That Girl From Marketing

Friendster’s Failure, Big Media Moves Into Second Life & Bling Bling Barbie

Filed under: Consumer Generated Media, Online Market Research, Online Reputation Monitoring, Second Life, Social Networking — Natasha Robinson

Ok, so I’m watching VeggieTales Saturday morning (Yes, I watch it and I’m not afraid to admit I like it!) when I see a commercial for Bling Bling Barbie. When I was growing up they had Career Girl and Astronaut Barbie. Now they have Ghetto Fabulous Barbies ala Little Kim or JLo. Next thing you know they will have a Video Hoe Barbie action figure complete with drop-it-like-its-hot booty shaking. Wow, I’m so disappointed that this is being marketed by the Barbie brand.

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

  • The Failure of Friendster: ”Roughly once a week, David L. Sze, a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners, hears from entrepreneurs who say they have the next MySpace, the copycat social networking site that has trounced Friendster. ‘The counter to that is, “Tell me why you aren’t going to be the next Friendster,”’ Mr. Sze said. ‘It’s become the iconic case of failure.’ But why and how Friendster missed the mark is a salutary Silicon Valley tale so instructive that Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, uses the company’s inglorious fall as a case study in his strategy classes” Ouch! “The team now running Friendster valiantly soldiers on, hoping that it can position the company as a site for an older demographic group — people 25 to 40 — who do not have the time or inclination to spend hours each day on MySpace.” Guess they don’t realize that More than Half of MySpace Visitors are Now Age 35 or Older. See also: Social Networks See Back-to-School Drop (via: smo)
  • Big Media Gets a Second Life “Big media’s land grab is well under way in Second Life, the online realm where real people, under the guise of avatars, mill and mingle and, in some cases, make a living. The game’s audience, swiftly approaching 1 million, is growing at about 38% month over month, according to its creator, Linden Lab. The outfit expects to add 200,000 to 250,000 new players—many of them the coveted younger early adopters—in October alone. And like so many other companies already setting up shop in Second Life, news organizations and other media outlets don’t want to be left behind. As the virtual world grows up in the coming 12 months, it’s only going to get more attractive to companies that want to send a multimedia message.” See also: Reuters Second Life Bureau

The I Also Glanced Over Reading List:

“What happened to the dreams of a girl president /She’s dancing in the video next to 50 Cent” – Stupid Girls – Pink

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson

Social Media Smorgasbord: Verizon’s No-Holds-Barred Blog, Creative for Social Networks,Viral Campaigns Ain’t Cheap & Brand Sirens

Filed under: Blog Marketing, Consumer Generated Media, Online Market Research, Online Reputation Monitoring, Search Engine Optimization, Second Life, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, Viral Marketing — Natasha Robinson

The study of the month goes to: Tapping into the Super Influencer: What You Need to Know to Engage the Elusive Young Customer(PDF), found via: Some 13-34s Show High Brand Loyalty: “CNET and Starcom questioned more than 10,000 young people through ethnographies, followed by online surveys and conversations. A small but significant portion of the respondents–between 15 and 20 percent–fell into a category dubbed “Brand Sirens.” Those sirens have a profound network effect on marketing through their ability to influence friends and family via word-of-mouth, viral video and applications such as instant messaging and Blogs, among other media.”

Lots of good stuff in the study, including: How To Insert YOUR Brand Into THEIR Conversations:

  • Recognize that word of mouth driven by technology has greater impact than ever before
  • Pitch the niche
  • Follow the content that they are passionate about
  • Give them control
  • Connect with honesty, humor and social responsibility
  • Rethink Reach: The New Reach and Frequency: Audience (influencers/sirens) X Number of conversations generated by them

Side Note: Some this did remind me of the Leveraging Social Media session from Search Engine Strategies. Such as what Gary Stein said about Marketing to Cliques (You can download his presentation at that link):

  • Tightly define your group - What do these people think about
  • Don’t be afraid to show features - Let the group come to their own conclusion about what they want to use – more features better
  • Support the community
  • Clone the tactic with like groups when you know what works

As well as what Scott Meyer of About.com gave as the definition of Success in Social Media: Engagement + Authenticity * Target Audience Reach

See also:

  • BuzzLogic Platform Maps Top Online Influencers: “The Web-based application joins other ‘listening’ platforms now offered by companies like Cymfony, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Waggener Edstrom and Umbria. BuzzLogic hopes to differentiate itself from those offerings by focusing on identifying the top handful of influencers — not merely the most popular, in terms of traffic or inbound links — within customer-specified ‘conversations’.”
  • Call for Comment: Social Media Disclosure: “Most consumers believe that content in environments like MySpace or YouTube has been created by non-marketers (Do they?). WOMMA’s goal is to establish actionable guidelines and best practices for marketers working in this media. Join us Wednesday, Sept. 27, at noon EST for a full telephone briefing on the issues surrounding social media disclosure. Call 1-512-225-3050 and enter code 495675# to participate.”

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

  • Verizon Plans No-Holds-Barred Blog To Engage Consumers : “DeVard acknowledged that Verizon is playing catch-up in the fields of online and social networking. ‘We were asleep at the wheel a bit.’ Verizon will spend 15 percent of its marketing budget online this year, and she said that may not be enough. DeVard said it is critical to allocate a percentage of the marketing budget to experiment with innovative tactics so you can understand how they work for your brand. See also: Blog Ads Must Get Buzz To Work: “New clues about online ads suggest we ‘don’t tell the audience what they should believe, or give them a question that they can answer themselves.’”
  • Creative that Makes Friends with Social Networks: “Social Media is a Hungry Mouth, and if you get the audience on your side, you have to feed it. …The notion that the Internet is no longer about creating destination points, but is increasingly about creating content for circulation.” See also: Rules of Engagement – How Brands Join Conversations: “Question from the audience: How do you jumpstart a conversation when it doesn’t exist? Answer from panelists: Send bloggers samples to get them talking about your brands, create widgets that people can interact with on the site, know your influencers.’ Reprise Media, Thank you for Blogging the Online Media, Marketing & Advertising Conference!!! BTW: Make sure to check out this oldie but goodie:User-generated content uncovered: Power to the people
  • A Viral Campaign Done Right Ain’t Cheap, Easy : “Here’s the bottom line: mounting a viral campaign requires not only social media, which provides remarkable new tools, but also integration with offline marketing, from street teams and guerilla marketing, to billboards, TV, radio, and print. New media marketing is simply not a substitute for all others. It’s a tool: one of the best ever created. But doing it right ain’t cheap, or easy.” See also: Advertisers Seek Safe Havens on User Sites

The I Also Glanced Over Reading List

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson

Should B2B Marketers Blog, Movie Goers Research Movies Online & Social Media Optimization: Next Big Thing Syndrome

Filed under: Blog Marketing, In-Video-Game Ads, Online Market Research, Online Marketing, Online Reputation Monitoring, Second Life, Social Media Optimization, Social Networking, Uncategorized — Natasha Robinson

AKA: Why, in spite of my better judgement, I will use the term Social Media Optimization in every post for the next month…

What is Social Media Optimization(SMO)? Well it is the new term dujour in online marketing. When I read the first article mentioning SMO a month or so ago, I thought “Cool, I like the concept”. Then I began seeing it everywhere.

And now I cringe when I read about SMO…everywhere! I cringe because here we go again, with yet another acronym with a nebulous definition in the online marketing industry. I cringe because I know it will be a topic of a panel at whatever is the next Online Marketing Conference. I cringe because I will be forced to read it everywhere. And, I cringe because of all the bandwagoneers who rush to use the term because it is the term dujour. And I especially cringe because… well if ya can’t beat ‘em….

The Online Marketing industry especially Search Engine Marketers suffer from Next Big Thing Syndrome. How many times have we read: “(insert tool, technology or new marketing term) is the Next Big Thing.” I believe it was not that long ago that I read that RSS was the Next Big Thing and Blogs were the Next Big Thing and Social Networks are the next Big Thing and SEOPR and Linkbaiting and so forth and so on.

But here’s my issue: while I have read articles on what Social Media Optimization is, and why you should implement social media optimization, I have yet to read an article on how a company allocates budget to include Social Media Optimization in their next campaign. Anyone? And don’t even get me started on the question that we all know a client will eventually ask, “So how many visitors do I get for that?” ;)

And on that , I’ll leave you to ponder a quote from the article: Viral Smoke n’ Mirrors: Comparing Stunts vs. Buzz in a Viral Marketing Campaign:

“Many clients and agencies are missing the point – mistaking the means for the ends. The means are a well thought-out marketing program that might include a viral component. The end is the ever-elusive and often ill-defined buzz. Good viral campaigns make you stop and look. They sneak up on you. You have an ‘aha’ moment of realization. Stunts make you look, but you quickly forget. Viral campaigns make you wonder who’s behind them. Stunts often have nothing at all to do with the company paying for them. Smart viral campaigns take advantage of the intimate connection between a brand and the community.”

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

  • Should B2B Marketers blog? - “Of the marketers who told us that they use these emerging tactics today, over 70% said they planned to boost their spending on social computing tactics during the next 12 months. Successful blogs have two interconnected ingredients, a community that finds reading the blog -– and contributing to it — valuable. From our own experience at Forrester, blogs are a bit like children –- they demand constant attention and nurturing to grow up properly –- so deciding to initiate a blog is not a decision taken lightly. Questions marketers should answer are: What is the purpose of the blog? Who is the audience? Will the blog encourage participation? And, who should own the blog’s content?” See also: These lists of Corporate Blogs: Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki, A List of Business Blogs & Corporate Blogs in Europe
  • Benchmark Study on the Internet’s Influence on Consumer Moviegoing: “The study found that these moviegoers recall television advertising, trailers and word-of-mouth as the most important sources of what MarketCast called “first awareness”–essentially the first introduction of a movie to a potential consumer. However, in between first awareness and the point of sale–during the critical period in which consumers learn more about movies, winnow their choices, and look up showtimes and theater locations–the Internet’s influence is vast. MarketCast found that 49% of moviegoers surveyed actively research a movie after first hearing about it; and of these, seven in ten go the Internet. “(via Marketing Pilgrim). See also: Google’s Treasure Trove of Industry Market Research

The I Also Glanced Over Reading list:

“In the real world, these just people with ideas/ they just like me and you /when the smoke and cameras dissappear”. Hip Hop - Dead Prez

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson