Category: Drew’s Articles

CMO Insights: Looking Ahead After The Downturn

Posted on by Drew Neisser

I ran into Brian Kardon at The CMO Club Summit and we had some great conversations despite the fact that he is a RedSox fan.  Brian is the CMO at Eloqua, a leading provider of sales automation software and a true thought leader.  Brian makes a strong case for crowd-sourcing, content marketing, personalization and mobile while encouraging marketers to take advantage of the downturn.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
Missing 2011 already!  2011 was the year that the four horsemen of the digital age became real: mobile, social, apps, cloud.   We found real value from these.  It’s not the proverbial “just a few months away.”   It’s now.  It’s an exciting time to be a marketer!

DN: What new things did you try in 2011?
Crowd-sourcing took a big step forward.  We leveraged our online community to help answer customer questions and create new, valuable content faster and cheaper via crowd-sourcing.  And when the “crowd” creates its, they are also your partner in distributing it.  Content that was created by outsiders received lots more love than that created by insiders or “the usual suspects”.  Companies are reaching outside their walls like never before.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty effecting your plans for 2012?
I’m starting to hear “hunker down” talk from business leaders.  That’s a huge mistake.  When your competitors are zigging, that’s the time to zag.  It’s like doing a house renovation.  You get higher quality workers and lower costs during a recession.  The same is true of business.  You can find better talent, get better media rates, pay less for words at Google because there are fewer dollars chasing those things during a downturn.  And when the recession is over, those companies are in an incredibly strong competitive position because they have been continually investing.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon?
 Call it 1:1 marketing or mass customization, but the dream of personalized digital experiences is finally here.  Websites are no longer the embodiment  of Groundhog Day, where the website looks the same every day.  Think NetFlix and Amazon – where they use your digital body language to personalize movie and book recommendations.  Retail and fashion sites use shopping card and clickstream digital body language to personalize the shopping experience.  You like Gucci, hate Pucci?  Your favorite web sites should know that and present content that they know you will like.  Drew likes tennis – he gets an offer for US Open tickets.  Drew likes the Yankees – he gets invited to Terry Francona’s Farewell Party! (Blogger’s note: you won’t see me holding my breath for that invitation.)

DN: What do you have to say about the growing challenge of complexity for marketers?
In all the petabytes and exabytes of data, some people see complexity and shudder.   I think smart marketers see beauty in the data and their ability to personalize and improve customer engagement.

CMO Insights: Thinking Big

Posted on by Drew Neisser

I caught up with Hope Frank, CMO of Webtrends at The CMO Club Summit and look forward to seeing her at Pivot next week.  Hope thinks big especially when it comes to marketing and offers a positive assessment of 2011 and an outright bullish one for 2012.  It is safe to say that Hope lives up to her name.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
2011 was a pivotal year for digital marketing and businesses. Marketers are getting smarter about their programs and investments, which drives them to companies like Webtrends. We maximize marketing ROI, through optimization, testing, targeting and program measurement with our analytics offering. This is an area companies are laser-focused on. We are certainly looking forward to watching our industry mature in 2012.

DN: Looking back at 2011, what new things did you try that worked or didn’t work?
Webtrends has been on an incredibly steep curve of development to meet the immediate needs of brand marketers today. In 2011, we introduced the industry’s first unified analytics offering to provide brand marketers a view of their performance across mobile, social and web properties. Amazingly, we also introduced Webtrends Social, a complete social offering from ads to apps to analytics. Both of these developments have driven deep digital marketing success for our clients.

DN: Are you particularly proud of something you tried in 2011?
Without question it would be the globalization of our Webtrends products and services. In 2011, we opened our Japan office, and enjoyed tremendous growth from our EMEA, South America and Asia Pacific teams. Our products and services naturally translate to marketers globally who are looking to effectively measure their programs and discover new ways to engage their audiences.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty effecting your plans for 2012, and if so how?
We do not see the current economic climate affecting our business in any negative way. In fact, we are seeing companies be smarter about their digital investments, driving them to our optimization and analytics solutions. We expect to continue to see strong growth in 2012.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon? If so, what are they and how important do you think these trends are to your business?
The shift of analytics from the IT department to the CMO will continue, as products continue to develop in the direction of clean, simple dashboards and interfaces that allow marketers to develop, manage and measure digital campaigns through intuitive tools and services. We have seen this unfold with “ahead of the curve clients” such as Zinio.

Zinio has been an avid customer of our analytics products and services and has applied it in a super intelligent fashion to shape their business. They don’t just sell magazine covers, Zinio sells the treasure of storytelling under the covers. Based on Webtrends analytics, Zinio is able to determine which articles are the most compelling and leverage those in their “Explore” section. Zinio allows for exploration and discovery of category-driven stories FOR FREE to complement the 5,000 titles Zinio sells. View examples here .

DN: Can you boil down your Pivot presentation to one or two key take-aways?
Genius in the Age of Enlightenment: Evan Greene, CMO, of The Recording Academy (The GRAMMYs) and Jeanniey Mullen, CMO of Zinio and VIVmag will join me to showcase creative innovation within social programs in music, fashion and publishing.

Key take-aways from our presentation at Pivot will include:

  • Don’t let the tools get in your way
  • Dive back into the art of marketing with jaw dropping concepts and creative
  • And a unified analytics approach to new creative and outreach is critical to ROI on digital

DN: Finally, among the trends I’m tracking are complexity (for marketers) and data-overload (for consumers). Can you comment on these?
Tackling complexity in analytics was another major achievements in 2011. We developed the only unified analytics offering in the industry. Webtrends Analytics 10 allows brands to measure effectiveness across their mobile, social and web properties, and see these measurements integrated in an easy to understand dashboard. It was a major step forward for our industry.

CMO Insights: Mobile Advertising and the Fifth P

Posted on by Drew Neisser

I caught up with Jeffrey Hayzlett at The CMO Club Summit in LA and look forward to hearing him speak next week in NYC at Pivot. He is a highly engaging speak with strong and clear points-of-view.  In the interview below, Jeff discusses his next book, the growing impact of mobile advertising and adds a 5th P to the old marketing pillars: product, price, place, promotion.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
2011 was a great year for my company and me, personally. I spoke all over the world, Australia, all over the US and met some great people and great companies. Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google and MGM were just a few of my favorites. My book, “The Mirror Test” was released in paperback. And I just became celebrity editor of the largest circulation magazine in the world, “Tweeting & Business”, coming out this month. It’s been a great year. I tend never to look back, just move forward and go!

DN: Looking back at 2011, what new things did you try?
I’m always open to trying new things; I love to take risks. But I also think it’s important to continue to examine your company inside and out, drive change and make tough decisions. It’s exactly about what I wrote in “The Mirror Test”.

DN: What else happened for you in 2011?
I wrote another book this year and it will be coming out in January. It’s called Running the Gauntlet: Essential Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change and Grow Profits. Gauntlet takes the concepts from The Mirror Test to the next level. I’m really proud of the book. We included some amazing new interactive elements as well that will make the book unique.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty effecting your plans for 2012 and if so how?
Overall it’s not, I’m driving change and continuing forward. You have to. I have to take my company and my plans and move forward—whether I succeed or fail is up to me. I don’t look at the economy and let that stop or influence anything I want to do.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon?
Mobile advertising is growing fast than anyone–Google or Yahoo! included–predicted. As a marketer I would have a plan in place for mobile campaigns. And social media continues to evolve. Video is surpassing the written word online. I’ve tape many of my blogs as video as well.

DN: Can you boil down your Pivot presentation to one or two key insights or thought-provoking take-aways?
I’m fortunate to be on a panel with Gayle Weiswasser, the Vice President of Social Media Communications at Discovery Communications. We’ll be talking about the traditional 4Ps of marketing. But with a spin. The four P’s aren’t going away, but they have been joined by a powerful 5th P — the social element — people. Since it’s a panel, you never know which direction the conversation will go–which I love.

However, key points I usually work into any conversation about marketing and social media are: Never, ever discount the Power of One. Just one follower, whether they are an evangelist or a critic, will tell their friends and followers. Don’t ignore the critics. The recent incident with GASP in Australia is an excellent lesson on how NOT to do it. I call the ROI of social media “return on ignoring”. You can’t ignore the comments–positive or negative. Feedback from your customers is critical; in the past I’ve used that feedback to develop new features and products customers loved and bought like crazy. As marketers it’s critical we really listen and respond. That creates brand ambassadors for your company.

Being Bullish About Customer Engagement

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Jay Samit, CEO of SocialVibe, an innovative and rapidly growing digital advertising platform, will be speaking at next week’s Pivot Conference in New York City.  (By the way, last year’s conference was both inspiring and enlightening and was among the best of its kind.) Here’s my brief but informative interview with Jay who is particularly bullish about 2012 and his promise of consumer engagement.

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
For SocialVibe, 2011 has been an amazing year. When the economy is tough, brand managers need to justify each and every ad dollar they spend. This has been the year for value-exchange engagements. Hundreds of brands have jumped on the bandwagon increasing our reach to over 600 million consumers per month.

DN: Can you boil down your Pivot presentation to one or two key insights?
Impressions are the least effective way to measure advertising. Measure consumer engagement. Value exchange advertising turns consumers into brand evangelists generating millions in earned media.

DN: Looking back at 2011, what new things did you try?
SocialVibe expanded our value-exchange engagement platform beyond Zynga in 2011, to encompass Facebook credits, premium content, and mobile. With a broader reach of over 150 million American consumers per month, we are now able to pair the product message with their exact audience. The result: millions of consumers opting in to spend over a minute with their favorite brand and sharing that message with dozens of friends online.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty effecting your plans for 2012?
SocialVibe is expanding globally in 2012. The success of our London office has us now running social media advertising campaigns in dozens of countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. With a reach of over 660 million consumers, Japan and Asia are SocialVibe’s next area of expansion.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon?
Providing a rich media solutions for small and medium size businesses is a key growth area for SocialVibe. Today we reach hundreds of millions of consumers for the top 300 brands in the world. In 2012, we want to give smaller businesses access to this targeted, engaged audience of consumers.

DN: Are you particularly proud of something new that you tried or recommended in 2011?
Great topic for another story: SocialVibe is now providing our advertising solution to the Presidential Election of 2012. We have clients from both sides of the aisle. The amazing thing is that political ad campaigns generate results even better than brand campaigns because people love to talk politics.

DN: Finally, among the trends I’m tracking are complexity (for marketers) and data-overload (for consumers). How are you responding to these?
Consumers on the Internet are inundated with marketing messages and have learned to tune them out. The secret is to enter the conversation by finding the “pause moments’ when consumers can and will pay attention. SocialVibe has published over 100 case studies illustrating how brands in virtually any category can achieve great results.

A Look Back at 2012

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Looking to gain some insight prior to the upcoming Pivot Conference in New York City, I interviewed a number of marketers including Gayle Weiswasser, VP, Social Media Communications, Discovery Communications.  Here is what Gayle had to say:

DN: As 2011 winds down, are you thinking “good riddance” or “darn I’ll miss it?”
We’d be thrilled to have another year like 2011. It was a banner year for social media at Discovery – we saw great growth across our social media platforms as well as sustained, strong engagement with fans, thanks to consistent delivery of compelling content that kept our fans happy. We hope that 2012 will be another year of experimentation, growth and success.

DN: Looking back at 2011, what new things did you try that worked or didn’t work?
We experimented with on-air integration of social media (most notably during a marathon for Science’s An Idiot Abroad).  We’d like to expand that capability across all of our networks and do more with on-air integration during premieres. We also tried a number of social media initiatives with our talent that proved to be a great success on social platforms – live chats, Q&As, Facebook/Twitter takeovers.

DN: Is the current economic uncertainty affecting your plans for 2012 and if so how?
Social media outreach and marketing are very cost-effective strategies for driving tune-in and traffic and engaging with fans. We do not expect the economic climate to affect our social media plans; in fact, social media has proven to be indispensable when budgets are tightened.

DN: Looking ahead to 2012, are there some emerging trends that you hope to capitalize upon?
Mobile is a big trend for 2012 (and has been for the last few years). The more that we can engage our fans across a range of devices through compelling content and apps – whether they augment our on-air programming through co-viewing or simply make our brands more accessible and fun – the more successful we will be. Mobile is incredibly important to our business, and Discovery’s commitment to making its sites mobile-friendly and to developing these apps is a testament to that.

DN: Are you particularly proud of something new that you tried in 2011?
We’re proud of the fact that, with very few exceptions around individual shows, Discovery does all of its social media in-house. We’ve grown from a team of 2 in 2009 to a team of 10 today, which is a testament to Discovery’s commitment to social media and its importance as part of a larger marketing/communications strategy.

DN: How are the dual trends, complexity (for marketers) and data-overload (for consumers) effecting your plans?
We know that our fans are constantly bombarded with information, and that we are competing with many, many inputs for both their television minutes and their online attention. That puts the burden squarely on us to consistently deliver strong, authentic content that is both relevant and entertaining. It is very easy for a fan to hide a page or unsubscribe from a Twitter account, or just simply to pass by our posts without sharing, commenting or clicking through. We try to meet that challenge by setting a high bar for content on our platforms and using social media to spotlight effectively the amazing programming that airs every day across our networks.

Taking Social Media for Granite

Posted on by Drew Neisser

The topic was igneous rock. Sitting atop the lecture hall, I was delighted to see my tuition payments at work this particular parent’s weekend.  The professor of Dynamic Earth was making, what we used to call “Rocks for Jocks,” both enlightening and entertaining. Watching him enthrall, alternating between videos, charts and real samples, I realized “dull as a rock” would need to be expunged from my list of pejoratives.

Halfdome is Granite

Without going all scientific on you (it was but a one-hour lecture after all), igneous rock, which accounts for 80% or so of all rocks on earth, is formed by magma or lava, either above or below the earth’s service.  And when the magma hardens below the surface it often forms granite, a marvel of geology that we all simply take for granted.  More than just a bad pun, granite provides a nifty albeit rocky metaphor for some sturdy thinking about social media.

A Solid Social Media Program Takes Time to Develop

Because molten magma is really really hot, it actually takes millions of years for it to cool, condense and form granite.  Not that social media need take eons, but  a successful program does take a reasonable amount of time to develop.  Consumers are not necessarily hot about engaging with your brand so, first and foremost, you need to think through all the elements of the program from strategy to brand POV, channel mix to monitoring, content development to on-going execution.

I know this sounds obvious to you daily practitioners but it is often rushed through or overlooked by those new to social.  We recently ran into a stone  wall with a prospect who was looking to plan and execute a fully-integrated social media program for a new product with extraordinarily ambitious fan acquisition goals in under three weeks.  Sadly, we decided to walk away from the pitch, knowing that the odds of success under these parameters were as likely as predicting the next eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

Look Below the Surface for On-Going Success

Though granite is formed under the earth’s crust, it only became ubiquitous after millions of years of surface erosion and tectonic plate shifts.  Rather than seek ubiquity through follower and fan counts, marketers would be better advised to look below the surface at true fan engagement.  Having thousands or even millions of fans is essentially useless if these fans are not engaging with the brand in a meaningful manner.

Buying fans is easy; engaging with them is the hard part.  These days, Twitter followers can be bought for under $30 per thousand and Facebook “likes” can be purchased for as little as a few pennies to a whopping $2 per.   Given the ease of acquisition, it would be easy to confuse abundance with effectiveness.  Engagement measures like comments on wall posts, retweets, link sharing and favoriting are far better indications of a successful social media program.

The Social Media Landscape is Anything But Static

Turns out that exposed granite is constantly under pressure from the elements, which can grind it down into almost unrecognizable bits of soil.  And so it is with social media as competing forces vie to gain competitive advantage and grind each out of existence.  Among these battles, the one between the mountain that is Facebook and the rising tide that is Google+ is already having the greatest impact.

Google+ established a 25 million-user foothold on the strength of its Circles, a unique way to classify one’s friends and associates.   Not to be outdone, Facebook responded with a new way to differentiate between “close friends” and mere “acquaintances.”  Facebook also added a “subscribe button” which allows people to follow the public feeds of anyone, even if your not friends, another feature that Google+ offered from the get go (see the pattern here?).  And with the hopes of crushing G+ entirely, Facebook just rolled out an entirely new user interface.

But wait there’s more. Google+ finally released it API to developers and just now opened up the site to all, which combined could prove to be the perfect rock for David’s sling.  3rd Party developers like those that drive the features of Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Social Oopmh, can finally integrate G+ into their systems, making it easier for users to post, track and manage all their social networks at once.  With G+ usage down a reported 41%, these changes arrived just in time to remind us that when it comes to social media, nothing is set in stone!

And if you like what you’ve read, feel free to subscribe to the Renegade newsletter or our Facebook page. Finally, if this article seemed familiar, that’s because you saw it earlier this week on MediaPost.