blog

Modern Media Mash-up

Tue, 11 May 2010 12:32:00 +0100

Modern media has changed! If you or your brand has not yet learned how you can create and attract media instead of buying it, you haven’t invested your attention in how media has changed and what it means for the way you market.

What is really exciting about these changes are that small business can really maximise their reach through what is known as ‘owned and earned’ media. These are all marketing and promotions activities that do not include paying or buying your media and in turn your reach. We are also saying that owned or earned media can integrate with bought media and does not sit in a silo, detached from the entire marketing mix. Quite the contrary, when owned, earned and bought media are strategically integrated, this is when you are getting real value and reach from your paid-for media. In effect what you are achieving is an entire socially personal relevant ecosystem around your product or brand with the consumer relationship at the heart of the system.

So what do the terms ‘bought’, ‘owned’ and ‘earned’ media mean? Bought media is obvious; these are traditional channels of TV, Radio, and Print, outdoor or Public Relations that we typically spend our marketing budgets on. They are relatively easy to implement with most of targeting and metrics readily available by long established statistical measurements like AMPS, RAMS and the like. Bought media also includes new media channels: Online and mobile advertising. A relatively new practise, with many unclear and complex optimization techniques requiring experienced practitioners to implement.

Owned media is probably the most interesting, vastly under-rated and fairground category of modern media today. Owned media refers to all the plethora of content in existence as either produced or by-product of a brand/company’s business. It is the media you control! An example could be industry knowledge or research within the financial sector, or it could be your brand logo and image, your website and everything in between. In fact social media expert and author of the book ‘Engage’ Brian Solis says EC=MC: Every company is a media company. How does owned media fit into your marketing mix, well its simple really...modern media’s driving forces are dictated by getting the attention of your consumer, providing a context for your product in the consumer’s world, providing objects around which the consumer can dynamically engage and doing so in a ubiquitous channel. Publishing your media gives you a proportionate impact to that of traditional media companies: you can now be a magazine, audio channel or TV channel for little to no investment other than time and effort.

Earned media to me can be both driven and/or a result from your activities as a publisher of owned media or that which has been integrated with your bought media. Basically though this is all the stuff we underestimate the power of i.e.: viral or word of mouth, publicity and social media. This category offers ubiquitous access and opportunity, but also requires more time resources. I found this wonderful diagram to illustrate earned media position in the digital marketing ecosystem.

Now that you have a handle on the landscape of modern media what approach will you take? Are there ways in which your small business can create reach and impact and ultimately sales with the limited financial resources you have? Can you realign your human capital to more effectively gain in the earned media category without compromising outputs? How will you integrate your bought media with your earned media strategy to double the effects of each marketing Rand you spend? Can you turn each member of your staff into creators and distributors of your owned media?

Looking forward to sharing more modern media insights with you.

Intuition - The New Science of Social Networks

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:37:34 +0100

I was reading through my past blogs and came across this gem that is still very relevant 1 year later. I thought I would share it again.....

As you may be aware, I conceptualized and created a South African WAP-based mobile only social network in 2008, which showed significant success in its first 6 months of existence. Needless to say there were many cries for formalized metrics and analysis to show how the network was building and what the ‘profile’ of the collective behaviour was? Although reporting was easy enough, analysing how or why or what can be ‘proved’ mathematically was very challenging, in fact to me I honestly believe that results of trying to ‘prove’ any single theory as to why and how this collective was operating, could only be erroneous at best.
Just recently I have been studying the science of networks, epidemics and predictive behaviour of collective groups (mob theory), I found support for my conviction that intuitive predictions as opposed to scientific ones are in fact more realistic. It might explain how all the successful social networks e.g. facebook and MXIT are often surprised to see the level of success that they do!
“While knowing the rules that govern the behaviour of individuals do not necessarily help us to predict the behaviour of the mob, we may be able to predict the very same mob behaviour without knowing very much at all about the unique personalities and characteristics of the individuals that make it up.” Duncan J Watts (Six Degrees: the Science of a connected Age)
I could be quite detailed about how I went about implementing and deciding which marketing/features/direction to take with my project, but the bottom line was that no matter what other stakeholders believed (all of which were never hands on in the project), I responded directly to what users were expressing and used what I ‘felt’ about this collective group to lend creativity and intuition to my decisions. Happily I can claim to have had great success, although sometimes at my own expense: my boss’s lack of approval of my somewhat unconstructed approach to the metrics.

Investigation into the topic shows that whatever we can come to know about the network structure or social structure, both of which tells us about individuals and their connectivity or membership to groups of common interests, it is in fact the dynamics between these individuals and the resulting interaction which can give us insight or some understanding to successful networks. How does one measure this?! Not only with graphs or empirical information but rather with a more ethereal ‘science’ like emotional intelligence or intuition. We are required to apply the gut feel rather than some measured science that in any case is a representation of a time and space long passed (at least in digital time).
The moving target that is a network supported by technologies accelerating the efforts of communication and sharing are without a doubt the most formidable we’ve ever seen. Technologically based networks, like epidemics and fads, can evolve from little interaction and seemingly stagnant spaces into monsters in a short space of time. They can of course reverse that trend just as quickly and this is the challenge for social networks trying to link business success to them.
The complexity and varying dynamics of the individual member’s interrelationships is the chasm of knowledge and science where answers to managing networks might lie. One such sociologist, Mark Granovetter introduced a concept called ‘weak tie’, which showed how some of the most significant interactions in a network did not come from dense groups of strong ties, but rather from individuals who did not know each other, but had much in common. “He called this effect ‘the strength of weak ties’ a beautiful and elegant phrase that has since entered the lexicon of sociology” Duncan J Watts.
Our innate ‘knowledge’ of things sociologically and psychologically related are what I believe give any shareholder of a social network the edge on developing a good social network, if we believe that such a management element exists.
Reading Duncan J Watts’ book “Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age has added to my understanding of the challenges that face stakeholders of networks. The sheer scale of variables and unpredictability in types of interaction between individuals in the collective is mind-blowing. The true possibility lies in being able to move, evolve with your social network, living as a member of the collective. To direct this phenomenon centrally and from above is seen in social networks originating in large corporate as opposed to start-up businesses. Marketers and development teams should be able to fluidly progress through the mire of options and apply what they ‘feel’ will add value, rather than what they think they ‘know for sure’.

Social Media Apocalypse in 2010

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:12:27 +0100

The new year tends to start with reflections on the past year and clever trend predictions. I thought I would give you an overview of my favourites so far and maybe a few pearls of my own thrown in.

I'll start by saying this: where social media and its business is concerned, South Africa and Africa is so well positioned to fleece the mobile channel for its own benefit and the benefit of its communities and perhaps even go about setting itself apart in how it can maximise development potential from social media.

But lets look at general 2010 digital predictions.

Naseem Javad describes miniturisation as a major business trend for 2010: "Every business process will go through intense compression and digitalisation so when it comes out on the other side of the tunnel, it will have already considerably reduced its operational costs. This will enable the process to function effectively, more powerfully, and be highly replicable, with a lower cost structure like a proverbial silver bullet."
Full Story: http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/423/43579.html

Jarred Cinman had this to say about corporate approach to digital campaigns: "Listen to the local digital marketing industry and one of the biggest complaints you'll still hear is that corporates don't take digital marketing seriously, and they don't allocate the kind of budgets our purple-haired friends shooting TV commercials enjoy."

I believe this is still going to go on for a while. Although many more brands are dragging their agencies towards digital strategy, agencies are still holding onto the lucrative TV commercial approach. The solution lies in companies finding digital consultants to help navigate them towards the social media channels. Towards the end of 2009 I experienced an interesting phenomena, where production houses (TV and photography) had been given the responsibility of creating digital campaigns with the visual assets they had created. I believe we'll see a lot of traditional agency silos being erroded by this kind of change.
Jarred Cinman full article: http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/16/43588.html

In the above article, Jarred Cinman also had this to say about accessibility of the internet to South Africans: "Despite the huge numbers in mobile internet usage by specific LSMs for specific things (such as Facebook or MXit), the mobile Internet has yet to grab the imagination of the technologically well-endowed. If you own a laptop or a netbook, you don't spend time surfing on a mobile device."

Again my opinion is that most digital consultants/companies tend to be focused on "specific' LSM's. The immense growth of mobile internet access via WAP enabled mobile phones is being overlooked. It would serve FMCG brands and mass market brands well to immerse themselves in the practice of using social media targeted towards lower LSM's. In fact I would say that the mobile internet has grabbed the imagination of the previously technologically challenged and the business from this sector will grow hugely this year.

Jerry Mpufane, MD of DraftFCB shares his vision of 2010 digital trends and how brands will interact with them. http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/16/43546.html

Also read: Chris Moerdyk's article on marketing trends for some digital insights: http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/423/43543.html

Also read: Top digital Trends for 2010 by Nuri Djavit and Paul Newnes http://www.digitalmediabuzz.com/2009/12/top-digital-trends-for-2010/

If you prefer to listen to a podcast go to the Digital Edge and listen to experts discuss digital trends for 2010: http://www.thedigitaledge.co.za/cambrient2/view/cambrient2/en/page213?oid=1519&sn=Detail

MBA.co.za have published the following 6 social media trends for 2010: http://www.mba.co.za/article.aspx?rootid=6&subdirectoryid=2236

Hope you find this short list useful. I will be back to discuss more hot digital trends soon.

The cost of mobile advertising for South Africans

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:24:01 +0100

Mobile advertising is growing at an alarming rate in South Africa, but we are paying nearly 500% more than any other country in the world for our advertising space. Why? Simply, there is not enough South African inventory. The demand for advertising is greater than the space available.

The average CPC (cost per click) in other countries like the US and UK is about USD 0.08, while in South Africa it costs about USD 0.25 on average.

The problem exists because South Africa itself does not have any local inventory/publishers of WAP portals to speak of. We have MXIT, Vodafone Live, Soccer Laduma and a couple of insignificantly smaller ones. In a few articles previously I have urged local brands and businesses to create WAP portals at least at the rate that they create web sites. The reality is that last year the revenue generated by mobile advertising from SA was ZAR 1.9bn. But 90% of that revenue was spent on overseas mobile publishers like BBC, CNN and My Gamma and others. This means that the revenue generated by local advertising landed in the hands of foreigh media companies and mobile advertising servers like Admob(US), Admoda (U.K) and Buzz City (South East Asian).

I just get sick and tired of South Africa and Africa being re-colonised every time we happen to show growth in a particular sector. Being an emerging territory always gives big western businesses a head start on capitalising on our revenues. This should be a something for all of us to think about. Sometimes I also note that organisations like MMA in South Africa don't seem to have these issues at the top of the agenda and this is a matter for concern.

I will once again here urge local brands and organisations to create mobile wap portals with huge communities that are able to give advertisers platforms to target advertising more locally. We also have a duty to bring mobile social networking to Africa and South Africa in ways that give them the platform to express themselves, share, self actualise and access each other in a localised context.

Are you a marketer or not?

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:26:42 +0100

Marketers in South Africa are not properly engaging in the mobile channel or the power of social media. In this present economic climate there still seems to be resistance to marketing and advertising via the most lucrative channel around...that of mobile. For me, if you do not have a mobile element to your marketing for the December cycle or if you have not constructed your campaign around mobile marketing, you are not in the game.

The recession is diluting the effect of the traditional mediums, while mobile advertising is growing and reaching numbers unheard of in campaigns before while costing LESS! Increase your ROI while adding dynamic communication and brand awareness strategies to your mix and you're likely to see the true possibility of this channel in a whole new light and see your marketing strategy and spend with renewed enthusiam, with what can be achieved.

Talking to agencies, I have noted that unless driven from their clients they are not likely to engage in a full mobile media strategy. I have also noted the number of agencies chosing to claim digital strategies as being online only. Here are the facts people. If there are 6 million internet users in South Africa there are 36 million mobile phones. Mobile marketing is yielding 70% higher response than online, so why are you spending a half a million rand developing a website? Shouldn't you be investing in a mobile platform for your brand?

Mobile Advertising publisher services are reporting views of 140 million views a month and there are 3 such services all getting the same results. This is the potential size of your target market in the mobile space. Makes the hits on your expensive website look a bit sad, doesn't it?

My next post will focus on the reason why you as brands and marketers should invest in building mobile web/WAP portals....