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Archive for the ‘marketing’ Category

Canadians Report a 35% Decline in Email Received. Significant for Marketing?

Posted in marketing, social media, web communications, tagged , , on 6 July 2010 |

Online Canadians Report a Large 35% Decline in the Amount of Email Received | Ipsos.

That’s an impressive headline. From the release:

Study author Mark Laver noted that ‘when you look at some of the new communications platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and [MSN] Messenger, that have taken off in the last few years the decline in email usage is really not that surprising, what is surprising is the size of the decline that is happening.’

One of the reasons that email usage may have declined so dramatically are emerging communications platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and various Instant Messengers. In fact, Facebook users send an average of 16 messages inside of that platform each week. Those using MSN Messenger or Blackberry Messenger are sending even more messages on a weekly basis.

And the takeaway:

These findings also have significant implications for those businesses that rely on email marketing for some or all of their business. These companies should be evaluating to see if social media platforms are an effective method for distributing their message.

Sounds logical, right? Email is down,  and there’s lots of people using Facebook, Twitter and various IM networks, so marketers should be considering dropping email and shifting over to social networks.

And yet. Statistics Canada recently noted that email is still the most common activity undertaken by online Canadians — at 93%, e-mail was still the most common online activity from home in 2009. This was far ahead of even “general browsing for fun or leisure,” the second most common activity reported by 78%. & using instant messaging was only reported by 45% in 2009 — which in fact represents a decline, from 50% in 2007.

Turning back to the Ipsos findings, note that these are based on email received. The question that was asked: “In an average week, how many emails do you receive (including spam)?” I think that the inclusion of spam in the question is actually very significant. My experience with spam over the last few years has been that I get far less of it. From Gmail to my ISP to my workplace email, I see very little spam these days — a far cry from a few years back when I started every day by cleaning out my inbox of the overnight clutter of unsolicited weight loss/cheap meds/penis enlargement (or worse) crap.

So I’m left wondering whether the 35% decline in email rec’d since 2008 reported by Ipsos is due to better spam filters? I’ll bet improvements in this area have had a significant impact. My theory is that while overall emails received is down, the signal to noise ratio has improved greatly. Meaning that email marketing of the legitimate kind — where people has actually signed up to receive your messages — would actually benefit from this decline of inbox clutter.

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Don’t Ignore the Core

Posted in government, marketing, social media, tagged , on 27 May 2010 |

Check out this excellent infographic from Dave Fleet that models the web ecosystem as it exists in 2010. (If you’re not familiar with the “paid” and “earned” media concepts, read both of Dave’s web ecosystem posts — the original and the sequel.)

Schematic of the web ecosystem, by Dave Fleet

Source: davefleet.com

What I like about this, beyond its elegant big-picture simplicity, is that it shows how the the corporate website is still key to an organization’s web efforts. It’s the core from which digital engagement flows.

In the Government of Canada context, our core .gc.ca websites are the key places where we offer accurate & unbiased info on our programs or provide services to our citizens. For the Government of Canada overall web presence, .gc.ca is the foundational layer. Sure, social media interaction allows us to follow our stakeholders into the places where they spend their time online, but I don’t think we can successfully extend our reach without a core website to return to. (An advanced approach would be not only to extend into the social web, but also to allow citizens in return to co-develop our .gc.ca sites, but that’s a ways off isn’t it.)

I’ve mentioned the irrelevant corporate website in the past, but as this schema shows, it’s actually more important than ever to make sure the core stays relevant — as we pursue engagement via the social web, our strategies must incorporate the traditional website also. We must ensure our websites are citizen focused/client-centric/user centered/call it what you will…. we can’t ignore the core.

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Boring Government and Social Media

Posted in bureaucracy, government, marketing, social media, tagged , , , , on 15 March 2009 | 1 Comment »

A little while back I came across this nugget from Seth Godin:

If the marketplace isn’t talking about you, there’s a reason.

If people aren’t discussing your products, your services, your cause, your movement or your career, there’s a reason.

The reason is that you’re boring. (I guess that’s what boring means, right?) And you’re probably boring on purpose. You have boring pricing because that’s safer. You have a boring location because to do otherwise would be nuts. You have boring products because that’s what the market wants. That boring staff? They’re perfectly well qualified…

You don’t get unboring for free. Remarkable costs time and money and effort, but most of all, remarkable costs a willingness to be wrong.

OK, so Seth was mostly talking about private sector marketing, for start-ups and small businesses and such. I can see how for these kinds of enterprises, becoming remarkable would be a very good thing. But what about the social web and government?

It’s true that “boring” is not something I’d like to be personally. But when it comes to marketing federal programs and services, is “remarkable” desirable? A lot of the same barriers to becoming unboring are in play as in Seth’s scenario — time, money and resources, plus there’s the intense pressure to manage avoid risk.

I’m not talking about the government that you read about in the news. That’s the government of the politicians and interest groups fighting over the Parliamentary issue of the day.  I’m talking about the government that persists after the politics has moved on to the next issue, the government that takes care of basic services, or of programs created long ago in response to circumstances that are no longer controversial, that are now run on autopilot. It’s administrative in the extreme — the epitome of boring.

Makes me think of something I read from Bruce Sterling (in Tomorrow Now) about how 21st century government operates after the ideologues have left the scene:

Government still has plenty to do; it’s just that it’s all very boring. In this utopia of tedium, public affairs are properly left to policy wonks who never rabble-rouse. They concern themselves with banking laws, commercial laws, contract laws, business codes of conduct, property rights, accounting standards, officeholder ethics, tax laws, and insider trading. Assisted and pestered by lobbyists and pressure groups, they act as level-playing field referees for the panoply of for-profit enterprises.

And we all know the role of the referees. Most of the time — when they are going about their job properly — everybody ignores them completely. They’re just there, in the background, quietly keeping an eye on things. It’s only when they screw up that anyone notices that they’re there. (And boy do they get noticed!)

So let’s say you’re a government program that’s launched its teensy tiny social media initiative. You know it’s important to measure the impact of what you are doing, so you undertake some social media monitoring (more, and more). And you find nobody is talking about you online. You’re unremarkable. You’re boring. But in Sterling’s terms, that’s not such a bad thing.

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CMO Survey: Traditional Branding is ‘Broken’

Posted in branding, government, marketing, social media, tagged , , , , , on 5 March 2009 |

Broken!

Oh No! Broken!

CMO Survey: Traditional Branding is ‘Broken’.

Survey from Verse Group and Jupiter Research. Key findings:

  • 62% of marketers say that traditional advertising efforts are no longer as effective as they once were in attracting new customers.
  • 62% are seeking breakthrough methods that are more effective than brand positioning.
  • 89% say that marketing is under greater scrutiny than ever before.
  • The top three trends marketers see are a shift to non-traditional media, the need to adopt brand stories and a growing use of design for competitive advantage.

This points back to those graphics I posted yesterday — where “non-traditional” media, i.e. the social web, revealing the disconnect between brand and consumer more starkly than ever before. And as this survey shows, the corporate landscape is well aware.

Opportunity here for governments? We never got branding 1.0 right, so we’re not burdened by these old models as much as the private sector. So can we jump in with a clean slate?

And in the GoC context specifically — advertising is a tightly controlled channel that most government services and programs don’t really have access to. So they could use the social web in an attempt to reach more directly the people who would use those programs and services.

Mucho risks: it’s a largely unknown, untested area, especially for us. So right now, few are willing to try stuff that’s off the usual path. Not to mention being hampered by an outdated web of rules. These challenges are significant, but they are implementation issues — they can (and will, I’m sure) be worked out.

So, potential for mucho rewards:

  • cheap reach — I fully understand that social media for communications takes time and energy, but on the other hand it does not require a lot of high cost or time-consuming “production” overhead (i.e. creative services suppliers, media placement agencies and whatnot). Easy enough to raise awareness of your program or service online via social channels.
  • more effective and responsive client service — this is obviously a more advanced use of social media, but the theory is that empowering civil servants to use social channels can give you highly responsive service to citizens, near real-time even.
  • instant feedback — given the two-way, always-on nature of social media, you can find out what works and what doesn’t really quickly. Ultimately, the social web could lead your stakeholders or customers to become co-designers of your service offerings.

These are just three aspects that I banged out quickly off the top of my head. What are others?

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Broadcast Thinking in a Networked World

Posted in branding, marketing, social media, strategy, Web 2.0, tagged , , on 4 March 2009 |

For many marketers, regardless of whether they are on the private or public sectors, the following graphic illustrates how they were trained to think about their role:

future_of_advertising-broadcast_model

Ok ok, so in the public sector, replace “buy our stuff” with “believe what we say” ;+)

It’s the broadcast model. Controlled  and consistent messages delivered over and over again via mass channels – the “axe in our heads” that the Cluetrain Manifesto railed against.

But the reality is this:

future_of_advertising_where_we_are_now

These are taken from this presentation from a major agency in the UK. They are set up as a “then vs. now” comparison, given the rise of social networks, the blogopshere, user generated content, and blah blah blah.

Sometimes I think that this 2.0 stuff is merely bringing out into the open the way that people reacted (or didn’t react) to the broadcast model all along. But anyhow.

OK so we know that broadcast thinking doesn’t work in a networked world — Well what are the strategies then? We’re all experimenting, but I don’t think we’ve really begun to figure it out yet.

(found via craphammer)

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Speaking of the Cluetrain …

Posted in marketing, social media, tagged , , , , , on 26 February 2009 |

Since the Cluetrain is 10 years old, there’s lots of attention being paid to it. But some still miss the point a little. To wit -

A little less action, a little more conversation – Brand Republic News – Brand Republic.

This is the second place I’ve seen this post and I still don’t quite get it… esp. this bit:

But if markets are conversations, broadband technology and web inventions have created something the [Cluetrain] manifesto writers could not and did not anticipate.

…

Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging, e-mail, blogs, Skype – the internet is alive with conversations. Tempting for marketers to think that today’s challenge is to find a way of inserting themselves into these exchanges. No, that’s rude and it doesn’t work.

Our challenge is the much more interesting one – to allow customers to have a conversation with us on their terms and whenever they choose.

Hmm.. true in a strict sense that the Cluetrain could not anticipate apps like Twitter, Facebook etc. specifically, but if memory serves, isn’t the social web in general exactly what the Cluetrain was anticipating?

Not sure that the us/them, marketers vs. customers dialectic perpetuated by this poster in that last paragraph is what the Cluetrain had in mind either. Oh great, the marketers are “allowing” us to have a conversation with them now? Don’t need their permission, never did, thanks for nothing.

I much prefer this kind of approach. Marketing as “brand ethnography:”

Be quiet.  Listen.  Ask.

Likewise, shelve the impulse to be the one with the clever lines & arresting images.  You’re a brand ethnographer now.  Your field notes contain the seeds of strategies.

(h/t Jason Falls).

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RealWire Video: The Online Media

Posted in marketing, social media, tagged , , on 16 January 2009 | 1 Comment »

Succinct introduction to how the social media ecosystem functions, aimed at communicators and marketers. Very nicely done.

The vid explains how creators, distributions and consumers all use and share online content. Words, images, audio and video that are generated, circulated and curated via blogging, social networking, link sharing, etc. It’s a pretty complete high-level look at web/media environment that we are operating in, all in a little more than 3 minutes.

I particularly like how the journalism niche is not given more play than the blogging niche or the aggregating niche. If you’re trying to make the point why your communications efforts need to move beyond its traditional focus on press releases and beat reporters, then this should be helpful.

NB RealWire is a UK public relations firm (formerly webitpr) that I’ve never worked with. But I did like this nice little vid explaining the social media press release from a little while back (complete with sales pitch at the end).

Aside: I came across this video through a comment I left on Mike Kujawski’s Public Sector Marketing 2.0 blog. I then received a tweet from Adam Parker at RealWire pointing me to this vid. The social media ecosystem in action!

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“The Trouble With Facebook” for Marketers

Posted in marketing, social networking, tagged , , , , , , , on 16 September 2008 |

Spotted in Sunday’s G&M:

Maggie Fox on how hard it is to do market research on Facebook:

“I don’t want to know who, I just want to know what. I don’t need to take it down to the level of what Joe Blow says, I want to know what people are talking about generally. It is almost impossible to extract data from Facebook around who’s talking about what and whether it’s a favourable or negative conversation without doing it manually,” Ms. Fox said.

The marketer in me feels her pain. The research is painstaking! Who’s got the time or the money to have some poor sod sit there flipping through FB profiles and pages…. But the Facebook user in me figgers that “the trouble with Facebook” from a marketing point of view is probably a good thing.

The problem is that there are others less reputable than the Social Media Group who do in fact want to take it down to the level of what Joe Blow Peter Smith says, where he clicks, who his contacts are and what data he’s entering online. Phishing, spamming and all that naughty stuff. Let’s build a widget that secretly scapes all my profile data right?

If it weren’t for these types (and some of them work for companies that I buy crap from, I can just feel it when I go through my inbox or snail mail), I’d be all cool with letting Maggie & her gang collect more data.

In a perfect world, right?

Aside: that quote seems a bit slipshod the more I look at it — at first she says I don’t want to know who, but then she mentions that she would in fact like to know who‘s talking about what — hoping she was misquoted …

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Cluetrain: Voice

Posted in bureaucracy, marketing, social media, tagged , on 13 March 2008 | 1 Comment »

More on Cluetrain. I got halfway through and had to take it back to the library or face yet another fine. Bummer — but I’ve requested it again already, so I hope it gets back to me soon, before I forget too much of what I read.

From David Weinberger’s first essay in the book, “The Longing,” this caught my eye:

We don’t know what the Web is for but we’ve adopted it faster than any technology since fire.

There are many ways to look at what’s drawing us to the Web: access to information, connection to other people, entrance to communities, the ability to broadcast ideas. None of these are wrong perspectives. But they all come back to the promise of voice and thus of authentic self.

This “voice” theme is a big deal so far in the book. How the internets allow individual voices to break through into public infospace that had been dominated by marketing, PR, corporate communications for a long time.

(I’m not so sure about the “authentic self” part of it, as it seems to me that a lot of public participation online is about cultivating a persona of some sort, but ever for the poseurs, the voice used is an individual one, not an organizational one.)

So, OK, the individual voice. There tends not to be an “I” or even “we” in much govt communications. Other than at the political level, the voice of public services is often a kind of non-voice, often passive, often vague and imprecise. This comes out of the standard process for creating our content — written by committee and way overcooked from endless approvals.

But in social media of all kinds, the voice used is almost always personal, individual, immediate. The blogger or commenter behind the post stands by their words – their own words – they own them in a way that corporate communicators aren’t used to doing.

So how to accommodate the individual voice in a corporate communications environment? Slipping into the organizational voice is a hard habit to break.

So I can’t wait to get the book back in my grubby little hands to see how this saga of the individual voice online turns out.

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Branding public servants

Posted in branding, bureaucracy, marketing, strategy on 20 February 2008 |

No, no, not with a fire-heated iron rod or anything. What I’m talking about is this story that appeared on the front page of yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen:

Canada’s public service must recover its lost image as a “place to make a difference” in a fiercely competitive war for executives in which meaningful work can still trump big salaries and bonuses, says the head of a federal advisory committee on executive compensation.

Carol Stephenson, who is also the dean of the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, said it’s time the public service returned to the days of marketing itself as a calling. She said the public service does a poor job of recruiting at colleges and universities and marketing itself as the country’s only employer that offers such diverse careers and interesting work.

Drilling down, I spotted this:

But Ms. Stephenson said the government has to focus on managing its people and offering what she calls a “total value proposition” because pay and generous benefits alone won’t keep and attract people.

She said many companies have shifted from “branding” their companies to branding their people, which means paying more attention to things that make people stay — personal growth, new opportunities, making a difference, rewards, recognition and stable work.

The concept of branding the people rather than the organization is totally foreign to the federal public service. Where I work, the concept of branding in general is pretty much outside the box, at least at the administrative (as opposed to political) level — i.e. the departments and agencies actually delivering programs and services. So we’re talking about a huge challenge to implement.

Strikes me though that an engagement with social media could be a big help in this regard — online communications using real, individual voices, as opposed to disembodied, distant org-speak, could go a long way to changing perceptions of who public servants are and what they are all about. In terms of attracting and retaining talent, my bet would be that the kind of authenticity that can be achieved via online communities would be a huge bonus. Big risks involved in moving into that space (both real and perceived!), and PS participants would need signposts and touchstones to help guide us on our way, but the reward could be great.

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