Authentic Buzz

I popped over to Virgin Radio last night and caught up with their new media supremo James Cridland. Virgin’s been the leader in radio online for a long time and much of that’s been based on constant innovation. However, in any organisation getting people to buy into the vision is vital and a key way of manging that is by demonstrating value to the staff, both your own and those in the wider company too. This, of course, is easier said than done and takes real focus for any new media team.

James has a great tool in his office to demonstrate value, he’s hung a large plasma screen above his team showing a number of different things. Half was taken up with recent activity by the users. If you got to virginradio.co.uk/interact you can see a scrolling activity wall with information about what the VIP’s (the station’s CRM’d users) have been doing. The office-version includes this ‘public’ information as well as more private data - like whose contacted the studio, entered competitions etc. He said this was brilliant to watch when their was a call to action on-air as instantly you got to see real-world responses. In a similar fashion the second section showed the current number of VIPs - a key target for any radio station.

The third section looks at the station’s streaming figures and shows the current number of streaming listeners. Cleverly it’s displayed alongside the official RAJAR listening figures for that hour, allowing them to show the percentage of listeners who are listening online right now.

Together, these features provide a great insight for the team showing instantly how their actions are being consumed by the audience and properly demonstrating the value of their contribution to the radio station.

Steve Jobs has had an odd couple of weeks, the iPhone’s been under attack a little, he’s got an options scandal-a-brewing and in Europe certain countries are taking umbrage at Apple’s unwillingness to open up iTunes to other music players.

If you’re under siege from the press or popular opinion a good way to deflect the problem is to use the momentum a story has to move it on somewhere else. Steve did this last week when he made the closest thing to a blog post on the apple website, where he called on Europe to encourage their music companies to stop the requirement for digital rights management.

Saying one thing though, is very different from actually doing something. Om points to a great post by Ted Wallingford who suggests that Apple should turn iTunes into a platform where bands themselves can upload DRM-free content. Taking leadership in this area would have truly moved the story and would have closesly aligned Apple’s actions with the perception and desires of its core Mac-following audience. Surely a win-win.

In the UK, Radio 1 is the BBC’s national youth pop music radio station and 1Xtra is its sister black music station. Both have recently started developing its video capabilities to enhance their audio output.

I belatedly noticed, this week, a behind the scenes video for 1Xtra, that’s been around since September. Today, Radio 1 launched the Annie Mac video podcast.

They’ve probably been created by the same team (Hello Will) but they’ve done it in quite a different way. Firstly though, it’s a great thing to do. People are generally very exicted about going behind the scenes of things that they are passionate about. However when they get there they want it to be amazing. The trick with these things is delivering on the promise.

They’re also an excellent opportunity to demonstrate relationships. If people are enjoying themselves, having fun and just generally being passionate about something they love - it ends up rubbing off on the viewer. The other thing to remember is that people are choosing to download the video, it’s not broadcast conent that people might just come across, it’s content that they’re actively seeking out.

Radio 1 have got the right idea in producing it in vodcast form. This will allow it to develop and cover different content areas. At the moment however it’s far too generic, the mock comedy bits get in the way of actually providing any insight into Radio 1. Other than seeing some famous faces the only thing we find out about Radio 1 is that it has some open plan offices.

The 1Xtra video is a one-off and follows a similar format but somehow has much more heart. You get the impression that they really are all part of one big happily family. They have fun with each other rather than at the expense of each other. ‘Boring’ talking heads actually show the real passion that the team have about their product.

Video is a great way to bring a product to life by providing context to help provide real reasons why someone should want to consume your product. It removes the bullshit layer that lots of advertising campaigns mysteriously insert between their products and their consumers. It also has the opportunity to speak directly, with passion, to the people who want to like what you do. It should be an open goal to connect with your audience.

Great post from the Church of the Customer blog about how the US National Pork Board shoved out a cease and desist letter to a breast-feeding activist who was parodying their ad campaign “Pork: the other white meat” with “the other white milk”.

Unfortunately Jennifer Laycock (the activist) has a strong social network who she encouraged to spread the bad word about the Pork Board’s heavy-handed tactics. It worked and the CEO apologised and relented.

A little while ago it was easy for big companies to show their might whether they were right or wrong and let the lawyers fire off standard letters to scare consumers. The shift now is that size no longer matters, distribution does. Would you change the way you talk to your consumers/listeners/readers/viewers if when they talked back they were much louder than you?

A new company’s popped up - Super Expansion - who apparently are “dedicated to finding the most aggressive, underground ways of promotion via online guerilla marketing”, hat tip to Entrepreneur’s Journey. They seem to have three businesses. The first is using MySpace bulletins to promote sites, the second is an automated ad-poster for Craigslist and the third is a service to seed ads on bulletin boards.

The MySpace one is probably the most interesting, they say:

We’ve created a network of account holders who, between them have thousands and millions of friends. By having these multiple account holders place your bulletin it looks like genuine, organic buzz. Whether you’re a brand looking to drive traffic to a jump site, or a band establishing a following, our bulletin program is a way to spread authentic buzz to a large group of people.

I’ve suddenly realised why random normal people ask to be my MySpace friend. It’s so I can be collated and sold as a bulk campaign. I’m sure that is does alright for awareness, but only in the same way I could name you drugs like Xanax, Cialis, Voixx and Ambien. In other words I know they exist but have no need for them and certainly wouldn’t buy them a bulletin from someone who I don’t really know.

The interesting thing about MySpace is that there are some people who have very high levels of trust with their friends. They tend to be ’supernodes’, people who have well-regarded links with lots of individuals that cross friendship groups and individual locations. It would be a much more sensible and valuable business for ‘Super Expansion’
if they worked with their clients to explain their products and services to supernodes and get them to buy in to (and promote) these products. But I guess that would be a bit harder than sending our a load of spam bulletins, wouldn’t it?

One of the lovely things about Facebook has been its less intensive advertising. There’s been some banners but it’s mostly been more promotions based marketing where features (like Holiday Centre) have been sponsored or Groups that allow you to opt-in to connect to some activity (like the new JT film Alpha Dog).

Facebook has grown as a student network. Up until a few months ago you could only get on if you had a .ac.uk or .edu email address. This meant they were pretty much ignored by mainstream-media as no-one could really get on and have a look. However during this time they’ve signed-up millions of users and have an amazingly high penetration into the student market - all of which seem to love the service.

This more grass-roots approached allows them to embark on a micro-marketing opportunities. Users can buy ‘flyers’ for $5 which get you 10,000 impressions if you’re a student and 2,500 impressions if you’re not. These allow individual campuses to be targeted giving some interesting commercial opportunities to arise.

Trendcatching’s pointed out one company that’s taken advantage of these - Boso. Boso is an “online marketplace where students can trade their second-hand stuff with other students, quickly and easily.” They use flyers to remark on current news and entertainment stories to provoke reasons for students to sample their site. It’s a classic piece of brand building that gives the site a personality and encourage trial in a crowded marketplace.

Disappointingly though it seems that since Friday Facebook has bit the bullet and signed up to a number of ad-networks generating banners on every page. Disappointingly they’re not particularly targeted and have included those seemingly social-network standard-issue ones for smilies. Something that has created a Facebook group dedicated to “Get those fucking talking smileys off facebook!!” It will be interesting to see if this changes over the coming weeks and months.

Running a Presidential campaign must surely be the ultimate marketing challenge. First of all you have to run against your colleagues in a nationwide campaign, then you have to run against your opponent in another nationwide campaign. This will take around two years and to be successful you’ll have to spend 100s of millions of dollars, made up of all of your own money but mostly made up of other people’s. Oh, and they’ll want some kind of payback for their efforts. In the process every aspect of your life will be dragged up and exposed, small errors you make will be magnified and after all of that effort you’ll probably lose.

Previously the campaigns concentrated on combining the candidate’s constant touring (generating free media) alongside a large pay-for TV spend on ads. Two shifts in the 2004 campaign however, have started to changed this, the first is Karl Rove’s pyramid approach to getting the vote out and the second was Howard Dean’s grassroot’s campaign.

Karl Rove was convinced that Bush would have a won a larger majority (hey, or even an actual majority) in 2000 if more Republicans had come out and voted. He spent the intervening years creating a pyramid of 300,000 supporters, based around an MLM-style strategy. The interesting thing he accomplished was that he developed a leadership structure that combined individuals with strong organisational skills alongside those who had a faithful belief in Bush. This strong connection was encouraged by them receiving notes and little gifts from the President making them feel a true part of the campaign. This meant that when they were called on months later they were already primed to do the work. In other words he worked to create a true social network that could be used when required.

Howard Dean accomplished something similar, albeit with a different methodology, though unfortunately he was less successful. Dean started off as an outsider but caught the imagination of voters, many of which were young, by talking about healthcare and fighting special interests and the Iraq war. He also took his fight online, being one of the first candidates to start a blog and openly chronicle the campaign. This created a true connection with supporters and let him generate $50m, but most impressively the average donation was just $80 showing him to be a truly different candidate and not bank-rolled by big corporate interests. Had he gone on he would have been able to solicit further donations from these supporters (the limit is $2,000) powering the campaign to the next stage. With an internet campaign his customer-acquisition costs were also much lower than traditional campaign’s expensive mail-outs.

The power of these voter-networks have not been lost on 2008’s candidates - Tom Vilsack, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden have all got blogs and links to themselves on MySpace, Facebook and even party social networks like PartyBuilder. Taking their candidacy to where their voters exist is a good idea and will help them cut through to new voters. Using sites like YouTube to host videos, rather than publishing them on their own sites (as Hillary has done) potentially lets those video messages break out of the tight political circles and once again bring new people to their campaigns. However, even with the best will in the world, the danger is that these efforts will end up being just bandwagon jumping rather than truly leveraging the power of social networks.

Someone that’s doing something very different is Barack Obama. Already tipped as one of the leading presidential hopefuls, Barack has only just opened his Presidential Exploratory Committee. However, compared to other candidates, his number of public engagements is small and his web activity is quiet.

The Democratic National Congress have just held their winter jamboree where all the potential candidates jockeyed for position. Placards, merchandise and loud music played a large part. However Barack eschewed all of that and just did a good speech - he still got five standing ovations and was regarded as one of the best performers.

As anyone who’s been at the receving end of numerous band requests on MySpace, you know you’re in a powerful position when people reach out for you to follow them, however it also instantly reduces the amount of interest you have in them.

Through being authentic, Barack has the opportunity to ensure that come the right time he’ll be able to create a strong Rove-esque passion-led network rather than one that’s just merely supportive. I’m sure the eyes of all the other campaigns will be on him.

E4’s new youth show Skins had a great audience for its first episode - 1.6m, much of which must have been driven by an excellent youth marketing campaign by Naked and Holler. The show’s had a dual-position with sites at e4.com/skins and MySpace. The E4 site’s allowed visitors to re-design the logo, one of which they re-brand the site with every week, enter compeititons and see mini web-only episodes that site alongside the broadcast show.

As well as showing the episodes, the MySpace site acts as a mini-hub pushing vistors to the profile pages of all the characters. Vistors can then friend either individual characters or the show as a whole. It’s interesting to see the interaction from real people in the comments on the characters pages. There’s a mix of remarks to the actors and to the persona’s of the characters.

With the characters profiles appearing alongside visitors’ real-world friends it shows how with the right product you can integrate branded activity into consumer’s own social networks.

What’s a shame is that the producers haven’t really seen the activity through post-launch. The profiles have been beautifully designed and really reflect the characters’ personalities, they include good ‘about me’ info and they even include video and audio like a real MySpace user. What they haven’t done though, is update the characters blogs. It would be great to hear each character’s own take on the episodes that have just aired and the comments from visitors would have been a great read too. It could of also gone a step further with characters interacting on each other’s MySpace pages.

The Skins campaign is easily the best execution so far of a big brand trying to replicate MySpace users activity, but it will be great to see who goes the whole hog.