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PR Agencies: Adapt Or Die
I’ve been wondering if the PR role is slipping and if the growth in interactive marketing will make PR agencies largely irrelevant unless they diversify and get wise to online opportunities?
Forrester’s December 2010 US Interactive Marketing Online Executive Panel Survey showed that PR agencies held a respectable fourth place when it came to which agencies are helping with company/brand interactive marketing but the same survey also showed that 68% of marketers were working with at least two or more agencies for their interactive marketing needs (all competing for budgets and control no doubt).
In the 14 months since that survey took place interactive marketing has continued to mature, and I wonder if the full-service interactive agency is growing up and gaining control — leaving the PR agency behind at the kids table.
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Principles For Mobile Marketing Success
Most marketers know that there are opportunities for them to engage consumers on mobile devices: consumers are increasingly buying smartphones, using them more frequently, and using them as a supplemental resource for content and communication. So it’s great to see that marketer spend in mobile is increasing. However, we find that most efforts still treat mobile as a translation of PC-based campaigns, or are otherwise experimental. And while it’s smart to start with those kinds of programs, we think it’s important that marketers begin to evolve their mobile marketing strategies so their programs can be as sophisticated as their customers.
In our latest report, we’ve identified a few steps you can take to move your mobile marketing strategy forward:
1) Know what phase of mobile marketing evolution you are in.To get where you’re going, you first have to know where you are. We’ve has outlined five phases of mobile marketing evolution and the accompanying approach, resources, goals, and tactics for each so that you can see which phase you are in today: Foundation, Experimentation, Device Strategy, Channel Strategy, and Comprehensive Strategy.
2) Use the three pillars of mobile strategy to guide your marketing programs in each phase:
a. Immediacy: Provide content that is timely and actionable in the moment.
b. Simplicity: Provide programs elements that are easy to see and navigate on a mobile phone.
c. Context: Send relevant messages based on time, location, and mobile behaviors.
The Super Bowl On The Second Screen
I think that the Super Bowl ads fell short this year. Teasers for ads and ads that were "leaked" on YouTube became old news by the time they aired and offered no element of surprise. The creative was, well, not that creative. But something exciting did happen. This year was a testing ground for advertising on the second screen. During the big game, brands like Best Buy, Pepsi, Toyota, and Bud Light partnered with Shazam, a popular app that can recognize music and television programing, to deliver customized offers and content to viewers that tagged the spot. This morning, Shazam reported "millions of tags" during the game. What will be more interesting to find out is what viewers actually did after they tagged the spot? Did they enter a sweepstakes? Watch a music video? Like the brand on Facebook?
Pinterest is over-hyped
If you didn't hear about it last year I guarantee the platform Pinterest has cropped up on your radar in these past few weeks of 2012. But does that mean it should feature in your 2012 digital marketing planning?
No.
Why it's too early to use Pinterest for interactive marketing
There’s no denying that Pinterest is fun, looks great, and a lot of people love playing with it. That is also true of kittens but no one’s rushing to include them in their 2012 marketing plans (except for maybe Karl Lagerfeld).
A couple of talking points circulating are getting way out of proportion:
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Mobile Websites and the Interactive Marketer
Whether we like it or not, consumers are visting websites from their mobile devices. Marketers confronted by this reality tend to react in two ways: they panic or disregard the information altogether. The problem is, when it comes to mobile websites, interactive marketers have a lot of questions. Over the next 6 weeks, I'll be taking a deep dive into mobile websites and write research that tells marketers what they need to know before investing time, resources and marketing dollars. Key questions for the report will include:
- What is a mobile website and what interactive marketing purpose does it serve?
- How and when do consumers visit sites from their mobile devices?
- What type of content do you need on the site?
- How are brands using mobile websites successfully today?
- How do you optimze a site over time?
I'd also like to hear from you. What questions do you have? What do you need to know when it comes to mobile websites? Email them to me at elshaw@forrester.com and look for a follow-up post where I'll include some highlights and key findings when the report publishes.
Why Google’s Privacy Changes (And The ‘Data Tidy Up’) Moves Everything Forward
Google has handled its privacy debate by being disarmingly clear with a little note left on the fridge the other week.
We’re tidying up and love data too much to not want to connect it better.
Like it or lump it.
Love Google.
It’s their right – they are after all a private company and not the public service we somehow feel them to be. Google wants to “create a beautifully simple, intuitive user experience” and its data consolidation is what will help it do this. Facebook makes one product called Facebook while Google up until now has chosen to run many nom de plumes, betas, and side initiatives. I’d like to see a more capable ‘joined up’ Google sparring with Apple and Facebook on who can do the coolest and most useful things for people using data. In truth, the Google engineering team must be relieved to ditch the sticking plasters and chewing gum connecting the hitherto disparate data sets they manage.
Data isn’t something you set free or conversely even hide. It’s something that you give more data to and see what new stuff it can come up with. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and all the other big personal data holders know this. These companies are at the forefront of the semantic web and are chasing down the promise of more, faster and smarter. We have enough data now to begin inferring something new and useful from it. Of course, in order to get big insights from big data we have to reduce the volume of human effort — we can’t keep confirming and thumb scrolling through ‘permissions’ dialogues for each data exchange. At some point we need to permit companies to infer on our behalf if we want the dialogue to move up a gear. It’s a leap of faith.
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How Facebook’s IPO Could Transform Marketing
Media reports suggest that Facebook will file for an IPO this week that could value the company at $100 billion — and leave the company sitting on $10 billion in cash. I’m not a financial analyst, so I’ll leave it to Wall Street to discuss and debate that valuation. But the fact is this newfound wealth could not only allow Facebook to solve its biggest business challenges, it could also help Facebook finally achieve its longstanding goal to change how marketing works. So how should Facebook use its IPO windfall?
Content Curation No Substitute For Content Creation
“Publishing is a lot harder than it looks” — so says Josh Sternberg over on Digiday. It’s true, so apparently brands are turning toward content curation in a bid to feed their ever-growing need for information to push to Facebook and Twitter streams.
The problem, as always, is that you get what you put in.
Unique content takes more out of the business because it gives more back to the business. (Well, it should.) If I wanted to be a content purist, I’d say that content curation is the equivalent of me turning up to a bake-off with a store-bought cake and saying “Look! I baked a cake.” Nobody’s impressed (or fooled) by me pretending I’m a cake expert having never broken an egg.
Even looking at it in more sympathetic terms for the time-poor Digital Marketer, in the age of customization most people are quite capable of curating their own information — just the way they like it. There’s very little a brand can do to add value to the original content once curated. If I want to find healthy recipes online I can do that for myself, I don’t need to turn to a toaster brand — as one of the article’s interviewees suggest– for their perspective on healthy recipes (no doubt all with a strong toast bias).
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Just Published: A Forrester Wave™ For Mobile Marketing Strategy
We’ve all seen the headlines: 2010 2011 2012 is the year of mobile! Mobile marketing spend will outpace email search display! Jump on the bandwagon now or else!
. . . And while I’m bullish about mobile marketing — I better be, since it’s my primary coverage area these days — the importance of having a sound strategy and the right partners to execute often gets lost in all that hype. That’s why I’m extremely proud to have just published The Forrester Wave™: US Digital Agencies — Mobile Marketing Strategy And Execution, to help marketers identify the right agency partners to develop and build smart mobile marketing strategies that deliver real business results.
You’ll notice from the (rather long) title that I focused specifically on US-based digital agencies. Admittedly, this is a narrow view of a very wide array of service providers that help marketers create mobile programs. However, to deliver the kind of value people expect from Forrester’s trusted Wave methodology, it was necessary to zero in on just one part of the market to ensure a level field for all players.
Even with this focus, we screened scores of agencies for this study and ultimately ended up with nine agencies to evaluate: AKQA, iCrossing, Ogilvy, Possible Worldwide, Razorfish, Rosetta, SapientNitro, TribalDDB, and VML. These top performing agencies were included in our evaluation because they all:
• Offer comprehensive mobile marketing services.
• Met – and mostly exceeded — a minimum revenue requirement from mobile marketing offerings.
• Have more than 5 years of proven mobile marketing experience for enterprise clients.
• Appear frequently as a competitor for new business and on marketers’ short list during agency selection processes.Categories:
Snickers, Twitter, And The Problem Of Compliance
The following is a guest post by Senior Research Associate James McDavid:
When tweets from Katie Price (aka Jordan, a British glamour model) talking about the recently released Chinese GDP figures and the potential effects of large-scale quantitative easing on the liquidity of the bond markets began appearing in my Twitter stream early this week I was a little surprised. Not entirely shocked (I "accidentally" read her autobiography and she’s undoubtedly a smart cookie and a successful businesswoman) but certainly a little confused. Had her account been hacked, had she decided that what the UK really needed was a new Iron Lady and that she was up for it? A few tweets later all was revealed when Katie tweeted a picture of herself holding a chocolate bar as part of the Snickers campaign, "You’re not you when you’re hungry."
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New Analyst With The Interactive Marketing Team: Darika Ahrens
After more than seven years in marketing, media, and tech — four of which were running my own marketing and social media consultancy — I’ve landed at Forrester as an analyst serving Interactive Marketing Professionals (EMEA) based in London.
My role at Forrester will start to focus on content as content creation becomes more and more vital to the interactive marketer. Content will also apply in a multitude of ways to mobile, online video, search, and across interactive brand ecosystems.
My first report is underway and will look at online video content in your marketing. If you have anything to contribute please get in touch dahrens@forrester.co.uk. Also if you have suggestions for anything else related to the area of content drop me a line.
Three things I’d love you to do:
- If you’d like to speak with me, have information on a product or service, or have an idea relevant to my research areas you can Request a Briefing (simply write my name in the ‘Preferred Analyst’ box on the form) — PR contacts, this includes you!
- If you’re a Forrester member and would like to connect I’m now available to take Inquiries. Topics I can discuss are social media marketing, online video, community management, content strategy.
- Keep in touch by following the blog (where I will update on research I’m conducting and opportunities where you may contribute) or follow me on Twitter @darika.
Looking forward to working with you.
I’m Back In NYC
I'm really pleased to announce that I've moved back to New York City. I actually started my interactive marketing career in New York almost 15 years ago, and I started my analyst career in New York nine years ago. But for the past seven years I've been plying my trade elsewhere: in London, Berlin, Vancouver, and then back in London again. Now, after half a career spent abroad, it's great to be back home.
What does this mean for my research coverage? Not much, really. I've still got the same job on the same team, and I'll still be focused on the same topics I've covered for years:
SOPA/PIPA – what really stunts the growth of the Digital Economy?
The recent furore about SOPA and PIPA has set me thinking afresh about my position on copyright ownership legislation. I myself suffer, albeit in a very small way, from the kind of pirates being targeted by the bills and regularly find my Indian classical arrangement of Silent Night being illegally sold by pirate sites in China and elsewhere. It’s frustrating but my views on the topic are not simply to create the biggest hammer possible to crush the activity.
What really stunts growth and adoption of the Digital Economy?
There is something wider at work here beyond simply piracy. The short term view, adopted by SOPA, is to instigate moderately Draconian measures impacting the architecture of the internet. My colleague Ari Osur has written an excellent post that clearly outlines how this might affect the world of the Marketer should SOPA/PIPA transpire in its current form.
A longer term view to the solution is that this piracy is mostly happening in emerging digital economies and that it is informally permissible until they mature. Joe Karaganis published a seminal report on Media Piracy in 2011 which took a fresh look at the topic with many case studies taken from emerging economies. One quote which sticks out is :
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Ham-Handed SOPA Loses Momentum, But This Issue Isn’t Dead
So it appears that the progress of SOPA and PIPA is grinding to a halt, largely due to the massive online backlash inflamed by the influential new generation of digitally focused companies like Google, Amazon.com, and Facebook. For interactive marketers, this is a good thing. But protecting content creators from online piracy is fundamentally important and the movement is funded by deep pockets. If SOPA and PIPA are dead in their current incarnations, they’re certain to resurface in another form. The new question for interactive marketers and the online community is whether that new form will be more realistic, fair, and effective in terms of enforcement and compliance.
As a refresher, the twin online anti-piracy bills in the U.S. legislature sought to give copyright holders and U.S. attorneys general the power to stop foreign-based websites from linking to or displaying copyrighted content like movies and music without permission. But the bills are extremely far-reaching and complicated and could potentially up-end the operations of any website that allows users to post content or has links to other sites – which is basically every site out there.
Why are SOPA and PIPA bad news for marketers? They would potentially:
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How Privacy Legislation Will Change The Ad Network/Exchange Paradigm — Pulling Back The Curtain Of Oz
In my recent paper titled Privacy Laws Force Rich Dialogue with Customers I outlined some of the looming legal directives that will change the targeting dialogue between brands and consumers and how the industry should respond.
The ad network ecosystem will ultimately be forced the pull back the curtain of Oz to reveal to customers the machines and levers behind targeting technology. As illustrated in my paper, the predominant approaches are full targeting vesus opt out, but this is not enough choice. Segmentation strategies and targeting techniques used by ad tools are hidden within engines and will need to be surfaced to customers so that they may verify, modify, and importantly play with them.
This isn’t easy, however, as the mathematical vernacular of targeting technology with confusing terms such as graphs, nodes, and vectors are unintelligible to most. Metaphors will be needed to distill the complexity for customers. One of the approaches to take will be similar to how optometrists work by showing the customer different "lenses" (perceptions) held about them and subsequently allowing them to choose. These "lenses" may not just be rich segmentation concepts but will include social and individual assumptions too.
Where does this transparency and explanation rationale take us?
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