online information 2008 - day one
Posted by popkitchen | Filed under web 2.0
Online Information 2008 is a combination of a trade show for information companies, conference (keynote speaker being Clay Shirky, professor at NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program, author of Here Comes Everybody, about which I wrote down below) and seminar series entitled Information Management Solutions. Since, my pass did not go through and the conference costs the astounding £799, I will cover only seminars I attended, the streams I am interested are (obviously) Marketing Through Social Media and Content Management. Seminars are delivered by a range of professionals, they are 30 minute short, concise and focused on examples from the practice.
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The one to kick off the talks about Marketing in Social Media was Michael Nutley, editor-in-chief of New 
Media Age magazine, who gave an introduction about the hype surrounding social media fromarketing perspective.
He quotes the findings of Forrester Research company, which states that “advertising no longer drives sales, only considerations (before the purchase), the consumers are those who drive the sales”. The advertising process is split in two:
1) traditional internet marketing is more expensive and less effective
2) marketers are faces with savvy Internet users, who are ignoring advertising messages in online environment, as they would rather trust someone like them.
American agency Anomaly proclaims that “brands are what your friends tell you to buy”.
In new network space, ruled by many-to-many communications, it is not advisable to buy media space, but to earn it (by means of ratings and reviews). Nutley mentions the examples of Royal Navy, which had an ongoing recruitment problem. One of its helicopter drivers had a page of Bebo, where he blogged about his job, which proved as an attractive way to recruit new Navy members.
Another good example for that, according to Nutley, is a Dove Evolution viral campaign.
The pressing issue is – how do you influence the influencers?
47% of Europeans and 56% of Americans are active in social media, the actual contribution distribution is somewhat different – around 10% are writers, 20% comment, while the prevailing majority just observes, talks about the content with other people, not necessarily engaging online.
What everyone online pretty much knows – traditional wisdom is not working here, insert the commercial messages into online spaces and people will immediately run away. People like to control their online environment, Bebo lets people chose which ads will appear next to their profile. Another issue is the lack of control over where the ad is placed within a social network environment, Apple ads appeared on the social networks dedicated to the music sharing, or on the Facebook page of British National Party (overtly racist and anti-immigration), ads for HSBC and EasyJet were posted, which creates an unwanted association for the mentioned brands.
Brands which build social networks themselves usually saw the failures of these endevours (Wallmart in US and Dr. Martins in the UK). People do not like social networks set up by brands, they like to talk about brands, but on their own terms. On the other hand, Lego used a group of nerdy fans (adults, not kids) as group to engage with online.
All problems with brands are likely to be discovered in the cyber space. People will comment on the inconsistencies – after Real Beauty campaign, Dove created a campaign with a different message, which created a backlash. Similarly, Nike is the most criticized brand online, due to its outsourcing policies, involving kids working in sweatshops in South East Asia. If people complain about you, it will show on your Google rankings.
Very successful example of authentic approach in web 2.0 world is small South African winery Stromhoek, where the owners sent the wine to the over 150 bloggers, who regularly blog about wine. Their revenue went from $1m to $10m, within a year. Naturally, everyone else who copied this campaign was less successful.
There are two features of social media, brands will have to tackle.
1) loss of control
2) commitment – if you are harnessing a community, you can not let it down, once your original goal is accomplished. Nike created Nike Plus community for runners and despite wanting to move on (to another sport perhaps), they realized that the community their created is too engaged to be shut down.
No one is giving recipes for easy success, when it comes to web 2.0 marketing, authenticity can not be taught or bought, knowledge about nature of interactions is social spaces is as important as the quantity of click-throughs.
Nutley finished off by quoting Samuel Becket: “Try. Fail. Try Again. Fail Better”
Tags: branding, london, marketing, michael nutley, online information 2008, social media, viral marketing, web 2.0
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:25 am
keep it up! you’re my eyes and ears in london, hahaha!
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Yep!! Keep it up! Maybe we can collect money among friends to pay you this 799 pounds! I could send an official representative email for that! :-)..
December 4th, 2008 at 1:55 am
no need to, the most prominent person on the conference is clay shirky, i already read his book and that is worth 20 bucks max … you might find something for your thesis there, i am sure:)