“‘Desperate times call for desperate measures’ is a dangerous justification, often uttered by politicians desperate to proceed with a hidden agenda.”
A Place of Honor
Posted on March 30, 2009 Written by 2 Comments
One of the great aspects of this medium is it can reach so many people around the world.
One of the downsides is that most of them will never give you the feedback that validates what you do. Having a great idea is even better when you know it touched someone or helped them.
I wrote a piece awhile back about my homegrown system for dealing with email overload: the Dr. Pepper system.
Check this out from my tracking log:
Look at that Entry Page: file:///E:/Outlook/…
That’s a locally-stored file. Let’s look at that in depth:
Someone liked it well enough to file it away. Based on nothing but conjecture, it would appear this person filed away an Outlook message, likely from an email subscription to Occam’s RazR. Or maybe just saved the link as a local shortcut. (My first thought was that it was on a flash drive, which might make sense for someone using public computers at a college.)
Still, any way you slice it, this isn’t like the many who come in on Google Image searches for Live Nude Girls or Chocolate Covered Cockroaches. This is someone who saw enough value in what I wrote they saved it. And not like those RSS Ninjas who save 40 links without blinking.
I’m honored. And that’s enough for me.
Modern Mobs
Posted on March 27, 2009 Written by 3 Comments
“Populism is more dangerous today, as modern mobs have traded pitchforks and torches for forklifts and flamethrowers.”
Continual Lather
Posted on March 26, 2009 Written by 2 Comments
I was sick and stayed at home recently. I’ve been blessed that I haven’t had many of those days to remind me that daytime television is still pretty much a wasteland for males. And I’ve also been blessed that my overall health and well-being has far outstripped the soap opera genre, which is reeling from lower viewership, slashed casts, evaporation of entire shows and the creeping crippling of the time shift.
The DVR has been a savior of sorts, but it’s the cure that kills. Time-shifting and automatic recording have allowed a greater audience to stay up to date with their favorite daytime serials. True, VCRs served the same purpose, but they were a hassle. You can’t start watching a 1pm show at 1:20 if it’s on tape, and you can’t watch All My Children at 8:30 if you’re trying to record “Lost” at the same time. The DVR is also popular because it allows viewers to skip through commercials.
Advertisers are still trying to come to terms with the DVR effect. Sure, we still know roughly how many people watched it live, and a pretty decent idea how many people time-shifted a show. Some are even acting on formulae that provides a conversion ratio: a live viewer is X% likely to get an ad impression, where a time-shifter is Y% likely to see the spot. The X-Y factor for those viewers makes the difference between paying full price in the Cost Per Thousand (CPM) and getting a discount.
Dear Diary
Let’s back up a moment. The Nielsen ratings had never been perfect, but for a long time that’s all there were. Television ad rates were set based on viewership levels measured during three major and one minor period of the year. They’re still known as “sweeps”, and they happen in November, May, February, and July (in order of importance.) During those four-week intervals, targeted homes get a diary to fill out, indicating what each member of the household watches. It’s arbitrary at times, and in many cases relies on the memory of the viewer to backfill the entries. There’s also a perception bias that creeps in, where some Nielsen families “fib” about what they watch. Which makes your family look “smarter” to the survey team: Hard-hitting news on “60 Minutes” or a parade of candid crotch-knocks on “America’s Funniest Videos?”
The diaries weren’t perfect, but they were made better with the advent of the People Meter. Larger markets (the biggest 60 or so) are “metered,” meaning that on any given day about 440 homes in that coverage area are hooked up to a box that eavesdrops on actual viewing habits. 440 doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is a statistically significant enough number to provide useful information in aggregate. Every few months, a percentage of those meters are moved around, and care is taken to ensure they approximate the blend of geographic, demographic and cultural diversity in the market.
These meters provide overnight results to stations that subscribe to the ratings, giving instant feedback about what does and doesn’t resonate on a large scale. Overnight ratings are often responsible for the cancellation of shows that have only aired once. They’re also responsible for the hyper-sensitivity of local news operations, which use the numbers to inform their gut instincts about whether that lead story was a grabber, and whether it ought to be followed up the next day.
What the meters don’t give us is meaningful information about the “splits”. How many women 25-54 watched that show? How many teens? There aren’t enough in the daily samples to give a decent context.
Meter Maids
When you combine the diaries and the meters, in theory you get to extrapolate one data set and interpolate the other. The meters give you a sense of what people are really watching, which allows you to compare to the diary data to glean how many of those viewers fit certain desirable profiles.
And that’s where soap operas can once again demonstrate a relevance that will revive the genre, or at the very least provide a value beyond just the revenue generated by ads in the time slots.
The daytime serial falls in one of the most-studied time periods, because the audience has traditionally been homemakers who are key decision makers for entire classes of household consumables. (The soap in the soap opera.) There are reams of data about these viewers, what they like, and why. The genre is also one of the stickiest forms of entertainment – with loyal viewers willing to invest 150-300 minutes per week into each show they follow (80-200 minutes for the DVR people who skip the breaks and duplicate scenes.)
The goal ought to be two-fold: re-engage these viewers to want to watch the ads, and use that pre-existing knowledge of the viewers to inform other metrics.
Lather After Hours
Many shows are attempting to extend the viewer experience beyond the original timeslot. Shows like “Lost” have entire strands of storyline happening in a world of bogus websites, full of extra clues and Easter Eggs for diehard fans to discover. “The Office” has built several incarnations of the Dunder-Mifflin website, and has created a community of slacker non-employees who can engage in zany non-antics with very real virtual non-co-workers. (Which is precisely the vibe of the show.) Or if you just want to see additional out-takes from this week’s episode of “Psych,” you’re just a couple of clicks away.
Other shows, like “Mad Men,” have a fan base so loyal that viewers started impersonating characters on sites like Twitter. Not knowing what to do at first, AMC asked for the accounts to be shut down. Most shows would kill for a rabid enough fan base that people would want to interact with characters outside of the box.
What genre do you think has just such a fan base?
What makes this such an intriguing proposition is you don’t really need people running Erica Kane’s character 24 hours a day. You don’t need to interact with the viewers. Just allow some of the “conversation” that takes place between characters to spill over into real channels. A couple of younger characters might have occasional conversations with each other on Twitter, and real fans will sign up to eavesdrop. Twitter would be ideal for this, because you could glean some data from the profiles about who signs up from which regions of the country, and you sell to women the idea they can have those little love notes sent via SMS to their cell phones.
Maybe you do some of it through traditional email. Sure, you don’t want to punish the regular viewer by having key elements only occur off-screen, but you can have the characters talking about their exchange the next day. “What did you mean when you wrote _______?”
The final piece is how you get viewers to eavesdrop.
You leave the clues in the commercial breaks. Maybe a 10-second slate in the middle of a break gives you an email address. Send a message and you can opt-in to emails to and from that character. Maybe you embed the coded email addresses within some of the spots themselves – a form of sponsorship that doesn’t involve plot redirection or product placement, just an inducement to stop on that ad long enough to scribble the email address.
Now you’re beginning to build a cross-functional dataset that gives you comparisons between traditional ads, Social Media ads, and Social Media content. You have the same audience captured to be the Rosetta Stone between online and off. That may be the first ongoing benchmark that delivers the comparative Return on Investment for traditional and non-traditional marketing. What you haven’t really had is a dataset large enough that builds on a loyal following.
Take the most rabid soap audience, and find a way to feed it off hours. The Continual Lather will wash away red ink.
Tale of Two Cities
Posted on March 23, 2009 Written by 2 Comments
Here are the final moments from the two legs of my brief “presentation vacation” out west. I’ll let you write your own conclusion.
My last transaction in Las Vegas involved checking out of the Wynn at the conclusion of the Ragan/PRSA Social Media Conference. While I was at the closing keynote, my wife waited in line to square up the bill.
Apparently, the Wynn was prepared to bill us $582, representing the entire contents of the minibar (which we did not touch). She had to wait an additional 20 minutes for someone to go to the room and do an inventory of the minibar before it was removed from our credit card.
My last transaction in Springdale, Utah (just outside Zion National Park) was refueling the rental car before driving back to the airport in Las Vegas. Just after I started pumping the gas, a stranger walked up and started cleaning my windshield. I was bracing myself for the incoming request for monetary assistance.
It was the owner of the gas station. Cleaning my windshield on a Sunday morning. I told him it was the closest thing to full service I had seen since I was a child.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression, but you can make your own opportunities to score a strong last impression.
Skydiver Drops In
Posted on March 17, 2009 Written by 5 Comments
Marketing Guru Peter Shankman (Founder of HARO, @skydiver on Twitter) is coming to the Alabama PRSA on April 14th.
He’ll try as best he can to uphold the high standards set by March’s guest speaker; filmmaker, Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival founder, Workplay entrepreneur and original MTV jock Alan Hunter:
Stumbling out of the Gate
Posted on March 13, 2009 Written by 4 Comments
(This was written Friday morning, but didn’t post. I’ll let it stand.)
Michelle Obama’s much hyped first interview as First Lady aired on Good Morning America today.
Some may have fun with the slip of the tongue where she commented on the sheer volume of things that needed the President’s attention. “Some of it’ll work, and some of it will.” (Funny, and no I don’t think she’s being overly optimistic or cocky.)
The disturbing slip was one that her handlers should have caught. There’s no excuse for them not catching this in the prep.
{my paraphase, for lack of transcript} “Like most Americans, I was completely unaware of the hardships and sacrifices military families endure.”
Well, maybe “like most Americans in my upper-class Chicago neighborhood who may or may not have be reformed 60′s domestic terrorists.”
Then she compounds it with an observation about how few of us know how hard it is on young children who find themselves moving to different schools every year.
Mrs. Obama… really?
Actually, I don’t blame her one bit. It’s the first interview, and the assumption (correct) was that Robin Roberts would not be a hostile interview.
The next interview needs to be better prepared. Michelle, it’s time to sack your handlers. Every one of them. They failed you. Not once in any of the rehearsed questions did anyone point out how out-of-touch that sounded.
There are many of us (make that most) who went to school with self-described “Army Brats,” and we know people who’ve kept the family humming along despite the absence of a parent. Maybe you ought to reach out beyond the bubble and find some more representative sounding boards.
