Huxley Quayle von Blog

Is this the start of something?

OTTAWA LAW STUDENTS FILE FACEBOOK PRIVACY COMPLAINT ] June 02, 2008 | By Canadian Press Law students at the University of Ottawa have filed a complaint with the federal privacy commissioner against Facebook. The students, including several dedicated Facebook users, allege the popular social networking website has committed 22 violations of Canadian privacy law. They allege Facebook fails to inform members about how their personal information is disclosed to third parties for advertising and other profit-making activities, and also that it doesn’t get permission from users to do so. The students drew up the complaint after analyzing the company’s policies and practices as part of a clinic course during the winter term. Clinic director Philippa Lawson said the group focused on Facebook—which boasts more than seven million Canadian members—because it appeals to young teens who may not realize the risks of exposing personal information online. Under law, the privacy commissioner has up to one year to investigate the complaint and present findings.

Advertising vs. Social Marketing

Here's the best explanation of when to use more traditional marketing/advertising and when to use social marketing, from Chris Bogan.

"If you’re Burger King and you’re looking to influence whether I go there or not, use plain old marketing. It’s just fine. It’s the right tool for the job. So is advertising. You don’t HAVE to use social media for that.

But, if you’re Burger King and you want to understand me, to get what’s really going on inside my head, and know what we have in common, then THAT is where social media can be useful. Talk to me. Get to know me. Ask me about me and the things that aren’t about you."

Personally, I think successful companies do both. Nike engages runners with Nike Plus. It gets to know them, understand them better and, through the dialogue, they get to like and trust Nike more. But, and this is a big but, Nike also does great marketing. They create great advertising that builds brand affinity and they create ideas that get people involved not just with each other and with the company, but with their brand.

So I think marketing and social marketing should work hand in hand. Or, maybe they should just become part of the larger sphere of marketing. You can use more traditional advertising to change how people think about your brand. You can use to engage, to point people towards a conversation. And then you can use social media to keep the conversation going and find out how your company can be more customer focused.

In the process, you spend less on expensive traditional media and promotions, while getting more people involved in your brand.

That's our vision here at HQvB.

Everything you ever wanted to know about User Generated Content and Social Media but were too bored to read.

Okay, we warned you in the headline, this is a bit of a dull read. However, if you can get through the entire document, you'll earn a ton about UGC and social media and how you can use it to get people involved with your brand.

Or, you can just call us and we'll be happy to go through some thinking with you.

Enjoy.

Download 2008_ugc_platform.pdf

A must read for luxury goods marketers.

A great article from AdAge.

Affluent Keep Tighter Hold on Purse Strings
But Weak Economy Presents Pockets of Opportunity for Marketers

By Beth Snyder Bulik

Published: April 28, 2008
YORK, Pa. (AdAge.com) -- Being rich isn't what it used to be.

Today there are more affluent households than ever before, from more diverse ethnic and psychographic backgrounds, and they include a wide range of age demographics as well as various degrees of wealth. They're just as likely to be shopping at H&M or grabbing a latte at Starbucks on Saturday as they are to be making the rounds at an exclusive country club.

Luxury aspirers are highly materialistic and identify luxury as what they buy and what they own.

However, thanks to the flagging economy, many have one thing in common: They're not feeling nearly as affluent as they once did.

About 55% of the wealthiest Americans -- the top 10%, with an average net worth of $3.1 million and an average annual salary of $315,000 -- have cut back on expenditures in the past year and will make a conscious effort to keep cutting during the next 12 months, according the spring 2008 survey by the American Affluence Research Center.

Tightening belts
Plans to buy vehicles, build new homes or extensively remodel their current ones have also hit historic lows among the über-wealthy that are the subject of the center's six-and-a-half years of twice-annual surveys.

Pam Danziger of Unity Marketing, who classifies affluent consumers as those who make at least $100,000 in wages -- or about 20% of American households -- recently noted that luxury-consumer confidence is way down. Some 41% of those consumers expect to spend less in the next year, and only 13% plan to spend more.

"When gas hits $3.50 a gallon, I don't care how much money you make, you're going to notice it," Ms. Danziger said. "Luxury is the easiest thing to hold back on. ... They might have just as much money as they did six months ago, but today they don't feel as flush."

So what's a marketer looking to sell to affluent consumers to do?

The unaffected few
Well, there are some at the rarefied levels of wealth who are still spending at the same or increased levels. It may take more targeting or research, but there is evidence that certain segments are still indulging.

The weak economy also may open opportunities to appeal to affluent consumers' "bargain" side. Why buy a $1,500 Tod's handbag when substituting a $350 Dooney & Bourke bag (as Ms. Danziger just did) makes you feel just as good?

And because there are more affluent consumers than ever before -- thanks to double-digit growth of households with incomes of $100,000 or more in the past few years, according to Unity Marketing -- there are more potential customers.

This burgeoning affluent class is also more diverse than before, with more women, minorities and young people heading the households. Minorities lead 13% of affluent households, 5% are headed by women with no husbands present and 30% are either Gen X or Millenials. That means greater segmentation than in the past -- and a more difficult marketing challenge.

In short, marketers need to get to know the modern affluents. So we pulled stats and figures from various researchers to help you do just that. The five categories on the left are Ms. Danziger's characterizations of the "personalities" of affluent consumers, while the traits on the right were culled from other researchers' demographics and psychographic studies.
TEMPERATE PRAGMATIST

When Unity Marketing profiled the personalities of the affluent market in 2003, this category didn't exist. But in 2007, temperate pragmatists accounted for 22% of the market. They appreciate luxury products but the pursuit and purchase of them holds no great appeal. They are least likely to "indulge" and spent only about $9,000 on lux purchases in the second quarter -- about half of what the average affluent consumer spent. Of the five personalities, they have the lowest average incomes, at $146,000, and the oldest average age, with the majority in the 55-to-70-year-old range.

BUTTERFLIES

As the name implies, this group is changing, morphing from self-indulgent spenders to more socially responsible consumers. While they only slightly outspend the more pragmatic-affluent personalities, this group has the highest average income. They spent just over $15,000 on luxury items last quarter, almost exactly average. Much of this group is made up of baby boomers aged 45 to 55.

COCOONERS

Equal in size to the pragmatists is this group of affluent consumers who desire luxurious homes as both shelter and investment. Ms. Danziger describes them as "luxury consumers who prefer the status quo." They tend to be somewhat cautious in their luxury spending and dropped about $12,000 in the second quarter, or about 25% less than the average affluent. Men account for more than half (52%) of this group.

LUXURY ASPIRERS

The mantra for this group could be buy, buy, buy. They are highly materialistic and identify luxury as what they buy and what they own. They haven't reached the level of affluence they hope to attain but recognize -- and buy -- brands with the best lux recognition. Their incomes are below the average, but they dropped almost $17,000 in the second quarter on luxury items.

X-FLUENTS

Less-than-ideal economic conditions won't slow this group down. These consumers want what they want when they want it. They "describe their luxury lifestyle as the best of the best," Ms. Danziger reports. They spent more than $24,000 on luxury items in the second quarter. They're also the youngest-skewing of the five personalities, with the majority falling into the 24-to-34-year-old range, and are most likely to live in the downtown area of a major city.

HIGHLY ASSERTIVE

People who make more than $100,000 a year are 38% more likely to be extremely assertive, and people who make $200,000 or more are 57% more likely to be that way, according to Mindset Media. Sarah Welch, Mindset's chief operating officer, said: "It makes sense -- they're not afraid to ask for those raises and promotions." They are also 52% more likely than the average consumer to purchase four or more pairs of sneakers each year, 54% more likely to always buy organic and 57% more likely to see four or more movies at the theater every month.

HOUSE-RICH

While the subprime-mortgage market crumbles, many of the wealthiest 10% of Americans are safely ensconced in their primary homes with low mortgage balances or none at all. That means while their real-estate values may be dropping, the equity in their homes is extremely high, with incidences of being "upside down" on mortgages very rare, said Ron Kurtz, president of the American Affluence Research Center. The spring 2008 study found that those who did have the lowest level of equity in their homes were least likely to make major purchases this year and also more likely to decrease spending on a variety of smaller-ticket items such as dining out, furniture, home-entertainment equipment, recreational activities and charitable contributions.

SOCIAL MEDIA-SAVVY

Households with annual earnings of $100,000 or more use the widest range of internet tools and websites to learn about brands' customer-service experiences when buying new products. Research from the Society for New Communications Research, funded by Nuance Communications, showed that those in the wealthier group use multiple search engines and advanced search techniques, in contrast to their sub-$30,000-salary compadres, who are more likely to choose -- and believe -- customer information on corporate websites, along with popular social sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.

"They're very sophisticated in terms of their use of social media," said Nora Barnes, research fellow and one of the study's authors. "They're also the people who say they're most likely to share their own experiences online ... and to say they choose companies and brands based on customer care online."

Word of mouse takes over from word of mouth.

Read this in the New York Times. It shows how a new generation is coming up consuming media in a very, very different way. There's a lesson in here for marketers.

Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On

By BRIAN STELTER
Published: March 27, 2008

Senator Barack Obama’s videotaped response to President Bush’s final State of the Union address — almost five minutes of Mr. Obama’s talking directly to the camera — elicited little attention from newspaper and television reporters in January.

But on the medium it was made for, the Internet, the video caught fire. Quickly after it was posted on YouTube, it appeared on the video-sharing site’s most popular list and Google’s most blogged list. It has been viewed more than 1.3 million times, been linked by more than 500 blogs and distributed widely on social networking sites like Facebook.

It is not news that young politically minded viewers are turning to alternative sources like YouTube, Facebook and late-night comedy shows like “The Daily Show.” But that is only the beginning of how they process information.

According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one.

“There are lots of times where I’ll read an interesting story online and send the U.R.L. to 10 friends,” said Lauren Wolfe, 25, the president of College Democrats of America. “I’d rather read an e-mail from a friend with an attached story than search through a newspaper to find the story.”

In one sense, this social filter is simply a technological version of the oldest tool in politics: word of mouth. Jane Buckingham, the founder of the Intelligence Group, a market research company, said the “social media generation” was comfortable being in constant communication with others, so recommendations from friends or text messages from a campaign — information that is shared, but not sought — were perceived as natural.

Ms. Buckingham recalled conducting a focus group where one of her subjects, a college student, said, “If the news is that important, it will find me.”

A December survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press looked broadly at how media were being consumed this campaign. In the most striking finding, half of respondents over the age of 50 and 39 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds reported watching local television news regularly for campaign news, while only 25 percent of people under 30 said they did.

Fully two-thirds of Web users under 30 say they use social networking sites, while fewer than 20 percent of older users do. MySpace and Facebook create a sense of connection to the candidates. Between the two sites, Mr. Obama has about one million “friends,” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination, has roughly 330,000, and Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, has more than 140,000. Four out of 10 young people have watched candidate speeches, interviews, commercials or debates online, according to Pew, substantially more than people 30 and older.

Young people also identify online discussions with friends and videos as important sources of election information. The habits suggest that younger readers find themselves going straight to the source, bypassing the context and analysis that seasoned journalists provide.

In the days after Mr. Obama’s speech on race last week, for example, links to the transcript and the video were the most popular items posted on Facebook. On The New York Times’s Web site, the transcript of the speech ranked consistently higher on the most e-mailed list than the articles written about the speech.

The way consumers filter their news is being highlighted now that a generation of Americans is coming of age in the midst of a campaign that has generated intense interest and voter involvement. Exit polls in 22 states estimate that more than three million voters under the age of 30 participated in Democratic primaries this year, up from about one million four years ago.

In three of the most populous states — California, Texas and Ohio — the share of voters under 30 who turned out for Democratic primaries increased to 16 percent, up from less than 10 percent in 2004, according to exit polls by Edison/Mitofsky. In the Republican primaries, the increases in most states have been less striking but still visible.

“Young people are particularly galvanized in this campaign, and they have a new set of tools that make it look different from the enthusiasm that greeted other politicians 30 years ago,” said Lee Rainie, director for the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “They read a news story and then blog about it, or they see a YouTube video and then link to it, or they go to a campaign Web site, download some phone numbers, and make calls on behalf of a candidate.”

Media companies are benefiting from the heightened interest. CNN, which drew about 60,000 viewers ages 18 to 34 a night in February 2007, drew 218,000 on an average night this February, numbers that were increased by coverage of several presidential debates. Fox News and MSNBC also posted gains among young viewers last month, with both networks averaging more than 100,000 young viewers in prime time, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Although some college seniors may say they learned about Mr. Obama’s speech about race on CNN, more are likely to have seen it on YouTube, where it has been viewed almost 3.4 million times, or on Facebook, where it remains among the most shared links.

Candidates are capitalizing on this social development, and so are their supporters. A youth-minded music video called “Yes We Can” has been perhaps the biggest beneficiary. A musical version of Mr. Obama’s campaign speech made by the singer will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and a bevy of celebrities, it was released on YouTube three days before the series of coast-to-coast nominating contests on Feb. 5. Counting hits on YouTube and other sites, the video has been viewed more than 17 million times.

To a lesser extent, videos of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain have also been traveling through the online networks. A video of Mr. McCain asking citizens what issues matter most in the election has been viewed 300,000 times.

Rather than treating video-sharing Web sites as traditional news sources, young people use them as tools and act as editors themselves.

“We’re talking about a generation that doesn’t just like seeing the video in addition to the story — they expect it,” said Danny Shea, 23, the associate media editor for The Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com). “And they’ll find it elsewhere if you don’t give it to them, and then that’s the link that’s going to be passed around over e-mail and instant message.”

The Next Creative Revolution

A cool article on the future of advertising from Creativity:

Nick Law, chief creative officer of R/GA, talks about the the dynamic relationships that exist between the advertising medium and its message and the qualities the next generation of leaders need.

BY: NICK LAW PUBLISHED: MAR 24, 2008 EMAIL | PRINT |

Fifty years ago, to join advertising's creative guild, a man had to tell funny stories and smoke a pipe. The patron saint of this exclusive guild was a guy in a suit from the Bronx named Bill Bernbach, who preached about advertising as entertainment. To this day, there are followers of Saint Bill who believe that people are so amused by advertising that they run right out and buy stuff. They believe this because if it weren't true they'd have to go to Hollywood to tell funny stories, and it's harder to get a job in Hollywood than on Madison Avenue.

Over time the guild crafted the creative one-two punch that has become synonymous with what they call "The Big Idea." It consisted of their famous "funny story" tied up neatly with a conceptual bow called the "tagline." It worked pretty well for 50 years. Making the stories sufficiently funny and the taglines sufficiently memorable was enough to get products attention, so it became doctrine. But now the industry has a problem.

The sage Saint Bill himself saw it coming when he said:

"If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic."

I fear there are a lot of prodigiously funny ads that are like the proverbial tree falling in the woods. Armed with a fast forward button, and spending more and more time in front of computers, the audience has exposed a horrifying truth—the sons of Bernbach like making ads more than people like watching them.

Luckily for the guild, there are other places to tell funny stories. Award shows for example. Or the World Wide Web. Perhaps there's no reason to panic after all. The storytellers will just keep coming up with "Big Ideas" as they've always done, but instead of putting them on TV, they'll figure out a way to "extend" them on the web.

And so the time honored creative ritual just needs a touch of digital added at the end. The copywriter and art director can still return from their marathon coffee-fueled concept meditation with a glorious narrative. The below-the-line laity can then reverently receive this narrative before shuffling away to dutifully extrude it online.

This, we are told, is integration. For the web guy, who was recruited with the promise of a seat at the Bernbachian table, it feels more like integration at gunpoint. Instead of spending his time shoving a square-peg concept into a round-hole medium, web guy should look to his own patron saint, Marshall McLuhan.

While the followers of Bernbach are crafting the message, McLuhanites should be politely pointing out that you can't divorce the message from the medium (or, in this age of portable personal screens, the medium from the audience). Each time the medium changes, our relationship to the message changes. In case you haven't noticed, the medium has been changing a lot lately.

This has, in turn, complicated advertising. Back when both patron saints walked the earth in sensible shoes and Brylcreem, advertising was simple—and the medium stable. You could sell a car or a candy bar with the right tagline. Now the product influences the choice of medium and the medium influences the message.

For example, if your product is a car then the web is a good medium to sell it. But, despite what story guy keeps insisting, it is not a great place to put an extravagantly overproduced car narrative. It is better suited to deep information and a robust configurator. If your product is a less-considered purchase like a candy bar, a better medium might be the side of a bus; not great for a list of ingredients, but just fine for a zippy headline. Thankfully for today's creatives, none of this is prescriptive or particularly limiting—in fact, it frees us to make even bolder creative leaps of faith.

For Bill Bernbach, collaboration meant letting Paul Rand choose a typeface. His latter-day acolytes have inherited his certainty but not his world. Today if you don't collaborate you'll quickly find yourself in a creative cul-de-sac. If telling funny stories is all you can or want to do, you'll become a narrative boutique. Out of necessity however, brands will need to be owned by agencies with a new way of working and a broader set of aptitudes.

The copywriter and art director should now be a part of a flat, flexible and modular creative team that understands technology and how the customer relates to it. Flat: because no one knows it all. Flexible: because you'll be making a bunch of different things (including some things that haven't been invented yet). Modular: because you'll need different combinations of talents at different times to make all these things.

This new team is not a guild. They do not all wear backward baseball caps and high five each other in the hall. Some of them have food in their beard. Some of them have never heard of Cannes. Some are women who smoke pipes. This is big tent creativity. It's big enough for designers, technologists and, yes, storytellers. Out of this tent will march the next creative revolution.

Why do people get involved with social sites?

I read this on BuzzCanuck:

It seems tat IBM recently did some research as to why people join online communities and what motivates them to stay connected. It's very interesting and has a few lessons for marketers who are looking to explore social media.

Here are the top three reason why people join online communities.

The three biggest ones are most telling as identified by IBM''s research:
1) intrinsic/feeling part of a community (31%) - we all want to feel part of some larger whole
2) extrinsic - recognition from peers (28%) - a feeling of validation and respect from you peer network
3) brand kinship (9%) - a genuine affiliation with brands that either solve our problems or reflect our values

So what does this mean for marketers? I think you can take different things from the data. I take that even though people are online by themselves, they want to reach out to others. And if you combine this with reason number 3, you could see that if you build a bigger idea that ties into your brand, you could have some success online.

I think the key is creating an idea that makes people feel that they are part of something larger - a movement perhaps. Maybe it's a community based around a common interest that pertains to a lot of the people who use your brand, or who you want to use your brand. It could provide a good introduction to your brand. get people interested in the community and then show them how your brand fits into that community.

I think #3 also shows perhaps that branding is not dead. Indeed you could postulate that you need to build your brand in the real, offline world before you can expect a large community to develop around it online.

Something to think about.

Measuring the effects of social media

Follow the link below to watch how Sea World in San Antonio used social media and the internet to augment and bring forward the launch of a new ride. They started by getting enthusiasts of roller-coasters involved all over the country and then fed them and other people on the net with lots of great content before the ride opened.

Upon launching the ride, exit surveys of guests showed that more people became interested in the ride through the internet than through their advertising.

Lots of great ideas for social media campaigns, and lots of ways to measure the effects of the social media campaign.

http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/03/gntv-making-a-s.html

The future of marketing. Although we think it's the present.

This is a great powerpoint presentation about where marketing is heading and what we as creative people can do to be there.

It's a lot of pages, but it only takes a few minutes to go through. It's well worth the time.

Download whats-next-in-marketing-advertising-1206247156803190-3.ppt.pot

If you're as interested in sustainability as we are, check out this blog

www.changereport.com

There's tons of news from the environmental front and lots about green marketing. I especially like the article from Japan about saving the forest by wearing a bra that has a built-in chopstick holder. Nothing says sexy like pointy breasts that reek of the morning's sushi. Mmmmmm.....

You can also get a Change Widget that launches all their latest news on your desktop.

Anyway, lots of cool stuff in the Change Report, but please, if you like an article, don't print it. That'd kinda' defeat the purpose of the whole thing.