CrapHammer

Rethinking Digital and Social Marketing for the Arts

Or the five hardest questions I've ever been asked.

Rethinking Digital and Social Marketing for the Arts

The presentation that I gave today to the International Society for the Performing Arts.

Planningness 2010 Recap: Made By Many on Making Things

I'm kicking off my recap of PlanningNess 2010 with a deck by the Made by Many folks.

I've seen a lot of talk about agile and scrum.  And frankly, it's usually just someone spouting a lot of buzz words and urging agencies need to adapt.  But its generally someone from the outside without a lot of credibility on how to improve what we do.

But I've clearly never seen Made by Many talk about it.  And there are few agencies on this planet I hold in higher esteem.  And true to form, I found their presentation deck insightful, inspiring and dead on as to where we need to get to.

So many gems in here!  How about a dozen user testing and engagement tools we could be all be using in our project development processes?  God I love these guys.  I think I want to have their baby.  Shit.

How to really make something

View more presentations from Made by Many.

Measuring Twitter - You Gotta Be Kidding Me

Here's the scenario.  You launch a twitter account around a product launch.

It takes off like wildfire. But how do you go about showcasing the reach and re-tweet activity?  Laughable, right?   There are so many great tools out there.  How hard can this be?

Boy was I surprised.  Not that there aren't an insane number of tools.  Just that none of them appear to be 100% up to this task. So I set out on a quest to answer this question.

My Task:  Be able to showcase unique tweet and retweet activity (engagement) by day, week and month as well as the ability to tally up final reach.  So I want to know the WHO, WHEN and the total reach.

Here is the final tally.

The Fails = 7
The Partial Wins = 1
The Wins = 0

(Click to enlarge all screenshots below.)

#TheFails

RetweetRank (link) Score: F

I have no idea what scenario would enable this tool to be helpful or effective.  Though it's so awesome to know that my twitter account is in the 97.87 percentile.  Huh?  But hey, at least it's free.  Unlike the next one.

Tweetreach (link) Score = C-

Okay.  This gives us a total reach number.  And this was part of the ask.  But where did this number come from?  Over what time period?  What content was retweeted over the others?  What percentage of users participated versus not participating?  It's possible that the pro account would provide this but I'm hesitant to try it as the pricing escalates pretty quickly into the hundreds a month.

TweetStats (link) Score = C+

I feel really bad placing this service in the #fail category.  This tool really impressed me.  It's well done, free and an interesting way to explore your twitter activity in a profile.  I was able to see who I reply to more than others, when I tweet more during the week and even explore the clouds of my tweet content.  But I was unable to pull up any evaluations on what tweets were most retweeted or what my total reach might be in a time period.

TweetEffect (link) Score = F

WARNING!  Avoid this service like the plague.  It tries to show you what tweets you made that led to people following or not following you.  The graph at the top is so lacking in any insight that I literally laughted out loud when it loaded.  Again, looking at the list of what tweets "caused" people to leave may cause the stats addicts out there (like me) to lose way too much sleep.  Avoid at all costs!

Twitalyzer (link) Score = C [updated]

At this point I think I've given 30 tools access to my Twitter account and the design of this site made me really question whether I should grant access once again.  But I soldier on!  This service touts hundreds of reports. Um.  Really?  I'd say there are a few dozen reports.  Sadly, not one of them could give me the data I was searching for.  Their retweeters tab just said "Unfortunately we don't seem to know any of @passitalong's retweeters! Believe it or not we don't know every person who uses Twitter."  Sigh.  Fail.

UPDATE:  Per Jeff's comment at the bottom of this post, I went through each of the reports he outlines.  I have to say that some of the data points we would be looking for are here.  But it always remains a graph with the inability to drill down and see the data points.  And we would have to run a high number of reports to then pull each number into another spreadsheet (again, with the actual mentions being counted not being visible in the report we're looking at).  As many of the numbers are there, however, I updated the scoring for Twitalyzer to a C.

Twinfluence (link) Score = F

Someone needs to help all these services come up with a name that is not a variation of Tweet or Twitter.  That aside, this one was so bad it almost became my favorite.  I will have you all know I am "ranked in the of all twitterers!"  What?  Beat that!!  I think they left out a percentile number and we know how valuable that measure is!  oy.  Fail.  Next.

TwitterCounter [link] Score = B-

Okay.  TwitterCounter deserves an honorable mention.  Their solution is clean, effective and fast to repsond.  More importantly, they are proposing a paid service that will provide what I am looking for.  See image below.  But this remains vaporware at present.  It does not currenlty exist.

The one thing potentially missing from the paid service is the ability to identify unique retweets/twitters.  But if they manage to roll out this new service, I would move them up into partial win or higher.

#ThePartialWins

Radian6 [link] Score=B+

(Note:  Fake data in above image, but this shows the types of reports I used)

Radian6 remains one of my favorite tools.  I can see activity, trend it over time and even compute total reach achieved.  But what I can't easily do is pull up everything associated with a single twitter account.  I have to do a keyword search.  So what I did was do a search for anyone mentioning my twitter account.  But if your account is not, let's say, a unique word, then you're in for a lot of fiddling. 

I can't limit it to just looking at one source, because I want to see all mentions across the twitterverse, etc.

That said, I was able to pull unique mentions.  And I was able to pull a total reach number.  But I couldn't easily pull unique mentions by day, week or month.  This means I would have to run every report for every day and then tally it in Excel.  Not exactly fun.

Also, while I could pull unique mentions (choose : Unique Source Count as shown in image above) I can't easily tell what was a retweet or what was a mention without compounding significantly the number of reports I would have to run.

#TheWins

I got nothing.

But I know what I want.  I want PostRank for Twitter.  But more on PostRank later.

Know of a killer tool that would have made our life easier?  Ping me or comment below.

Wearing my creative briefs

A member of my team was questioning the creative brief.

She then began interviewing some people internally about what works and doesn't.

It's now blown out into a cool little investigation.

And she's not alone.

Dare put up a great deck on how to properly use the brief.

Creative Brief Workshop

I have to wonder if the problem is really how to best use a brief.

Is it really that "simple"?

Gareth Kay has one of the best slideshares on the digital creative brief I've ever seen.

I'd go so far as to say he believes the brief is broken.

I have to wonder if he is on to something.

The brief in the post digital age

What do you think of the creative brief?  Is it broken?  It is just misused?

(H/T to Paul for the slideshare finds!)

iPad - Stemming the Flow of Complaints

I'm quite amazed at the whiplash from the tech-heads and geeks around the iPad.

Is the name unfortunate?  Yes.

Does it do everything under the sun?  Hell no and thank god!

Will it be a game changer?  Yes.  No question.

But, Sean, "It's just a large iTouch!!!" 

I hear this over and over.  In fact, I predicted it would be a large iTouch.

So here's what I say back to all the geeks.

"Boo Hoo."

Because what people are really saying when they complain about this is "I wanted something new that was alien and inconceivable."

"I wanted to be surprised more!"

The iPhone was not alien and inconceivable.  We all knew it would be a phone and iPod with applications.

What made the iPhone so wonderful was the focus on design and the experience of using it.

I believe and predict that the iPad will be a game changer and here is why.

It is what we all needed and the industry was waiting for.

But no one had ever produced it.

Amazon came close with the Kindle.  But it failed to allow for further innovation by third parties out of the box.

Amazon also failed miserably with rolling out their device internationally.

Let's also keep in mind that the publishing industry is in need of some serious innovation here.

The content industry is still reeling from the financial shocks they have had to endure. 

And to date there has been no easy way for traditional publishers to reach a global audience while also adding unique value.

With the kindle, every publisher is the same.

This is assuming publishers don't make the same mistake as NBC and publicly state they will never be on iTunes (which NBC then had to take back many years and lots of missed dollars later).

The iPad will see a global increase in purchased consumption of eBooks and rich publishing content.

Will publishers make as much per title as they want?  no.  But it will drive revenue.

And yet the savviest amongst us are shouting out the perceived faults of this device as loud as they can.

So let's look at these complaints.

One of the biggest complaints is the lack of multi-tasking.  You can only run one application at a time.

Geeks are aghast.

"Boo Hoo," is all I can say back.

The average person won't care.  Nor will they care that the bevel is "large" or that there is no camera on their media reader.

Now... no flash sucks... but that's not a deal breaker.  That's just Apple being stubborn.  Again.

Here's the kicker.

The geeks clearly have their pocket protectors in a wad over this.  But mark my words, almost all of them will have one of these.  

They will all own an iPad.

Or they will go and buy a Sony Reader and we can all sympathize with their sad, poor little ebook content.

So let's assume it's just a fanatical few who are up in arms.

What will people care about?

That's easy.  The battery life, the responsiveness of the unit, and the experience of using it.  The experience being tied to the content available.

Design is a hard game.  It is a game of constant restrictions and constraints.

You can't have everything.  You have to make intelligent compromises.

Note:  you can have everything with bad design.  Tried to use an alarm clock recently with 325 functions but only 3 control buttons?  It's three years later and I still can't operate my alarm clock reliably.

Apple made the right choices.  10 hours of batter life together with a form, size and weight that is f'ing amazing.

So I believe quite strongly that the iPad will be a game changer. 

I have long stated my belief that piracy will not go away.  In fact, it will get worse.

The only solution for the publishing industry is to make their content ubiquitous to the user (digitally) and easy to purchase.  Easy, easy, easy!!

I spend quite a bit of money a month through my Apple TV because it's the highest quality HD content and it's one easy click with millions of titles at my fingertips.

But when something isn't there... hello torrent.

Remember this presentation from Sports Illustrated?

We all thought of it as science fiction.  Who in their right mind in the publishing industry would pump this kind of money into something this risky?  Only a moron looking to do a Kliavkoff. [edit: correction to name made]

Only now, the hardware exists to exactly enable this vision.

The iPad.

Sport Illustrated just has to write an app.  No hardware risks.  No crazy licensing deals.

Anyone can take their publishing vision and move it onto a platform that will have a global rollout and support.

I would like to applaud Jobs and Apple.

This larger than life iTouch may just change publishing.

Something has to.

Image source: yaunus

Death of the URL Bar

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Prediction:  The URL bar will go away (as we know it.)

We do not need two bars on our browsers.

More users are using the search bar for everything.  Because it always works.  Type in a search term and bingo, you get the results you were looking for.  Type in a URL and bingo, you click on the first link that comes back.

The URL bar is dying.

The day the Google search bar automatically takes you to a URL is the day the URL bar will become extinct.

What Spammers Know That We Don't

We are all working like mad to develop location based services and technologies. Phones that know where the nearest cool coffee shop is, discount coupons that apply to a store you just snubbed and walked past.  I believe it is considered to be a multi-billion dollar opportunity and the salvation of the mobile industry.

But frankly, we are sucking eggs and doing next to nothing while a few key individuals are proving you can mine for location based gold today with free or near-free resources.

Spammers Innovating Faster than Hi Tech:

The Real Estate, Online Pharmacies and Porn Spammers have once again proven they are leaders in adapting new technologies to their annoying purposes.

I tweeted the following:

And within minutes I received a follow from KatyFStewart.

She offers one link on her page.  To this site:

 

Should I be promoting her Twitter account?  Should I have clicked through on a link from a semi-naked nubile photo?  No.  Of course not.  But will I be alone?  Nope.  Guaranteed.  Not only that, I would bet that many a media person would cry to get even 1/10 of the clickthrough and conversion rates these people are achieving.

Not Just Porn:

Tweet the name of a city and you will undoubtedly get a sudden increase in followers.  Why?  Because the real estate industry is not about to be left behind by the porn industry.  Quite a few real estate agents appear to be using auto-subscribe services to add you as a friend in cities they do their work in.

These are services that listen for a set of keywords and once it finds a match with any twitter user in the world, it sends that person a follow request on your behalf.

Let me be clear. I hate auto-subscribe services.  It's like paying someone to get you more friends.

That said, it does make me wonder.  Do we really need fancy and expensive GPS and high tech solutions or could we just better monitor and respond to the contextual content people are providing in their tweets and status updates?

Brilliance:

What I love about [what] Ms. Stewart is doing (real name likely Amanda Hogsbottom) is that they are using simple, free and contextual tools to mine twitter and facebook.  Then they are doing simple (and free) IP sniffing from their website to provide an end to end contextually relevant and highly personalized (location based) solution.  Something the big brands are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve with likely far less success.

Naked 3 Minutes, Episode 1

I'm back.  New job is crazy but I'm starting to find my footing and some time to participate once again.  Way behind on my reading.  So rather than give you all some reading, I thought I would take my first stab at a naked show.

Apologies for all the "ums" and "ahhs", but hey, I'm naked.  I think I deserve some leeway.  ;)

[embedded naked video below]

Craphammer Naked 3 Minutes, episode 1 from craphammer on Vimeo.

Exposing Marketing in the Conversation Age
http://www.onedegree.ca/
Wonderful new design to One Degree (one of the top 10 marketing blogs in Canada according [to] Marketing Magazine.)  Be sure to check out Kate's wonderful post on twitter and microblogging.  Perfect for client-side and agency-side marketers alike.

Exposing the Future
http://tinyurl.com/32sadb
Communities Dominate Brands and their ten predictions for 2008.  Here's some wonderful quotes from their document.  Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen have created one of the most impressive sources of emerging mobile trends and data on the web.  And if you haven't read "Communities Dominate Brands" yet, then it's time to go sit in the corner.

Exposing her Marketing Brain
http://leighhimel.blogspot.com/
Taking risks is par for the course for Leigh Himel.  I'd like to call specific attention to her An Ecosystem Approach to Marketing in the Digital Age.  Brilliant application of not just system thinking, but environmental assessment criteria to communications.  Give us part two, Leigh!

Most Exposed Blogger (this week)
Connie Reece:  http://www.everydotconnects.com/
Frozen Pea Fund:  http://frozenpeafund.com/
Her ability to extend her persona into the digital world is amazing to behold.  And her work to support Susan Reynolds with the Frozen Pea Fund is both inspiring and empowering.  They have raised well over $3500 to support Breast Cancer research and I encourage everyone to participate.

(Note:  I'm looking for a logo and music for this crazy little "show".  Feeling creative?  Fire it my way.  I'll use it.)

Digital in context of experience

"media are not extensions of ourselves but interfaces with experience"

Michele perras twittered the above statement over to me the other day.  Yup, just me (and her other 300 followers.)  What struck me, beyond the insight of the statement, was that the source of this thought was not a philosophical marketing, advertising or brand debate.  Rather it was a look at "Prosthetic Technologies as Interfaces".

This is something we have been talking about this week at Lift Communications.  Experiences are becoming the cornerstone of engagement and it's impossible to build a strategy of engagement without considering context.

Digital is just that:  a context.  It's an extension of our being.  Cell phones, PDAs, laptops, YouTube, portable entertainment devices, nike plus, etc.  So many of these tools are akin to cyber extensions.  They have become interfaces with experiences we are having or desire to share.

David Armano speaks on AdAge's announcement that digital agencies have failed to prove they can manage brands strategically.  And he concurs with AdAge's assessment, but in typical Armano style he paints a clear picture of a path forward.

And I think we can agree that it's not just digital shops that have to pay attention.  Many traditional agencies are so focused on the "Ad" as the ultimate expression and vehicle for a brand idea that they are missing the point.  Or rather, they are unable to interface with the very experience they wish to create.  ;)

Love and Lust

So.  You are riding a train and you see the "girl of your dreams."  She exits.  You tell yourself, "She's got a boyfriend," or "I'm not her type."  But a few hours later, you are running a fever, and all thoughts are still on her.  A day goes by and your friends refuse to hang out with you because you are beyond obsessing.  What do you do?

Well, this young man (if this is real) plays for keeps. Ya gotta check this out.

http://www.nygirlofmydreams.com/

Raises an interesting question of whether "love at first site" exists or if this is just lust in an obsessive/scary form.  There are so many things we lust after that once we get them we find we don't really want them anymore.  Whereas, once in a while, true love forms between two entities and a relationship is born.

I think that Love and Lust are important concepts when it comes to new media.  So many new tools are erupting onto the playing field every few minutes.  New social marketing sites.  New technology.  Who doesn't want an iPhone?  Or a Joost?  Or a Seesmic?

How much of this is Lust?  And how many of these companies are setting the stage for true love?  Or at least a relationship that goes past a one night stand?