party data presents an interesting challenge for content creators and publishers.
In the old days, you bought ads in GQ because you assumed readers of the magazine fit the segment you wanted. GQ got paid a premium because they aggregated that audience.
But third party data allows advertsiers to slice out audiences from different pools of traffic. Information gathered about users’ web habits, search history, their gender etc. can be used to make assumptions about the kind of ads to serve, carving out a segment independent of the publishers audience.
“Thanks New York Times but I will go find my own users on your website.”
If advertisers feel they need these data suppliers to truly aggregate the audience they want, this begs the question:
What value do publishers bring beyond raw ad impressions?
Of course the assumption is that all the data and attendant blackbox targeting actually works.
But assuming it does work as advertised – no one should be paying premium to be on a particular site.
If publishers were doing their job – cultivating audience instead of generating impressions – there would not be a serious market for third party data. But as the business is developing right now, the value of content is in danger.
Which brings us back to Google’s data-exchange. The report is they are working on a market where publishers and third-party data would be combined centrally. Advertisers could buy desired segments from a rich data set, hop on an ad exchange and bid on inventory, never considering an individual publisher’s content.
Google has already woven itself into the online advertising ecosystem in an unprecedented way: search, display, adserving, ad management etc. Becoming the arbiter of audience would be the last step in making their advertising Death Star fully operational.
Occasional contributor, Josh Mortensen first appeared on the Web in 2002, writing for Salon.com.
A version of this post first appeared in The Hippo Files.
Related articles
BeanCast 160: God Hates Your Topic (beancast.us)
Google working on a marketplace for advertisers to buy and sell your data (venturebeat.com)
Posted by Tattletech on Nov 25, 2010 in
Technology,
What makes good news,
marketing “You can survive a lot of things if your CEO loves you and very little otherwise.”
Okay….Tattletech has been spending a lot of time lately listening to companies and hearing their woes when it come to getting into the marketplace they want to get into. It’s no mean feat being responsible for marketing within a hi-tech company. For a start, you are usually the only one who believes in it, understands it and (battles to) implement it.
Add to the mix, if you will then, the typical CEO who, again, often brilliant, has a ‘challenging time’ communicating with us mere mortals, let alone those who look after non-technical aspects of the business namely, marketing and communications. These guys (yes mostly) ‘wag the dog’ and if they, for instance, don’t like journalists or ‘don’t have time for marketing’ the role of marcomms becomes that of a lobbiest, evangelist, teacher and perhaps even masochist. Often an agency or consultant is brought in to blaze the trail or offer ‘expert advice’ in an effort to shift mindset and convince. At times like this the tension in the room is almost palpable!
There are exceptions – heard of Apple? The technology company that executes marketing well is changing the way we communicate and has a CEO of the decade by Fortune magazine.
What follows are some rules by Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group, on how to make the most of that dream IT marketing job … and how to survive it! Enjoy and take heart!
Rule No. 1: Learn from the Last CMO’s Mistakes and Successes
I was tempted to suggest you might want to sacrifice a chicken on the first day of the job. Instead, find out as much as you can about why the person you are replacing didn’t make it. Chances are that person was forced out, even if people initially tell you otherwise.
Rule No. 2: Learn the Power Structure
I can’t tell you the number of CMOs who didn’t realize in time that they were subordinated to division managers and often the marketing directors who reported to them. It is easy to fall in love with an organizational chart that puts you next to the CEO, but often that job is actually rather junior.
Rule No. 3: Own Your Metrics
You probably know that marketing metrics suck. They are largely unreliable and it is likely vastly easier to count the whiskers on an angel than to know at any given time how well or poorly your team is doing. However, it is in your best interest to make sure these metrics reflect as accurately as possible your contribution to sales. If you don’t own them, you can’t assure this, and you’ll likely find the metrics work against you.
Rule No. 4: Build a Qualified Team Loyal to You
As CMO, you are under siege. The last thing you need to worry about is one of your own people using your corpse as a stepping-stone to the next promotion. I’ve watched a lot of folks get shot down because their people did something either intentionally or accidentally that resulted in major problems for the company. Chances are your predecessor had this problem. One of the first things you have to do is make sure that any problem children in your new organization become someone else’s problem children.
Rule No. 5: Find Out What the CEO Wants (And Avoid Making Him or Her Look Stupid)
CEOs either want to meet celebrities, see themselves on TV, give presentations to large audiences, and/or be seen as a hero at the company or be totally invisible. Either way, they aren’t too fond of being pilloried or looking bad – EVER This suggests that you find out what the CEO wants to do in terms of public image and then you make sure no problems come from that.
Rule No 6: Own your Agencies – Don’t Let Them Own You
I’ve seen a lot of advertising and PR disasters over the years. Generally they have resulted from poor ownership over the process and one or more of these vendors behaving badly. The practice of bringing in an agency you know and love is a best practice, assuming the existing agency isn’t closely tied to an executive or board member. Like your employees, you want the agency to have your needs and reputation as its top priority.
Wrapping Up: The CMO is a Job at Risk
I’ve often thought that CMO should stand for Chief Masochistic Officer in technology companies because the deck is stacked against the successful execution of this job.
This sound helpful? Well today in the Blur Group blog, we read a similiar story about whats happening in the ecosystem of advertising… where agencies, once fat on the vine, now are rebuilding themselves in their own image..creating an agency in the eyes of an agency. The game is changing… are you?
– VV
Tags: Brand management, Chief marketing officer, ink Communications, Marketing, Nokia, Rob Enderle
Posted by Tattletech on Oct 22, 2010 in
Mobile industry stats,
Online ads,
Stats,
marketing We stumbled across a good blog about data recently posted by Bango – a cool UK company that focuses on mobile analytics and mobile billing. We liked the post so, we decided to re-run it here. Despite the fact that it is heavily all about Bango’s abilities, it’s still a good read. The premise is simple because it addresses one of the biggest issues that mobile marketers have today — so many types of data available, how do marketers really know what to use.
But that took us to this — a very cool video summary of the past 10 years on online ad revenue plus some pretty amazing stats for 2010 put out by the IABUK. Now this little ditty really makes you think. So many juicy stats you can pull out of here, but the key to this the images… take a look at the images they lay into this video.
Some stats? The 1st broadband connection in the UK was in March of 2000, and now 40 million UK citizens are online, 93 % of those are on broadband. In 10 years UK online ad spent grew to 3.5 billion pounds. In the UK 1 in 4 pounds in ad spend goes online. It goes on and on. Watch the video. It’s fascinating.
So this also reminds us of a blog post by GlibHippo, an online ad network that sort of is the uncola of ad networks who recently compared the current online advertising sector to Deadwood. Have a read here.
Oh, and this bring us to our final point – stats. Today, IntoMobile reported that Nokia out sells iPhone 2 to 1! Yea so i know that just didn’t read right, even I looked twice, but then I realized that you have close your eyes to the Apple glimmering and all its minions and seek out the light in this topsy turvy mobile world we live in today.
Tags: Advertising network, Apple, Bango, Deadwood, GlibHippo, IntoMobile, IPhone, Nokia
Posted by Tattletech on Oct 29, 2009 in
Web 2.0 stuff,
Weird things,
marketing,
social media This recent story in Mashable entitled 10 Small Business Marketing tips is well written, informative and well darn right adorable. But we are not really sure that a small business actually has the resources and bandwidth to pull that off. Most small businesses can barely get their branding right and now they have to worry about FourSquare? We will spare you the read by listing the 10 tips below, but you can click the link if you want more elaborate details, maybe there should be how to staff /fund and provide the resources to execute these 10 small business marketing tips.
1. Facebook
2.Twitter (well it depends, are you a tax accountant? probably not)
3. Company Blog
4. LinkedIn
5. Participate on other blogs
6. Mobile social networks and other local stratgies (note that already we aren’t using location based services anymore)
7. Comments and conversations about your company
8. Multimedia (aka YouTube, but please don’t make a cheesy home made video)
9. Maintain brand consistency (across all of these marketing tips/tools? at a small business?)
10. (our favorite) Leverage combinations of social media tools
*insert sarcasm* as you read this whole piece.
– JLH
Tags: YouTube
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