How Short Should Ads Be?

Ads keep getting shorter, but not subliminal.

Way back in TV advertising history, there were 60-second ads. Some people still remember those; there was even an article in The Atlantic looking back on them, wistfully.

Ads used to be longer

Like most GenXers, I grew up with :30s and :15s on TV. Conventional wisdom, after I joined the industry but before bandwidth permitted online video, was to run :30s until awareness reached some level when :15s could take over as reminders or reinforcement.

Miller High Life ran 1-second ads in
the 2009 Super Bowl, featuring
the late, great Windell Middlebrooks

During my international career, I became familiar with :20s and even :10s. In Argentina, where I lived and worked for three years, ads could be any length client and agency wanted, because media time was bought and sold on a second-by-second basis. So, we made :17s, :36s, :52s, etc.

Maybe that Argentine flexibility is going global. 30-second units are still common on linear TV, but audiences can be reached on other platforms that allow for all sorts of possibilities. Bandwidth has improved and the shift to mobile devices and mobile-friendly formats, like YouTube and TikTok, permits shorter ads and new rules for what makes effective communication. The six-second format is common.

But does the six-second format work?

Shorter ads can work, but...

Magna Global, the IPG media research hub, has studied ad lengths across different video platforms. Their 2015 study found that even 5-second ads could build awareness, but it took :15s or :30s to drive brand favorability and purchase intent.

A lot changed in Magna's more recent study, just published in the last few weeks. This time, they found :06s and :15s to be similar in their ability to drive search intent, brand preference, and purchase intent. Why would that be?

One reason may be the platforms on which they ran the test: Snapchat, a video aggregator (i.e., YouTube) and a Full Episode Player (FEP, perhaps a streaming app like Hulu). Audiences are already accustomed to short ad lengths in these environments, and there were no :30s tested for comparison.

The Snapchat part of the test was interesting because more people watched :15s all the way through, but they were all placed mid-roll, about ten seconds into the content, so perhaps viewers were really staying for the content, which might explain the other finding that these ads were slightly less convincing.

YouTube was different. Viewers didn’t like the :15s, which were skippable after six seconds, but keep in mind that all of these were pre-roll ads, meaning that they were a barrier to the selected content. On the FEPs, :15s were better-received, but may also have been more expected during a 20-minute TV program.

None of these findings should surprise us, especially when you consider:

• Linear TV wasn’t part of the test and neither were 30-second ads. It would be instructive to have these points of comparison.

• The three viewing platforms in the test give individualized watching experiences, which may improve the ability of short copy to get across its messages, and also lead to less patience for longer ads.

• We don’t know the quality of the ad creative shown. There were four brands included (Clinique, Mini, Lego and a “major CPG brand”) but we can only assume their ads were adequately memorable and persuasive.

On that last point, not only do we not know the quality of the ad creative, we don't know if it took full advantage of the format. Traditionally, :15s were (mostly) just shorter versions of :30s, both seen on linear TV. Newer formats, like a six-second pre-roll on YouTube, are seen by an individual person watching a very small screen. That calls for a different creative approach, and opens creative avenues instead of closing them.

It's always nice to have more time to get your message across, and :30s will continue to run on TV. But newer formats may prove to be a useful piece of your overall plan.

The State of TV Advertising Now That the Super Bowl Is Over

On Sunday, millions of people watched 4-1/2 hours of Live TV.

Today, millions of people will do the same.

As covered in my previous post, despite the popular reporting that TV is Dead, the medium is actually alive, well — and changing.  Live TV viewing is holding steady at 4-1/2 hours per day.  Much of that viewing happens on an actual TV.  At the same time, audiences are adopting new ways to watch TV, like DVRs, OTT, Online and Mobile.  It seems like we have video everywhere.

It's all TV

In the same way this blog says "it's all advertising" I'd say "it's all TV" when it comes to these new ways of delivering video.  Maybe we should say "it's all Video".  Either way, it's part of a trend as illustrated below in Twenty Years of TV Innovation.

What Social Media Taught Me on Super Bowl Sunday

My last post led to some enlightening discussions on Twitter and LinkedIn about the so-called Death of TV.  One insight was that when many people say "Death of TV" they actually mean "Death of Cable".  Much of the press on this subject talks about the cord cutters, and who can blame them?  Cable TV's delivery model forces you to buy up to 200 channels when most people watch no more than 17.

The Future of TV is Personalization

Which is a good reason to cheer for SlingTV, HBO Go, Google Chromecast and the other services starting to become available along with Hulu, Amazon Prime and Netflix.  All of these allow audiences to choose exactly what they want, which is why we said the other day that the future of TV is Personalization.  There's one day a year when 114.5 million people all watch one event, but during the rest of the year they all watch various programs that interest or entertain them.

It's all TV.  As the chart below illustrates, technology is meeting the demand for new ways to see what we want, when we want it.  TV's not dead.  It's innovating, growing and continuing to be a part of our lives.

The State of TV Advertising on the Eve of the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl has always symbolized the power of TV advertising.  Is that power waning?

Many business journalists seem to think the Super Bowl is the last bastion of TV advertising.  Just this morning as I was writing this post, The Economist daily news digest arrived, calling the Super Bowl "something increasingly rare in television: a programme that people watch live and in large numbers."

Surprise! Most TV Viewing is Still Done on a TV

Now let me explain
"Programmatic" to you

Actually, Live TV viewing is holding steady at about 4-1/2 hours per day.  Yes, 66.8% of Broadband Users Under 35 watch TV on a combination of these devices, but for all age groups most TV viewing is still done on a TV.  

This will shock Upper West Siders who binge-watch Orange Is The New Black on Netflix.  But regular people are watching live sports, NCIS, Dancing With The Stars, American Idol, Judge Judy and Big Bang Theory.  Bazinga!  

But Fragmentation Will Continue

TV was never dying; it was just following audiences to new platforms.  Cable supplanted Broadcast and new devices emerged like DVRs, OTT, Online and Mobile.  There will always be big audiences, but they will continue fragmenting.  In Ye Olde Marketing buying and selling TV was relatively straightforward and audience delivery was measured by Nielsen.  But now audiences are fragmented and sometimes not even measured.  Only Netflix knows how big the audience for Orange or House of Cards really is.  (A Los Angeles Times reporter tried thinking it through.)

The Super Bowl doesn't have this problem.  The marquee advertising will air during NBC's broadcast, and people will see it on TVs, tablets and other places.  The audiences will be big enough that few advertisers will worry about under-delivery against their $4.5 million (unless they're spending that money in the 4th quarter of a one-sided blowout).

The Revolution May Not Be Televised, but TV Will Be Personalized

But even in a big event that almost everyone watches or knows about, we see the future of TV:  Personalization.  For the Super Bowl it takes the form of second- and third-screen programming, i.e. game analysis, ad analysis and social media traffic.  Little of this is driven from broadcaster to audience; it's more of a conversation where both participate.  The famous Oreo dunk-in-the-dark tweet generated very small response:  15,000 Retweets and 20,000 Likes.  (In fact they probably generated more blog posts than that, but I digress.)  But it's OK because they learned how be part of people's conversations.  

In the same way, Oreo's latest stunt -- yes, it's a stunt -- using programmatic methods to buy a :15 in the Erie (Pennsylvania) DMA is a harbinger of things to come.  "Programmatic" is one of those words that's taken on too many meanings, but it's generally associated with media buying, just like the online ad world from which it came.  Its real value will be as a pathway to addressable TV, a way for audiences to customize the programs they see -- and advertisers to customize the messages that make them possible.

Enjoy the game -- and the ads -- and know that you'll always have plenty of company watching that first screen.  Keep one eye on those other screens, too, because they're a window to the future.

Mobile Devices Are a Way for Consumers to Reach Brands -- Not for Brands to Reach Consumers

Here's something advertisers and agencies seem slow to understand:  Mobile devices are not a way for brands to reach consumers; they're a way for consumers to reach brands.

Consider that the mobile device — the smartphone especially — is a very private zone in a person's life.  They don't necessarily want ads of any kind invading that personal space.

But the smartphone is wonderful tool for consumers to invade your space as a marketer.  Via Internet searches, shopping apps, social media and conversations with friends, they do it whether you invite them or not.

So why not invite them?

Use Mobile to Invite Customers and Prospects

Customers and prospects can contact you via certain smartphone apps.  The most-maligned is QR codes.  In the picture below is a QR code I saw this past weekend on the back of a service vehicle in Chicago.  I can't think of any better example of consumer-UNfriendly QR codes than this photo from WTF QR Codes which also sums up why I avoid them.

Not much of
an invitation

At the other end of the customer convenience spectrum is Messaging — SMS, MMS, P2P and other emerging tools.  Most of these are built in to a smartphone and very familiar, but there are also newer apps like Kik that would be handy reaching a younger audience (like Ad Majorem's teenage children).

There's also social media, of course, but only invite people to "Follow Us On Twitter!" if there's a darn good reason.

If you are extending an invitation to consumers at retail, it may be time to look again at NFC.  Could it be coming back thanks to the iPhone 6?  I've been bullish on NFC ever since my first project back in 2012 but it's been traveling a stubbornly slow adoption curve.

Ask for an R.S.V.P.

Sorry to torture the "invitation" metaphor a bit, but using "R.S.V.P." as an abbreviation, here are some principles to keep in mind:

• Response is the goal.  You're not going to rack up millions of "impressions" via Mobile (you might) but you may invite millions of customer interactions.  In other words, the quality of your audience, not the quantity, is what matters.  Think app dowloads, not ads served.

• Start with your consumer.  When and where might they be looking for something useful, informative or entertaining?  That's your chance to engage.  This Forrester video describes how American Airlines designed their mobile app around their customers' travel experience.

• Voice must be …inviting.  This past year during a radio interview, a local political candidate invited people to text him for more information — which I did, only to get an auto-reply asking for donations.  Since when do you invite people over and then ask them to pay?

• Perpetuate the relationship.  The old way of thinking is to stage a marketing or advertising event, but the kind of dialogue marketing both permits and requires today is a process, not an event.  The beauty of Mobile is that consumers can reach brands — and brands can keep that conversation going.  

Related: Who "Owns" Mobile?

Super Bowl XLVIII Advertising: Fumbles, Turnovers and Stats

I'm still trying to decide if yesterday's Super Bowl game was a metaphor for the advertising, or the other way around.

Both had fumbles and turnovers.  The Seahawks dominated the Broncos.  TV sales teams ran up the score about $4 million at a time.

Then there were the stats.  Did you know that losing quarterback Peyton Manning set a Super Bowl record for most completions?

In the same way, some advertisers won popular opinion surveys, or earned the most Likes, but failed to move the sales needle.

The Rules for Great Super Bowl Advertising

This was an ad for Pepsi, not pistachios

Every Super Bowl commercial has to be memorable, persuasive, well-executed and epic.  Ask yourself two questions:  Did you remember the advertiser?  Did you remember what they told you?

This year the ad industry disappointed the audience (and perhaps clients) on all these measures.  It's hard to pick clear winners and losers, so here are some group dynamics among some of the commercials you saw.

My Strategy's Showing!  No, It's Not

Early in the game we saw two carmakers take two totally opposite approaches.  Ford Fusion's "Nearly Double" was obvious and clear, practically hitting us over the head, while Maserati's Ghibli "Now We Strike" was pretentious and muddy.  Ford, a mass appeal car with a mass appeal message, surely got more for their money than Maserati, a car for the 1%.

Don't Tell Anyone, But That Was a DEMO!

Product features can be communicated with great drama, and even smart product demos can work in the Super Bowl.  None of these were "epic" but all three pass the two-question test -- you know Hyundai has an auto-emergency brake, that Jimmy John's is easy to order, and that Beats earphones sound great.  Among all the auto advertisers, do you think people remember Brand Hyundai today?

Tug at the Heartstrings

Super Bowl audiences expect emotional ad moments, and four advertisers did a credible job.  MetLife's Peanuts, a licensing deal I never understood, made sense for once.  Coke's America Is Beautiful continued an E Pluribis Unum ad tradition.  Chevy surprised us with a strong tribute to cancer survivors.  And Cheerios brought back Gracie -- I hope they keep that series going.  None of these were truly epic, however.  They could have been turned up to... well, given the Seahawks win, they could have been turned up to 12.

Pistachios and Pepsi

I have a sick fascination with bad Super Bowl advertising about nuts (see here and here).  Wonderful Pistachios -- Gangnam Style last year, Stephen Colbert this year -- understands that pistachios are green, but the branding still gets lost.  Having a generic name surely doesn't help.

Pepsi's halftime show was an ad.  The game and the advertising were boring, but Bruno Mars validated Pepsi's long experience working with celebrities and judging talent.  The show will turbocharge Mars' career, and surely helped Pepsi build their brand.  They need the help.

Lastly, a wise word from beer advertising expert Dan Fox, who tweeted this about the new Bud Light campaign:  "Crazy night for one guy.  Which beer?"

What About You?

Let me have it:  Which commercials did you think were memorable, persuasive, well-executed and/or epic?  Comment below.

Social Media Connect People with People, not People with Products

Twitter brought a coincidence to my professional life yesterday, and it made me think about how brands use -- and misuse -- social media.

Connection

For me, Twitter is a way to learn about #Marketing and #Advertising and network with people who do the same.  Somewhere along the way I met David Schwartz, a.k.a. @1ad_dad, a consultant from Nashville, Tennessee.  David is an enthusiastic networker, connecting groups of people in #FF (Follow Friday) groups, and I’m in one of those.  Occasionally I’ve spoken with a couple of marketers in the group.

Coincidence

Yesterday one of my colleagues said we were scheduled for a phone call with Justin Campana of JC Decaux.  Justin Campana?  That name sounded familiar.

Sure enough:  It was @Justin_Campana from the #FF gang.

Conversation

We are so totally networking right now!

It was a fun phone call.  Building on the friendly hellos from social media, we realized we went to adjacent high schools and both like the New York Yankees.  Not incidentally we had a productive business conversation that will surely lead somewhere for both of us.

What are the lessons for marketers?

Connections are authentic.  Neither Justin nor I were really “selling” each other, and if we had been, neither one of us stalked the other on Twitter as part of a prospecting plan.  David had already introduced us, and we made the connection.  Frustratingly, though, many marketing messages barge right in on your social media experience with messages like "Isn't it time you cleaned your toilet?"  Social media connects people with people, not people with products.

People + People = Networks.  An early epiphany working with social media was that individual people rely on their networks (read: groups of friends) as gatekeepers.  Thus, the job for marketers is to figure out how you are going to connect with  -- be relevant to -- these networks.  Most marketing on using social media just tries to break through and rack up Likes or Followers.  

Connection first, conversation second.  In the same way, most social media conversation topics ("Did you know today is Talk Like a Pirate Day?") are just borrowing interest.  Your favorite brand of cookie has more fans or followers than the population of Venezuela because people like the product.  That allowed their genius to shine when the clever messages went out later.

Be patient.  Wait for coincidences like the one that arrived at my door yesterday.  You can artificially drive up Likes or Followers, but that won't cement any connections between people and your product.  That kind of relationship can only develop by being the best product you can be, and showing a genuine interest in others.

Digital Out Of Home Media is All About Engagement

This past week the Digital Screenmedia Association held a symposium which captured the big trends in -- well, a kind of media that goes by several names.  Digital Out Of Home, or DOOH.  Digital Place-based Media.  Digital POP.  If there’s no consensus on what to call it, you know it’s a dynamic part of the media universe.  Watch this space!  (Literally and figuratively.)

What is Digital Out of Home?

Just to give it a little more definition, DOOH includes electronic billboards, stadiums, in-store video, and place-based networks reaching into doctors’ offices, gas station pumps, public transit, ATM machines, bars, malls and many other nooks and crannies of daily life.  Penetration is especially high in Europe and some Asian cities, and increasing in North America.

Now THIS is consumer engagement!

These screens are popping up everywhere because the technology behind them is getting cheaper to build and install.  Moreover, people are on the move so much that marketers are looking for new ways to engage them.  Still, there’s a sense that marketers under-utilize digital out of home.

That may change when some of the following trends start to materialize.

Engagement is the future of digital screens

Throughout the two days, engagement was a constant theme.  Technology permits not only a million screens, but ways for consumers to use those screens to get more information, get entertained or get some useful information.  Many of you know about R/GA’s interactive billboards for Nike.  In the future it might look like this scene from Minority Report, which Tom Fishburne delightfully sent up with one of his cartoons.  We’ll know the technology jumped the shark when Jaws 19 comes out.

Mobile is the tool

Here and now, Mobile will propel consumer engagement with DOOH.  It’s been clear to me for some time that Mobile isn’t a way for brands to reach consumers, it’s a way for consumers to reach brands.  If they think you'll help them shop, save, win, laugh or learn, you’re in.  DOOH gives brands another opportunity to earn consumers’ invitations to their mobile devices. 

DOOH Engagement:  What’s Next?

QR codes are teaching the behavior of holding up your phone to a scannable image, but there are new, easier ways for the consumer to invite you in.  What’s next?

In Chicago, elevate Digital is deploying truly interactive displays in and around the Loop that encourage participation via social media, connecting with consumers via their own experiences.  In New York, Perch Interactive designs point-of-purchase displays that encourage interaction with a product -- and deliver information about it in the ten seconds that a shopper handles it.  Numerous companies, like Ocutag, GroundCntrl and ShopOne, are developing new ways for CPG marketers to connect with shoppers in the grocery and mass retail channels.

In-store is Out-of-Home

DOOH also happens in the retail environment.  Jennifer Nye, retail channel manager for Kohler, pointed out that “the store isn’t dead; it’s where customer loyalty can be built.”  To be sure, she added, “It’s not just a matter of putting up screens.”  There must be a strategy.  

Lindsay Wadelton, the Flagship Customer Experience Manager at AT&T’s new store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, described a store where they don’t dramatize the product, but the experiences the product delivers.  Digital, interactive signage makes it possible.

Hello, Mr. Yakamoto, welcome back to The Gap

We may be a long way from Minority Report, but DOOH is showing us the way there.  Especially in an era of consumer privacy concerns and enhanced government snooping, the key for marketers will be to earn consumers' invitations into their lives.

Walmart Tweets -- Axe to the Rescue! A Tale of Shopper Marketing and Social Media

This week when I was speaking at a conference, someone in the audience asked what Shopper Marketing is. 

I gave my standard definition: a strategy where marketers and retailers develop together an offer that not only sells the marketers’ products, but also increases store traffic and cash register ring for the retailer.  I also cited one of my favorite examples.

Today I found another interesting example – in my Twitter feed.  Walmart sent out a promoted tweet touting the line of shave products from Axe.  Here it is:

Shopper Marketing doesn’t have to happen in the store.  Remember that one of its key objectives is to drive store traffic, so media like radio and out-of-home are very useful.  Social Media increasingly overlaps with Mobile on the Gigantic Venn Diagram, so this tweet is a logical tactic for Shopper Marketing.

Only one possible missed opportunity is that @Walmart could have mentioned the brand as it appears on Twitter, i.e., @Axe.

You might also like:  3 Reasons You Should Care About Shopper Marketing

How to Survive the Ad Biz in 2013

This past year I had lunch with a friend who used to run his own agency.  He closed it ten years ago and built a brand strategy consultancy.  Although he calls on marketing executives, and sees agency people in meetings, he was remarkably removed from goings-on in the advertising business.  Stopping for a moment, he thought, and said:  “My overall impression is ‘turbulence’.”

It was either this...
or start in the mail
room.

We won’t argue with that:  Turbulence.  Clients continue changing agencies at a rapid pace.  Assignments are spread among different agencies, either within or across holding companies.  It’s a buyer’s market, with agency fees generally down.  There were more layoffs last week, and many others change jobs voluntarily.  How do you survive all this turbulence?

It’s not just advertising.  Also this year, Fast Company announced “The Four-Year Career” and advised that “career planning is an oxymoron”.  The gist was that you may as well plan for constant career change because it’s going to happen to you anyway.  Their modern definition of a career path:  “Tacking swiftly from job to job and field to field, learning new skills all the while.” 

How to Survive the Ad Biz in 2013

This blog made a similar point in How To Get Ahead in Advertising:  “Advancement is not so much a straight line through one discipline, but tacking like a sailboat across various disciplines.  We will always need specialists, but it’s the generalists who will advance the farthest in agencies of the future.”

In the days of Ye Olde Marketing, there were fewer specialties, therefore, fewer specialists, so becoming a generalist was more achievable.  Most of the ways to reach consumers only reached them, i.e., with one-way messages from advertisers to audiences.  Today, there are many, many specialties and new ones invented all the time.  Media has multiplied and specialists have proliferated.

You’re already a specialist by virtue of what you do every day.  Copywriter.  Art director.  Social media community manager.  Web developer.  Shopper marketer.  Account executive.  Everyone shows up for work to do a specific thing.  You probably don’t expect to be doing that job forever.  How do you become a generalist, too?

Be Curious

First, be curious.  While you’re doing that job, have good peripheral vision, paying attention to how others contribute.  If you’re at an agency with many different services, take advantage of the many opportunities to learn.  If you’re at a specialist agency, for example a digital shop, you can still learn because by nature the work will intersect with other disciplines.  For example, your mobile app may also be part of a shopper marketing program.  You can also read about a couple of disciplines you haven’t learned yet.  Pick a couple of topics and focus on those.

Be Courageous

Second, be courageous.  Take a step outside the comfort zone of your day-to-day activity and try a new specialty.  I’ve been impressed by the willingness of up-and-comers to move from one discipline to another.  We even ran a program that rotated account executives over a two-year period among advertising, direct, digital, shopper and experiential.  More experienced people should do this, too.  I had a colleague who took his 25 years writing successful TV commercials and applied it to writing all the SEM copy we did for a large client.

Capabilities lead to Possibilities

Over time, you will go from specialist in a couple of areas to generalist who can see the big picture.  That kind of perspective gives you two super-powers.  One is that you are obviously more marketable.  The other is that you are more effective.  You’re not just a specialist playing your position well, you have a sense of how the other parts of the marketing program come together.  Ultimately, you’ll be qualified for a job to centrally run those interdisciplinary marketing efforts, either as a client, creative director, or agency account lead.

Put another way, capabilities lead to possibilities.  You need possibilities.  You could lose your job, it could bore you, or it could cease to exist, but chances are you won’t be doing the same job four years from now.  The trick isn’t just to survive, it’s to survive by growing along with the industry.

Advertising Jumps the Shark, Gets Back on Track

Does content deliver advertising or does advertising deliver content?

Joe Mandese at MediaPost has the answer for you, in a piece headlined “Advertising Jumps The Shark: Becomes Conduit For Content”.  

But first let’s get through that headline.

Jumping the Shark

Numerous readers pointed out in the comments section that the headline misused the term “jump the shark”.  Any student of pop culture knows the story:  On the 1970s sitcom Happy Days, Fonzie water skis over a shark, a moment now seen as the point where the show lost its original purpose – a fond look back at the 1950s – and got just plain silly.

Let’s first admit that the advertising industry has jumped the shark many more times than Fonzie, before or since.  We’ve jumped the shark via pointless line extensions, bad strategies, failed campaigns and poor planning.  Mea culpa.

Conduit for Content

In this case, the alleged shark jump is the launch of a new digital advertising platform that pulls existing Internet content into online ads.  It seems like a simple concept – link ads and content – but there’s a bit more involved.

The platform’s purveyor, Kontera, claims to be able to identify the most relevant content and serve it in web display, social and mobile ads.  That’s a bit more complicated than a shark jump – and more revolutionary.

3 Reasons Why it Matters

Mandese’s right, this is an important development the entire advertising industry should watch.

1.  It makes advertising useful, informative and/or entertaining.  These are the three things audiences seek in any medium.  For some reason we’ve been relearning that lesson the hard way in the digital advertising world.  In this case, Kontera claims to be supplying content that’s already popular, and hence should make ads more relevant.

 
2.     It adds sanity to online advertising.  Most web display advertising is the opposite of shooting fish in a barrel – more a minnow in the ocean.  You run ads that get clicked at infinitesimally low rates, paying only for those very small results.  Matching truly relevant content to truly relevant ads could significantly shift the equation of supply and demand.
 
3.     It challenges the distribution model.  Whether on TV, online or in-store, content normally is a means of distributing advertising.  That is, a :30-spot interrupts the program you were watching.  Kontera allows advertisers to buy ad space and use it to distribute all kinds of content.  Extrapolating that beyond web display ads, you can see how it would change journalism, entertainment and information in general.

Fond Look Back at the 1950s

If you read further down in the comments section of Mandese’s article, you’ll see an arcane conversation between him and me about whether it was also true in the 1950s that “advertising (was) a means for distributing content,” much like Kontera.  My point is that Radio and TV shows of the period, like soap operas and Texaco Star Theater, were also examples of brands delivering content.  (Mandese disagreed.)

It doesn’t really matter.  The only thing it proves is that for the past fifty years we’ve been force-feeding audiences our advertising when they wanted to see their content.  Up to now web display ads have followed that same model.

If, as an industry, we succeed in reversing that, and make advertising a means for distributing content, we won’t be jumping the shark.  We’ll be back on track.

When Plural is Really Anti-Social

Today's post is brought to you by the letter "S"

Just like 70 million other people, we watched the U.S. presidential debate this past Wednesday night.  I caught the first half hour on NPR while driving home, and joined Mrs. Ad Majorem watching the rest on ABC News.  Before leaving work I checked Twitter to see what hashtags would be in circulation, because of course I expected to participate in the national conversation. 

A #debate about #debates

My unscientific sample of tweeps, political consultants and other citizens led me to believe that #debate would be the default hashtag for most people.  Some put #Debate2012 or some variation.  Others with an agenda put hashtags supporting their candidate.  But #debate seemed like a good one.

Watching on TV, however, I noticed that ABC was encouraging the hashtag #debates – the plural.  Why not just #debate?  You’ve only got 140 characters, why use one of them on a vestigial “S”? 

Look at that S-car go!

It turns out that ABC News was following Twitter's lead.  According to a Twitter blog post, they declared #debates as the official hashtag.

It had never occurred to me to check and see what Twitter was pushing.  My normal procedure is to check and see what people are doing.  

It's not hard to imagine that Twitter has an internal team working on this series of debates:  producers, editors, journalists and social media experts.  They may be “the debates group” or they may just tell people, “We work on coverage of the debates.”  Sitting around the conference room table, it would be easy to agree on #debates as a hashtag.  

The Twitterverse looked at it differently, however.  No one watching at home was thinking about a series of debates.  This was the big night everyone in the U.S. had anticipated for weeks.  The social media commentary was about what happened that very night.

Put another way, I don't think anyone imagined #SaveBigBird.  

Maybe Twitter wanted something trackable.  I give them credit for not using #TwitterDebates -- you know, something “branded”.  Still, pushing an "official" hashtag reflects the mindset of an Old Media company used to broadcasting and big numbers.  Social Media works differently.  The relevant measure might be share of conversation, or the number of conversations in which they participated.

Watch and Learn

In the end this is a mental exercise.  Watch what is happening around you, and game it out.  Learn from what others do.  In this case the lesson is:  Not even Twitter can control its own conversation.  Try to swim with the tide, perhaps influence it, but don't imagine you can control or measure it according to some standard of Ye Olde Marketing.

"DON'T Follow Us on Twitter"

Old Media meets New Media

You see it everywhere.  Advertisers invite you to "Follow us on Twitter".  It’s all too easy to add this short message to traditional ad executions. 

So Why Not?

The problem is that Twitter in this way is treated as a mass medium just like the ads themselves.  They might as well say “Follow us on Twitter so we can send you more messages just like this one.”  Sadly, this is exactly how many marketers use Twitter.  You can just hear the conference room chatter:  We’ve got to surround the consumer at all brand contact points!  Or:  This is a lead generator!

You’ve read about companies who inadvertently start public relations disasters on Twitter, or practice poor customer service.  Those things happen.  I’m pointing out here that many companies never run that risk because they only tweet lawyer-approved ad copy 140 characters at a time.

Twitter and Traditional Ads CAN Mix

Maybe you or your clients are more enlightened and use Twitter properly, to engage with or listen to your customers.  In that case, maybe you can use ads to invite new followers more creatively, and in line with what they can expect.  Here are some examples.

“Tell @Moleskine what you’re writing”

“How hot is your @TacoBell #SaucePacket?”

“Suggest ideas to @SomePublicServant”

“What flavor should @Lays make?  #DoUsAFlavor”

“We update you on train delays @Metra on Twitter"

Don’t Close a Sale, Start a Relationship

The point is, you’ve got to give people a reason to follow or at least engage.  Just don’t expect someone to follow you just because they saw your ad.

What other ideas do you have for companies to engage with their customers on Twitter?  What really bad examples have you seen?  Put your responses in the comments section below.

Small Talk and Social Media

Don’t you hate small talk?  I do, too.  But it teaches us something about Social Media.

The most banal of small talk happens in forced encounters.  Co-workers cross paths in the corridor or cafeteria.  Neighbors coming or going in their entryways.  “How are you doing?”  “Fine, thanks, and you?”  “Fine, thank you.”

The next level of small talk is more interesting because it reveals things about people.  Someone ventures a little more, maybe “We’re almost done with a big job” or “I’m hoping to get home in time for my son’s game”.

As that person steps away, perhaps off the elevator, what’s the response?  Nonchalant?  Good luck.  Cynical?  Good luck with that.  Encouraging?  Go for it! 

Small Talk and Social Media

Those exchanges reveal things about both people.  The degree to which the first one shares will tell us what matters to them.  The second person’s response is reflexive, in the moment, telling us if they are encouraging, friendly, sincere, cynical, robotic or humorless.

Much of Social Media is like this.  No one forces you into a how-are-you-oh-I’m-fine encounter.  You engage because you want to, on a topic that matters.  In the above examples, the first person is the one who blogged, tweeted or posted.  The second is the person who linked, retweeted or liked.

How does that work for your ongoing Social Media program?

3 Lessons for Marketers

1. Have a personality.  Social Media happens via technology but humans drive it.  Humans have personalities.  What personality fits your business, brand or product?  If this sounds like social media claptrap to you, consider that your brand already has a personality.  For example, if you’ve ever written a Brand Positioning document, you probably included a Brand Character or Brand Personality.  (Normally these are just words on a page that never seem to come across in advertising.)  More practically, your brand expresses a personality by its interactions with consumers:  calls into the toll-free number or service center, package copy or retail representatives.  Like it or not, these add up to a personality.  Think hard about what makes sense for your business, and apply it to Social Media (as well as other channels).
2. Put the right people on it.  Depending on the size of your business, you may handle the small talk yourself, or have one person handling it for you, perhaps even a department.  Whatever the scale, someone has to set the tone, following the personality you’ve prescribed.  Obviously this person has to be a skilled communicator, which takes emotional intelligence and a sense of judgment.  There will always be some deviations, but over time the personality should be clear and consistent.
3. Figure out what you’re going to say.  The worst kind of small talk is the self-absorbed, it’s-all-about-me variety.  In the same way, few people will engage if you’re just talking about your product or service.  People go places on the Internet to be informed or entertained.  Maybe that’s an oversimplification, but it’s also a good place to start.  How can you make it worth someone’s while to engage with your blog, Twitter or Facebook page? 

To that point, above all:  Be authentic.  If your personality is wrong, everything you do will seem forced.

What have been your best and worst experiences using Social Media?  What did you learn from them?