Blink 4 Complete
Transcript of Blink 4 Complete
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
1/52
MEDIATRENDS
CONSUMERS
#4PUBLISHED BY
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
2/52
2 MEDIACOM | BLINK#4
What is the best way to reach consumers today? Are brands ready to meet
the demands o digital natives? Will technology be a carriage or a barrier
or messages? And what can we do to prepare or urther changes in
consumer behaviour?
These are just a ew o the many important questions that every advertiser
should be asking themselves.
Empowered by choices, we now live in a world o opportunity where everything
is just a click away. As consumers, we expect to have our needs met imme-
diately and nearly eortlessly, and more than ever, we are not araid to share
inormation to get there. And with every online interaction, we are creating
a ootprint.
For advertisers, this has created huge opportunities and challenges. On one
hand, the doors have been opened to a world o consumers, making it easier
to speak directly and relevantly to audiences. On the other hand, however,
consumers are now in charge o their own media consumption and are enclosed
in interest-specic lter bubbles created by search engine algorithms. It is even
harder or brands to get noticed in the rst place, and brands need to tackle
both the consumers and the technology.
To break through, brands need to look closer at the data that consumers leave
behind and think about what makes them tick. Get it right, and the rewards
will be worth it; consumers will love and trust your brand. Get it wrong, with no
ocus on the consumer, and your brand will be let outside the bubble.
In this issue o BLINK, we recognize that the shit in power rom advertisers to
consumers is a noticeable one and that many questions still need answering.
Inside, we identiy what advertisers are doing right, what they are doing wrong,
and what they will need to do more o in the uture.
I hope you nd it interesting, useul, and ultimately, empowering.
Regards,
Stephen Allan
MediaCom Worldwide Chairman and CEO
INTRO
WELCOME
#4 Winter 2011
Circulation: 8.907
MediaCom Global
124 Theobalds Road
London
WC1X 8RX
UK
Tel.: +44 (0)20 7158 5500
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.mediacom.com
Editor-in-Chie:
Signe Wandler, MediaCom
Design & layout:
Propellant, www.propellant.dk
Art Director, Martin Dahlbeck
Cover art:
Stephan Walter
Printed By:
Vilhelm Jensen & Partnere
ISSN: 1903-5373
The opinions expressed in the
articles are those o the authors.
Minor textual contents may be
republished as long as the original
author and publication are cited.
Find BLINK in the News & Insight
section at www.mediacom.com
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
3/52
WHAT IS YOURRELATIONSHIP LIKE?
STATUSUPDATES
34
10
Take the quiz to test i your brand
communication is up-to-date.
By Dennis Grzenia and Daniel Bischo,
MediaCom Germany
Consumption is still a way o displaying
social status but digital is changing thegame. What does this mean or brand
communication?
PHOTOGRAPHYGETTYIMAGES
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
4/52
A CROWDEDPLACE
DIGITALIN RETAIL
36
44
Interview
Why crowdsourcing
is a powerul tool.
By Tricia Nichols, Managing
Partner, MediaCom US
The unstoppable march o digital
marketing is orcing retail brands
to undamentally transorm their
relationship with shoppers.
CONTENT02 Welcome
06 Please Me Now
10 Status Updates
18 Cases: Dell & EA
20 Hacking the Meme Code
26 The Data Wars
28 M:Files: The Power o Empathy
30 Finding New Magic
34 M:Files: What is your Relationship like? (QUIZ)
36 Interview: A Crowded Place
40 Digital Persuasion
44 Digital: Retailers New Path to Purchase
48 Interview: Time to Get Active
#4
4 MEDIACOM | BLINK#4
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
5/52
HACKING THEMEME CODE
DIGITALPERSUASION
THE DATAWARS
20
40
26
By Joerg Blumtritt,MediaCom Germany
Social media and sophisticated
algorithms make it increasingly
difcult to get your message
across.
By Mauritz Kaptein
Persuasion proles will help
create more eective messages
and valuable, trade-able data.
By Daniel Nye Grifths
Who controls inormation about
where consumers go online and
what they do there?
THE
CONSUMER
ISSUE
PLEASEME NOW06
By Aimar Niedzwiedzki, MediaCom
Beyond Advertising, Norway
Are you entering the Customer
Satisaction Treadmill?
5BLINK#4 |MEDIACOM
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
6/52
6 MEDIACOM | BLINK#46
Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Laureate and the father
of behaviour economic theory, described a principle he
named The Customer Satisfaction Treadmill. The faster
we get it, the faster we want it. The more convenient
it becomes, the more we real ise just how convenient
it could be. The more our unreasonable demands are
met, the more unreasonable they become.
Every time you go out of your way to pleasea customer you are adding weight to creating
unreasonable demand. But it doesnt have to be this
way: there has never been a need for IKEA to include
a carpenter in its at packs. Because we have been
trained in regards to what we expect from IKEA.
An important force that shapes brand strategy today
is the threat of substitute products or services,
according to Professor Michael E. Porter from Harvard
University. This factor leads business managers to
believe that loyalty should be bought and included
in automated programmes. With the entrance of the
social net where the indiv idual voice suddenly becomesvisible, real-time support has become the latest trend.
But how smart is it to be there, everywhere for the
customer? And what is the purpose?
UNSTRUCTURED DATA
When someone shouts out into thin a ir via Twitter,
that something is wrong with your service or
product, and you reply without thinking through all
the consequences and possible snowball eects, you
are about to embark on a dangerous trail.
Are you really ready to full that demand? Are you
going to be there for the customer, mountain high
and valley wide? If not, youd better not please every
whim that we the customers express via these new
social channels. Because most likely my barking has
no specic aim. It is more often than not, an attempt
to get attention from my surroundings, not you (the
product) specically. I am saying you suck because
I want recognition from my friends. It is a moderngame of forget me not. You just happen to be
the content.
Many brands are now using Facebook as a customer
service platform. Ask yourself what the purpose
and consequence might be. Airline companies that
deliver personal ight services on Facebook are in
fact creating a feeling of a personal assistance that is
massively missing when they get to airport and on the
actual ight.
As a secondary eect is that their Facebook wall ends
up as spam since everything is about 1:1 experience.They have lost a good tool for communication to many
people in their attempt to satisfy their customers
imagined needs. Brands that take this route are
repeatedly solving the same problems over and over
because the answer in not available as a simple query
for the customer. Most questions are repetitive and
basic. Things consumers should be able to nd in a
good database. A good structured database. So the
same message doesnt have to be sent hundred times
to dierent people on the same wall.
CUSTOMERS ARE AN INCREASINGLY HARD AUDIENCE TO PLEASE AND
BRANDS MAY HAVE TO APPLY SOME TOUGH LOVE. HAVE WE FOUND THE
RIGHT BALANCE IN THE RELATIONSHIP?
BY AIMAR NIEDZWIEDZKI, MEDIACOM BEYOND ADVERTISING, NORWAY
PLEASE ME
NOW!
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
7/52
7BLINK#4 | MEDIACOM
GET SATISFACTION?
Even worse. You train your customers that they
can shout in the woods and be heard. There are
online platforms that actually help customers
without creating increased demands on the brand.
Getsatisfaction.com, a community-based support
platform, gives fans of companies and their sta a
place to share their knowledge of certain products
or services so the pressure on customer supportdecreases. Swedish music service Spotify has done
this with great success. Spotifys customer community
routinely receives more than 100.000 visitors perweek. This trac provides support to Spotifys 10
million registered users, and helps the Spotify team
remain lean despite an exploding customer base.
RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS
Treadmilling isnt only about support. It is rst and
foremost about creating situations where expectations
are adjusted without a specic purpose or strategy.
Business owners tend to spend more time looking
for threats than opportunities. Jumping if the angry
Twitter mob says their new logo is ugly. Considering
the general publics level of knowledge the process of
logo creation I am certain that one should be cautious
about making such decisions based on ephemeral
popular demand.
Here is what a good business leader should do.
Monitor and track conversations on the web with
a suitable social analy tics tool. Acknowledge thefrustration on the subject publicly. Find out if the
99,99% of customers who did not join the mob like
your logo or not. Ask your employees. If the logois liked by the silent majority, then ght for them.
That will earn respect from the mob over time. And
give you something to talk to fans about: The actual
reasons why you run the business the way you do. By
having an open and honest strategy most critique will
most likely become an asset.
This is what happened when JetBlue (not an airline,
but a happy jetting company) left many passengers in
a horrible situation during a blizzard some years ago.PHOTOGRAPHY
GETTY
IMAGES
CONTENT
PLEASE ME NOW!
I AM SAYING YOU SUCK BECAUSE I WANT
RECOGNITION FROM MY FRIENDS. IT IS A
MODERN TIMES GAME OF FORGET ME NOT.
YOU JUST HAPPEN TO BE THE CONTENT
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
8/52
CONTENT
PLEASE ME NOW!
BUT HOW SMART IS IT TO BE THERE,
EVERYWHERE FOR THE CUSTOMER?WHAT IS THE PURPOSE?
The angry mob went ball istic on Twitter, media picked
it up, and the companys CEO put on the mad hat and
made a YouTube video. He gave a public apology but
most importantly he made a promise on how JetBlue
would deal with similar problems in the future.
The next thing JetBlue did was make sure that all sta
members tried really hard to make every passenger
feel special. Not by replying on customer service mat-
ters on Facebook. They actually state pretty clearly that
they dont respond to specic customer service issues
posted on this platform. Instead they perform random
acts of kindness; like sta members performing as an
a cappella band at their JFK Terminal, or instantly mak-
ing their Caribbean ights freely available for rescue
workers from the US when the terrible earthquake hit
the islands in 2010.
Real human attention gives your employees the
power to become autonomic. This is how you make
true champions of positive customer satisfaction.
Loyalty programmes, and similar schemes, dont
work as well as the human touch because they createexpectancy. When customers start to expect gifts or
bonuses they dont value them as high ly anymore. It
is bought loyalty. We are running on the customer
satisfaction treadmill.
TAKE IT TO THE C LEVEL
Customer service can be immensely powerful for
a brand if used correct ly. Just ask Tony Hsieh of
Zappos.com, the CEO who built the worlds largest
online shoe store by delivering happiness. To really
understand the value of customer service as an asset,
all Zappos.coms employees are obliged to attend
customer service training in two of their rst four
weeks of work, regardless of department and position.
All employees are expected to drive a wow-eect
through service. To make a lasting impression
you must do something above and beyond whatsexpected. Make someone smile. But Zappos sta do
this over the phone. Not via 140 characters or less.
Seeing a problem online does not mean it must be
solved online.
The more I research customer service, the more
important the human factor becomes. This is about
humanising the brand or company. Our power as
customers via the social net will aect the business
strategy of the core business. This needs to be under-
stood by the C-suite, the CEO and his friends up there.
If they dont see any danger in automating satisfaction
in measurable programmes or being present without
understanding why, for us the customers, treadmilling
will continue. That was key to the success of Zappos.
com. Delivering happiness came from the CEO. It was
a core element of the strategy.
It is possible to love data and show some love to the
customer simultaneously. But only when a clear busi-
ness motivated strategy is in place, and not without a
clear understanding of what tools to use. Being service
minded and making sure that you help your customer
is very important. But know when, where and how.
Why and with what isnt such a bad idea either.
So if you want to please me now, I dont mind. But I
didnt expect you to, before you just did so. And now
my expectations just went up a notch. Good luck.
AIMAR NIEDZWIEDZKIAimar Niedzwiedzki, Marketing Entrepreneur,
MediaCom Beyond Advertising.
Author o marketing blog tasteasreal.com.
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
9/52
PH
OTOGRAPHY
GETTY
IMAGES
9BLINK#4 | MEDIACOM
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
10/52
MEDIACOM| BLINK#4
PHOTOGRAPHYGETTY
IMAGES
I CONSUME,
THEREFOREI AM
10
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
11/52
CONSUMPTION IS STILL A MEANS TO DISPLAY SOCIAL STATUS, BUT DIGITISATION IS
CHANGING THE GAME. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO BRAND COMMUNICATION?
BY DENNIS GRZENIA AND DANIEL BISCHOFF, MEDIACOM GERMANY
Cars are one of the worlds strongest
signiers of social status and give everyone
an opportunity to compare social standing.
Today many of the signiers of our place
in society can be seen in the goods we own
which provide helpful, and often instant,
indications of our place in the social order.
In 1899, Thorstein Veblen, a US economist
and sociologist, who became well-known
for his Theory of the Leisure Class, shaped
the term conspicuous consumption.
That is, spending money on visible goods
for the purpose of displaying income
or wealth or social status. According
to Veblen, the consumption of goods
not only satised basic needs but also
provided a means to build reputation.
This not only promotes and justieslimitless consumption since you can always
climb one step higher on the social ladder
but also makes consumption a way of
communicating our hopefully rising -
status. For instance, we know that owning
a Mercedes Benz indicates high status
based on income, education, and prestige.
Just think how you react when you meet
someone new. You instantly categorise
STATUSUPDATES
them based on their appearance, their
clothes, accessories and cars. We
are all exposed to the consumption
patterns of those in our reference
groups and seek to replicate the
patterns. That is why people consume
to keep up with their peers and toimpress people in lower social classes.
Richard Centers, author of The Psychology
of Social Classes: A Study of Class
Consciousness, denes social class as
follows: A mans class is a par t of his
ego, a feeling on his part of belongingness
to something: an identication with
something larger than himself. This
denition still holds true but, accord-
ing to the report Middle Britain, the
traditional markers of social class like
job, family background and wealth arefading away. Often people even assign
themselves into the wrong social class,
e.g. 36% of builders classify t hemselves
as middle class and 29% of bank
managers say they are working class.
The traditional boundaries of social
classes are fading and they are becoming
less signicant. The reason being that the
traditional ways of dierentiation and
demarcation such as nationality, religion,
or education no longer work as they did
in the past.
Instead people search for new reference
groups, which results in a more fragmented
aliation. You can be a banker at dayand roaming World of Warcraft as an
orc at night. One does not rule out the
other, since the current prole depends
on current reference groups. And in every
situation and every area of life, we can use
dierent symbols to display our status.
FROM PHYSICAL TO VIRTUAL GOODS
As in so many other areas, digital is
providing new ways to consume, display
and build reputation. In the past, you had
to pass my house to see my car. Today, you
just have to Google me! On the internetanyone can nd enough information
to determine the status of others.
And there is a shift from physical
status symbols to digital ones. Of
course, physical status symbols retain
their impact but status is now also
conveyed by my Facebook prole and
the amount of friends I have or by
the magica l sword I own in World of
1BLINK#4 | MEDIACOM 1BLINK#4 | MEDIACOM
CONTENT
STATUS UPDATES
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
12/52
Warcraft. This is a lso the reason why people
upload photographs of their (posh) meals.
The enabler of these new digital status symbols is the
smartphone (a status symbol in itself). It is the physi-
cal manifestation of my ability to show my consump-
tion to the whole digital society within seconds.
In addition, if you post something on a social network-
ing site, you reach a minimum of several hundred
of people within a second. Digitisation provides the
capability to communicate to an innite audience.
On top of this, virtual goods can also in themselves
be used to display my social status and who I
am. Digitisation has become an accelerator of
consumption. And all goods must now submit to
the mechanisms of this new way of distribution.
Physical goods need to oer a fast, ergonomic
and eective way to distribute themselves via
digital media such as Facebook. This need to
show o my physical goods online means that
the design of products is becoming even more
important, because my possessions have to
look perfect in the pictures that I share.
Tools like Instagram have responded to this need
by providing multiple lters that can be used to
enhance the pictures. Everything I photograph
looks great in no time, whether it is a retro sports
bike or a meal at my favourite restaurant.
NEW CURRENCIES FOR A NEW WORLD
When we talk about virtual currency, we mean
objects in digital environments like game items
(the magical sword from World of Warcraft or
the tractor from Farmvil le etc.), that can be
traded for real that is, the old - money.
Taking this idea one step further, social mediaplatforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube also
provide their own virtual currencies, namely likes,
followers, views and subscribers. Likes and
followers are sold for real money, and an increasing
number of people have already paid with a tweet.
While the digital immigrant may still distinguish
between virtual and real money, digital natives
view this distinction obsolete. In the future,
it will make no dierence, whether I own
1.000 Facebook credits or US$100 because
money is nothing more than an enabler.
The business of virtual goods especially within
(social) browser-based games has exploded in the
last few years. Even if we can play the game for free,
costs occur if the gamers wish to add to the game, be
it with a bigger farm or a superior spacecraf t. Such
virtual items have the potential to become the new
status symbols. In the US, the virtual goods market
already reached US$1,6 bill ion by the end of 2010,
while social gaming contributed US$835 million.
PHOTOGRAPHY
CUBAGALLERY
12 MEDIACOM| BLINK#4
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
13/52
ON TOP OF THIS, VIRTUAL GOODSCAN ALSO IN THEMSELVES BE USED
TO DISPLAY MY SOCIAL STATUS AND
WHO I AM
1BLINK#4 | MEDIACOMBLINK#4 | MEDIACOM
CONTENT
STATUS UPDATES
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
14/52
self-produced homemade video content can
nd its way on the TV screen, as seen in
the Deutsche Telekoms Million Moments
campaign. Al l these brand communications
help the user look good to his peer group.
THE FUTURE: FROM ASPIRATION-
AL TO MEANINGFUL BRANDS
In Germany, there is currently an
intense debate about forbidding the
like button. The key argument being
that it stores data about consumers
who are not Facebook members and
have thus not agreed to the storage.
There is very little probability that
the like button will be banned, but
critical voices have been raised and ithas already caused suspicion. This is
one of the reasons why the like button
should not be seen as the holy grail of
advertising. It goes beyond the likes.
Brands that glue people together in
communities go beyond the fullment
of conspicuous consumption. To be part
of a community one has to identify with
others. However classic prestige-driving
or aspirational brands tend to stress
individualism or even ego (look what I
can aord and you cant!) which is not
helpful in the formation of a community.
And let us not kid ourselves: Most people
wouldnt care if 80% of all brands disap-
peared tomorrow. Products and services are
not as attached to brands as we may think.
There are already clear signs of people
liberating themselves from the paradigms
of the previous decades individualism,
consumerism, mass society as shown
in impressive ways in the uprisings in
Spain, UK, and recently with #occupy-
wallstreet in the US. These netizens,
digital natives, pirates - or however theymight be labelled - are highly suspicious
of the old economic structures without
being left, green or any other form
of classic anti-consumer-ideology.
In this new environment, trust is
established through mutual experiences
which take place on social media, no matter
if it is politics, brands or products. The
way that these new consumers tribalise
CONTENT
STATUS UPDATES
A BRAND NEW PERSPECTIVE
This development not only has an impact on
products and goods, but also on com-
munication. The advertising industry needs
to embrace this new need to communicate
status. This happens both on the creative
side that is design and embell ishment
but also on the structural media level.
By integrating portable devices and cloud
services into our everyday life, we have
already entered the next level in the evolu-
tion of media. Media barriers have been
lowered and every piece of information (on
signs, ads, products, buildings, and even
people etc.) is linked to further content via
constructs such as QR codes, augmented
reality, or Shazam, to name but a few.
Facebook has become a diary of status
symbols or a museum of me as seen
in Intels campaign (see QR Code). All
relevant content is easily gathered by
using the omnipresent like button. This
mechanism is already heavily used by
brands, especially in campaigns with a
participatory aspect. People can integrate
themselves into movie sequences and even
Ater studying Theatre, Film and Media as well as Philosophy in Frankurt,
Brussels and Berlin, Daniel started his proessional career in journalism beore
heading to the Berlin ofce o Trend Research Company TrendONE. He joined
MediaCom Germany in 2010 where he ounded and heads up Innovation
Science, a research unit dedicated to applying trends and innovations to media
planning. He and his team work across a broad spectrum o clients
and industries.
DANIEL BISCHOFF (*1981)Research Director at MediaCom Germany
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
15/52
QR CODE
STATUSUPDATE
into communities over social networks
means brands need to be less pretentious,
and make fewer grand promises, and
instead donate value and meaning.
In the future, brands will still be able
to leverage the phenomenon of conspicu-
ous consumption, yet they will have to
tap into the accelerated opportuni-
ties oered by digital media by
becoming meaningful brands.
So we see a shift towards brands that give
meaning, support consumers who show
their sympathy with others and thus foster
community. As long as a brand focuses on
being aspirational rather than humble, it
is highly vulnerable to negative news thatgets spread fast over social networks.
A brand that instead positions itself in the
community by helping, doing good, being
of real value for the communitys members
is more robust and less likely to be harmed
if someone posts a negative comment.
LITERATURE
Conspicuous consumption by Thorstein Veblen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen
Denition o Social Class by Richard Centers
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1388331
Middle Britain Report by William Nelson
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/7053761/
Were-all-middle-class-now-darling.html
Virtual Goods and Currencies by Vili Lehdonvirta
http://vili.lehdonvirta.com/
Monetizing digital media by Ernst & Young
http://www.ey.com/Publication/
vwLUAssets/Monetizing_digital_media/$File/
Monetizing_digital_media.pd
Rethinking the Idea o the Brand by Umair Haque
http://blip.tv/harvard-business-publishing-video/
rethinking-the-idea-o-the-brand-4826346
Ater graduating in economics, business studies, and social psychology,
Dennis started working or MediaCom as a media planner. Thus he came in
touch with various clients rom categories like telecommunication, FMCG,
and insurance. In early 2010, Dennis became Research Analyst at MediaCom
Science and is now responsible or trend research, social media, and
communication consultancy.
DENNIS GRZENIA (*1979)Research Analyst at MediaCom Germany
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
16/52
Will
Critchlow
HARDtalk is the agship programme on BBC WorldNews that asks the dicult questions. In this special
series o interviews or Blink, Stephen Sackur, one
o the BBCs most respected journalists, adapts the
same uncompromising style with moguls and
gureheads shaping the worlds o advertising, sales
and media. This issue, Stephen goes head to head
with Will Critchlow, the co-ounder and Director
o Distilled, a London-based SEO and search engine
reputation management (SERM) agency. Well-known
across the industry, Will regularly blogs and speaks
at conerences.
BBC WORLD NEWS is a trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC 1996.
SS: Do you accept that what you do amounts to a manipulation
o the Internet?
WC: It really isnt about taking what is already there on our clients websites
and manipulating things so they appear higher up in search results. Its
actually about helping them change their business, change their website,
change their online marketing so that they end up appearing there.
I would say that theres a misconception that what we do is an external
thing to our clients. In other words, they do their thing and we just tick
away in the background manipulating things. Actually it s much more
integrated than that, or at least it should be, and we push our clients
hard to let us be integrated into what they do. What we do is very
much a mixture o technical consulting, helping them produce an
excellent website; content strategy, in other words helping them decide
what they should be writing about; and promotion strategy which
broadly speaking tends to look a lot like online PR.
SS: Let me ask you about one particular aspect o your business,
that is your work on search engine optimisation (SEO). It is
possible to cheat isnt it, when it comes to this optimisation
process? You can tag links across the web on unrelated content,
or example. Do your clients ever want you to do that?
WC: Firstly, what do we mean by cheating? Theres a whole spectrum o
things ranging rom the completely legitimate with perhaps unintended
consequences. There are some things that you might do completely
naturally and normally that have an unintended inuence on how you
perorm in the search engines. All the way through to things that are
slightly worse than that. There are things that Google, or example,
dont like you to do that actually have a perectly innocent explanation.
Through to things that are very distasteul - alternative methods like
spamming blog comments which just creates work or the owner o
the blog in cleaning those things up. All the way through to the actually
illegal, hacking websites, breaking into computers, that kind o thing.
SS: You mention Google and as you suggested, it has a pretty strict
set o guidelines. It has things it says are acceptable, and many
things it says are unacceptable. Do you think that their
guidelines are sometimes too strict?
WC: I wouldnt say their guidelines are necessarily too strict. I think that they
are occasionally a little bit vague and open to interpretation. They leave
themselves leeway to say that they dont like something ater the act,very oten. I personally would like to see them tightened up and I would
also like to see some kind o appeals process. Theyre very much judge,
jury and executioner at the moment, especially in the markets where
they have such a massive market share.
SS: I just wonder whether this SEO process is as complex and
multiaceted and as dicult as some people inside the industry
seem to say it is, because obviously it serves your interests to
have people believe that, because your business is all about
selling your service?
WC: I would challenge that actually. We put a huge amount o eort into
educating our peers and our clients on what it is we do, why we do it,
how we do it. We run conerences to explain, we dont hold back our
secrets. There defnitely are people in our industry who would ratherit be seen as a dark art and a mystery, but we are not among those.
We believe that the biggest challenge, the biggest thing we need to
overcome as an industry and as a business ourselves is ear o
the unknown.
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
17/52
Advertising feature sponsored by BBC World Ne
What we need to do is educate businesses that this process is not
rocket science, its not horribly complex, its not horribly risky. There
are defnite rewards, and its usually seen as part o a modern marketing
mix or any business doing business online.
SS: Just how important is it or a business selling itsel today to be
at the top o the search list? To be either number one in any
keyword Google search, or at least, to be on the ront page?
WC: It very much depends on the business. I you are a business to business
organisation selling entirely through personal networks and relationships,
you could maybe get away with not even having a website. But i youre
selling online or you have an e-commerce operation, appearing insearch is absolutely critical. It is literally a question o survival or
many businesses.
One o the key realisations or our business was that it very oten isnt
actually about helping our clients rank or a specifc keyword. That
activity is oten misguided and a low return on investment. Oten its
much more valuable to help them build up a website that ranks or many
new key words, and that can actually bring higher returns to their
business. It is also more valuable, in my opinion, to the consumer than
the activity o fddling around as to whether something ranks at number
three or number one in a highly competitive niche, because youre
actually adding new value to the internet; youre creating new content
and youre allowing search engines to index content that they previously
couldnt get to.
SS: Let me switch ocus now to another important element o your
business, search engine reputation management (SERM). Is it
right to regard this as your clients wanting to bury bad news
and accentuate the positive?
WC: Thats a pretty close description o what they come to us asking or.
The frst thing we say to them is that in the modern, connected,
socially-networked world, its pretty much impossible to bury bad news.
SS: You can bury it pretty deep down the web though cant you?
WC: Depending on what it is and depending on what the alternative news is
out there. The very frst rule o reputation management that Ive always
preached to my clients is step one: stop doing the stupid stu. We hav
taken on clients in the past who have still been doing the stupid stu
and its never worked out well or anyone. When theres a constant
ow o new stories that they dont like, it is pretty much impossible an
a ools errand to try and pretend otherwise. The web is simply too
good at uncovering interesting stories.
SS: Assuming that they stop doing the stupid stuf, it then comes
down to how efectively you can cover up the embarrassing
behaviour that they displayed in the past?
WC: It is defnitely one way o phrasing it. I preer to work with people
who want to do new and interesting things that are more interestingthan their past and promote those. Thinking about what ranks when
somebody searches or your name is, I would argue, a good activity
or pretty much everyone because it is, these days, how you get a job.
When you apply or a job, very oten they want to know who you are,
what youve done beore and they want to know the real you, and the
are going to creep around and see whats out there.
SS: They want to know the real you, not the airbrushed you, but
your job is really to promote the most positive view o you or
any subject and that isnt always the most truthul is it?
WC: So the activity we would be doing is promoting the new stu, whateve
it might be. But that is not an activity that hides anything else. Its simpl
presenting both sides o an argument. There is no way to remove
existing stories rom the internet once theyve fnished.
SS: Are you saying that i a client approaches you saying, my priority
here is to ensure that it is as dicult as possible to access
inormation about x, y or z, that Im rather unhappy about,
are you saying that youve reused to do that or clients because
that wasnt truthul or morally right?
WC: No, what I would say to each o them is that you have to realise thatstu is always going to be able to be ound. We cant remove it,
we cant make it that hard to fnd. To be perectly honest, the search
engines these days are phenomenally good at presenting a variety o
views o someone. When you search or a particularly controversial
subject on Google or example, you will fnd that they actively return
diering views on that frst page the search is on. So, I do counsel my
clients that you can defnitely put a good story orwards but you can
remove the other stu, and that defnitely has resulted in us not worki
with some individuals.
Interview conducted with Will Cr itchlow October 2011.
For urther inormation on advertising and sponsorship on
BBC World News and BBC.com please call +44 208 433 0000
or e-mail [email protected]
In the modern, connected, socially-networke
world, its pretty much impossible to bury
bad news.
There defnitely are people in our industry whowould rather it [SEO] be seen as a dark art
and a mystery...
HARDtalk presenter, Stephen Sackur
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
18/52
THE CHALLENGE:
Dells website had swarms o visitorsbut too many were leaving without making a purchase.
We needed to nd a way to leverage stored data rom cookieswhich could clearly indicate
which products or type o products each shopper was interested in or maybe even intending to
purchaseto increase engagement and keep their Dell.com experience top-o-mind ater they
let the site.
OUR SOLUTION:
We mixed cutting-edge technology with creative ingenuity to totally cut out inefcient advertising!
We drastically improved the customer experience by increasing the relevancy o the advertising
message seen by individual users, while minimising wastage and increasing engagement.
HOW WE MADE A DIFFERENCE:
In an industry-leading move, we developed a model that merged behavioural targeting technolo-
gies capturing prospects visit history with dynamic creative tools that built customised messaging.
Ads eature products rom each consumers visit history, keeping them resh days ater visiting
Dells website.
We tagged hundreds o pages within Dells sitesomething ew other blue chip advertisers have
doneto pinpoint the reason or each visit, based on the products the visitor viewed, searched
or, placed in their shopping cart or purchased.
Our model recognised these prospects via a cookie, then retargeted them with customised ads on
their next visit to an outside website running Dell advertising. So, i someone placed an Inspiron
laptop in their shopping cart but exited beore purchasing, that consumer would receive an
Inspiron ad later on, or instance, Yahoo.com. Other visitors might see ads or products they were
researching, or be cross-sold on products they had purchased.
RESULTS:
Our targeting produced outstanding improvements across the boardclick through rates, conver-
sion and ROI.
OnlineadswithbehaviouraltargetingconvertednearlyTHREEtimesmore
than those without behavioural targeting!
Behaviouraltargetedadsaccountfor42%ofDellsonlineimpressionsbutthey
driveanamazing83%ofonlineadvertisingrevenues
BehaviouraltargetingimpressionsgeneratealmostSEVENtimesmore
revenue per impression served than non-targeted impressions
Onlineadswithbehaviouraltargetinghada70%higherclick-throughrate
This campaign also won the US 2010 Creative Media Award or the Perormance Media &
Marketing category.
TARGETING GENERATEDMORE REVENUE
MEDIACOM | BLINK#418
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
19/52
OPPORTUNITY/PROBLEM:
EA had a huge amount o data on people playing EAs FIFA ranchise but werent doing
anything with it.
INSIGHTS:
14 billion minutes o playing data told EA what people are doing within the game but not what would
bring more people into the ranchise. We convinced EA that i we created a YouTube channel or all
their ootball content, the combination o internal telemetry and external YouTube behavioural data
would be powerul enough to change the way they did business or good.
STRATEGY:For the rst time we persuaded EA to launch the FIFA AV ad on YouTube and Facebook rather
than on TV. This gave us data on 380.000 individuals, data that changed the way we approached
planning in uture.
MAKING IT HAPPEN:
Data changed our approach in our ways:
CONTEXT:
Distributing content and lighting media to coincide with engagement cycles, peaking
on Sundays and in August.
CONTENT:
More people engaged with tips and tricks so we developed bespoke coaching advice
videos that delivered 1,5 million views in a week.
COMMERCIAL:
Reworking EAs club agreements to get the most engaging content.
MOBILE:
Prompted exploration rom EA to deliver the mobile game or ree, as the data can prove
more valuable than any loss in income.
RESULTS:
We delivered the best-selling sports video game o all time. And now EA need never use industry
standard planning tools again.
SMART USE OF DATA GAVE
EA THE BEST SELLING
SPORTS VIDEO EVER
BY PUTTING SMART USE OF DATA AT THE HEART OF OUR PLANNING, WE
CHANGED EAS COMMUNICATIONS AND BUSINESS MODEL AND CREATED THEMOST POPULAR SPORTS GAME IN HISTORY.
CONTENT
CASES
1BLINK#4 |MEDIACOM
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
20/52
CONTENT
HACKING THE MEME CODE
ILLUSTRATIONJ
ACK
HUDSON
20 MEDIACOM | BLINK#4
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
21/52
THE SOCIAL NETWORK TIMELINE IS, IN EFFECT, A PERSONAL NEWSPAPER. OUR FRIENDS
POSTS ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER OR GOOGLE+ TELL US WHATS HAPPENING IN THEIR
WORLDS. BUT LIKE EVERY GREAT NEWSPAPER, THE TIMELINE ALSO LINKS US TO OTHER
INFORMATION, NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT THAT WE MIGHT LIKE.
BYJOERG BLUMTRITT, MEDIACOM GERMANY
It is often said that our timeline is, in fact,
a lter. We see only what our community
of selected friends post. If someone posts
things on social networks that we are
not interested in, we will unfollow or
uncircle him or her sooner or later
depending on our mood, on the strength
of our relationship and the netiquette,
the rules of courtesy in social media
that everyone has to obey to remain an
accepted member.
Advertising, in particular, seems to becontent that only very rarely passes
through this lter, if at all. Just as we would
in our meatspace communities, we try to
avoid people pushing unwarranted business
towards us. Thus, the timeline might be the
toughest spam-lter there is.
This phenomenon of a highly sophisti-
cated algorithm combined with a social
prediction engine has been named the
HACKING THE
MEME CODE
lter bubble by author and entrepreneur
Eli Pariser. The word bubble in this case
has a thoroughly ambivalent meaning:
a bubble that surrounds us, in which we
are somehow trapped, because we no
longer see the reality outside clearly; the
second meaning of course is that of a
soap bubble that will burst sooner or later
like any other piece of online hype. There
is concern that this bubble could not
only diminish the quality of serendipity
inherent in networks such as the internet,
but also the ability of advertisers to reachnew audiences.
THE RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND
THE CHANGES FOR MASS MEDIA
The rise of social media has been
accompanied by the decline of mass media.
Although it is undisputed that the 30 TV
spot is still the most eective means of
advertising and is likely to remain that way
for a long time, it is becoming harder and
hearder to reach some audiences through
the classic communication channels.
Advertising is perhaps more sensitive to
this development than any other form of
communication. However, it also becomes
increasingly dicult to reach out to
audiences, be it for advertising, political
announcements or any other kind of
communication. This lter bubble process
will add a new dimension to the rising
complexity of communications planning
that we have to take into consideration.
Social media platforms provide multiple
technological means to make this lter-
process even more seamless, eective and
invisible to their users. By organising our
contacts into groups, lists or circles, users
are encouraged to (re)create hierarchies of
relevance (inner circ le, extended ci rcle,
nuisance circ le, spam). Thus content
posted by someone from the buddies
2BLINK#4 | MEDIACOM
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
22/52
circle might get a totally dierent amount
of attention compared to content fromsomeone in the business partners or
opinion leaders circle.
MY INTERNET DOES NOT LOOK
THE SAME WAY YOURS DOES
A third layer after the timeline and the
circles between the user and outside
reality is created by Google and other
search engines that use the select ions made
by users in their social media proles (time-
line, circles) as input for their algorithms
to provide the most relevant results for our
queries. These technologies take contentposted by our friends to predict what would
be relevant for us.
We can no longer expect to be shown any
kind of objective search ranking, instead
we will get our very own list of results
that might be completely dierent from
that of our colleagues or neighbours.
Google translates this into what it thinks
we would nd relevant. This will heavily
impact Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
How will searchmarketing specialistsin the future be able to guarantee that
youll get a top-10 search ranking? For
SEO purposes it will thus also become
important to see the URLs of websites we
want to promote recommended as often as
possible by being posted or tweeted.
The targeting of display ads can be
improved in the same way. This is, of
course, a good thing at rst, since cam-
paigns will perform more eciently and
the user will experience more relevant
advertising. But, at the same time, theinventory that addresses a broad audi-
ence, maximising reach - a prerequis ite in
building brand awareness - becomes
more fragmented.
Thus social media works as a lter,
induced by the user, but also selects what
the user gets recommended by search
engines and display advertising. Very
few platforms allow users to access and
edit the predicted preferences of these
algorithms in the way that Google, forexample, does on http://www.google.
com/ads/preferences. This might become
more common following the EU Privacy
Directive that became eective in May
this year and will be implemented in
national legislation soon.
Finally, the media consumption of the
classic channels is also aected by the lter
bubble. Studies have shown that nothing
inuences a consumers choice more
heavily than the recommendation they
get through their timeline, which therebybecomes a screen that might preselect what
someone would watch or read. Its not only
media consumption our brand prefer-
ences also start to be aected by the posts
from our community to our circles, friends
and our timeline.
MEANINGFUL BRANDS
One side eect is that the meaning of
brands in peoples lives changes. With
ILLUSTRATIONJ
ACK
HUDSON
22 MEDIACOM | BLINK#4
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
23/52
mass media advertising, the most
valuable brands would have been thosethat gave their buyers a sense of prestige.
Conspicuous consumption is based on
mass communication. It requires that
others easily recognise what brands
we buy.
When the process of building brand
preferences gets somehow atomised, as
we experience when enclosed within our
lter bubbles, others may no longer notice
the signicance of our brand-choices. At
the same time, it becomes increasingly
important to show aliation to your
community, to get acceptance and to be
welcomed as a member.
Brands that contribute something of
value to a community, something that notonly the buyer but the whole community
can benet from, will be the brands that
succeed. They will be more likely to show
up in their buyers posts, telling their
friends, look, I care about all of you.
THE MEME
So far we have been mostly looking at
what gets ltered out. But what about the
content that does make it inside our lter?
Since most users follow more people
than they know in person, there must be
something that gets through.
Umair Haque, a writer for the Harvard
Business Review, has coined the term
meaningful brands in opposition to themore conventional aspirational brands that
we previously bought into.
With the meaningful brands we have a
rst hint of how advertising within the
lter-bubble might still work. Apart from
that, and in addition to the obvious - the
personal statements, the thoughts, and
emotions that people share with their
followers - there is a specic type of
content that gets propagated from one
personal circle to the next, that is repeat-
edly shared, retweeted, liked or whatever
4form of handling a certain platform
might provide.
THE FILTER BUBBLE WILL ADD A NEW DIMENSION TO THE
RISING COMPLEXITY OF COMMUNICATIONS PLANNING
THAT WE HAVE TO TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION
2BLINK#4 | MEDIACOM
-
8/3/2019 Blink 4 Complete
24/52
Joerg Blumtritt (*1970) is managing
director at MediaCom Germany.
Ater his graduation in statistics and
political sciences he started work-
ing as a researcher in behavioural
sciences, ocused on nonverbal
communication. Projects were
unded by EU Commission, German
ederal government and the Max-
Planck-Society. Subsequently he ran
marketing and research teams or
TV-channels ProSiebenSat.1, RTL
II and magazine publisher Hubert
Burda Media, introducing new quali-
tative methods like Netnography (