Changing Industries

Businesses spend countless hours trying to figure out what their customers want. They conduct surveys and host focus groups to find out what their customers want. So when a company knows exactly what customers want, it would be logical for them to do something about it. Unless, of course, they aren’t paying attention.

Viacom is a great example of a company that isn’t paying too much attention right now. They have three or four dozen incredibly hot children’s television shows that ran on the Nickelodeon network from the late 80’s through the mid 90’s that were utterly fantastic and are in high demand among twenty-somethings.

Yes, you heard right. Twenty-somethings like me are interested in children’s shows. We grew up shows like Noozles, Are You Afraid of the Dark? and The Secret World of Alex Mack. Our quarterlife crises are making us nostalgic for our favorite childhood programming, and we’re pretty damn vocal about it.

For example, there is a 38,648 member group on Facebook dedicated solely to pestering Viacom to make these shows available to us in some form. There are countless online petitions, organized e-mailing, letter-writing and phone banking campaigns. People in their twenties are practically screaming for these great televisions shows to be resurrected from the Viacom vaults. We’re expressing this demand in our online communities.

We represent a target market with a lot of disposable income. We buy DVDs, and we also buy stuff we see advertised alongside content we consume. With all the competition for our eyeballs, you would think that a company that is sitting on these hot media properties would be eager to re-monetize them.

Unless, of course, they’re not paying attention.

I read today on Scobleizer about the new Blogger and Podcaster magazine.

You can subscribe to its twelve annual issues in one of three ways:

• Online with “magazine-esque” technology.
• Via Podcast
• In print

The print edition costs $79 per year, while the “magazine-esque” online version and podcast are free.

I think this is a bold move on the part of the publishers. A magazine for bloggers and podcasters is definitely an unfulfilled niche. The question is whether or not bloggers will pay attention to a news source that only updates once a month. Of course, the magazine also has its own blog.

The big upside I can see to this is that the magazine is available in print. Why is this an upside when so many paper and ink publications are struggling? Because we bloggy types spend all day every day staring at some varity of computer monitor. I, for one, love to read information on paper sometimes. It allows me to focus on one thing at a time. Sometimes I even use a pen and hi-lighter. You can’t do that with a computer unless you want to mess up your screen bigtime.

In an interview with blogger Joe Wikert, B&P publisher Larry Genkin answered some of those concerns:

Instead of “swimming upstream” we decided to make it easier to succeed by publishing the magazine in 3 formats: Print, Digital and Podcast. I believe we are the first in magazine history to do this (and another reason why my editorial team is about ready to string me up.) Each edition is different too. The digital edition uses cool software that gives our readers a magazine-esque feel with pages flipping on the screen and also allows us to embed audio and video into it to add to the experience beyond what you can get from the printed magazine. Then our podcast edition includes some of the actual interviews we conducted in writing our stories, to give subscribers even more detailed information from the industry experts we interviewed. In addition, we’ve also started a blog, written by our editors, so we can have a more regular and intimat? dialogue with our readers.

In time, I might sign up for the print edition, but for the time being I’m signed up for the online print version. I’m looking forward to seeing what this magazine has to offer. I have a funny feeling that I’ll be linking to some of their content sooner rather than later.

As a follow-up to our work with CEA in evaluating bloggers for the 2007 CES show, and in preparation for our 2008 CES blogger bash, we’ve launched an in-depth analysis of blog activity related to the January event.

Using a combination of several Web intelligence engines and human review of over 3,000 individual blog posts, we’ve captured the majority of blog posts made by those in attendance at CES. We’re starting to see clear patterns emerge.

One of the largest data sets we have on hand is extracted post subject lines. We’ve broken those subjects into individual words and have analyzed them for frequency. Below is a chart depicting the top 150 or so words in use–after assignment to companies best aligned with them. The iPod was the single most frequently mentioned product term. Vista, iPhone, and Xbox also were hot topics.

Note that PodTech’s Bloghaus sponsored by Seagate was in the top ten. Heads up that thanks to the data being munched and the services being tapped into, we’ll soon have a comprehensive set of interpreted CES blog-related info. We have a list of the hundreds of individual bloggers who attended CES, and are ranking them now based on influence. We’ve also begun the process to glean product and company mentions (and sentiment) within blog posts.

FYI that Monster Cable is just one of the client companies who have commissioned us to deliver to them the final report we’re preparing. If you are interested in receiving the report based on this data, contact Kim Larsen.

I’ve tried to stay on top of this recent “Wirged” memo fiasco, and have read most (but certainly not all) of the posts produced so far. I have to say I am somewhat disappointed by the one-dimensional commentary. All I seem to see are variations on “dossiers are anathema to transparent journalism!” (from the former baristas) and — since every PR old-timer now has a Typepad account — lots of “get real! We’ve used dossiers since I started spinning during the Eisenhower adminstration!”

The best analysis I’ve seen so far, and one that cuts to the heart of the issue is Jeremy Wagstaff’s post. Do yourself a favor, and leave this site now and read it. (Please come back.)

Wagstaff interprets several key passages in the memo, and comes up with five essential messages that Wagged appeared to be sending to their Microsoft masters:

1) “We wanted them (Wired) to write about Sandquist and they are.”

2) “We will be exerting influence over the writer as he writes.”

3) “We are exerting influence over the timing of the journalistic process.”

4) “We will exert influence over the journalist to ascertain the content of the article and (implicitly) seek to remove anything we don’t like.”

5) “We will use all tools in our kit including personal feelings and guilt to ensure the journalist writes what we want.”

In essence, Wagged appears to be telling their biggest client that they are TOTALLY on top of it and in control — they have Vogelstein corralled. The $300 plus dollars an hour they charge (per staff head in the meeting) are being well spent. Keep those checks coming.

Immediately Fred Vogelstein responds to Wagstaff in a comment and echoes what Chris Anderson has already posted (and other Wired staff have commented elsewhere) — that points one through five are a total fantasy. All from Wired make very persuasive cases IMHO.

Wagged immediately responds with the following brief podcast.

Hmmmmm. So far all that Frank Shaw has blogged (hey, aren’t there any other bloggers over there at Waggener Edstrom??) is some happy talk about how “we just want a super-great interview, and dossiers help us help the reporter!”

Hey, the big point here isn’t about whether dossiers are a good idea or not (I think they are) to me, it’s whether you’re feeding your client a bunch of hooey, or if Wired can be gamed by high-priced spin.

Which is it?

The Wall Street Journal article Ogilvy’s New Digital Chief Discusses Challenges features an overview of WPP Group’s Ogilvy North America take on the new advertising landscape and how traditional agencies are struggling with the new world of Web, mobile, search, and social media.

Ogilvy’s move is the latest sign that big traditional ad agencies, under pressure from clients, are trying to make Web-based and mobile advertising a stronger part of their day-to-day operations. But as advertisers are shifting more of their ad budgets into digital media, many are wrestling with a shortage of digitally experienced creative staffers at their ad agencies. The issue was highlighted by Nike’s recent decision to move part of its business away from its longtime ad partner Wieden + Kennedy because of dissatisfaction with the shop’s digital abilities.

Based on last week’s activities, I think you can add Waggener Edstrom to that list of old-world corporate agencies that are struggling to be a part of today’s game.

Dave of The U.S.S. Mariner wrote today about Seattle Times staff baseball columnist Steve Kelley’s seeming disdain for the blogosphere.

Kelley filed a column today that imagines how the stupid bloggers must be responding to Seattle’s 1-5 Cactus League record thus far. He must think that nobody but him understands how spring training is just to get the troops warmed up and ready for regular season play.

In response, Dave writes:

It’s okay, Steve. We’re not the enemy. We’re not even that different than you. We watch the games, we write about what we see, and we use the best knowledge we know how to evaluate what goes on in front of us. We even use full paragraphs from time to time.

The term blogger doesn’t mean irrational idiot any more than staff columnist does.

John Battelle linked today to Peter Norvig’s comparison study of Alexa vs. actual site statistics.

We all know that Alexa ranking is a fuzzy measure of a site’s actual traffic. It is extremely vulnerable to selection bias. But I contend that it’s still a useful tool.

When we were working to determine which bloggers should get press passes to CES, we looked at Alexa ranking as one of many factors to determine whether or not the blogger had a significant enough audience to qualify as “press.” When combined with a number of other qualitative and quantitative factors, Alexa rank can be a good indicator.

Norvig’s results should serve as a useful reminder that no one statistic or qualitative assessment — especially one that is susceptible to so much bias — should be used as the definitive indicator of a site’s merit.

Google’s recent struggles with CBS in getting video content online (WSJ, subscription required) illustrates just how far the traditional media still has to go in ending its resistence to change.

Everyone knows that the emergence and continue growth of the Web has broad, sweeping implications for copyright holders. From Napster to Google’s YouTube, copying protected content has never been easier. But the media companies haven’t been willing to step up to the plate and deal with the most effective and popular online distribution platforms.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal “he was sure Google ‘will eventually do some very significant deals’ with TV companies, but suggested that none were imminent. ‘I’m not in a great hurry on this issue. It’s more important to get it right.’”

I’m not so sure that Schmidt would be taking the same conservative stance if the media companies were ready to stop dragging their feet. They have to be aware that long-term, there’s absolutely nothing the media industry can do to stop people from using the Web to share their content.

Yes, they can sue and stifle innovation in online media distribution technologies. They can tie things up for years in the courts, slowing progress in the process.

And even if they were able to come up with a foolproof DRM software that would prevent unauthorized online sharing, it would be to their own detrmient. People are getting used to watching content how they want it and when they want it. That’s only going to become more the case. And no matter how compelling their storytelling, their media offerings will increase in irrelevancy unless they face those facts.

This is the same basic fear we’re seeing with public relations/brand management and the blogosphere, althought we’re heartened to see that businesses seem to be getting over that fear in recent months. I hope that the media industry is soon to follow.

The Wall Street Journal’s Informed Reader column reports today that Hollywood studios are enlisting bloggers to talk up nominated movies, which is “Ruffling Feathers in (the) Hollywood Hierarchy.”

As we saw with electronics firms at CES this year, the article reports that:

Movie studios have embraced bloggers as a cost-effective route for launching all-important Oscar campaigns. Studios frequently give a handful of high-profile Web sites a first look at trailers or rough cuts of movies. The new dynamic has ruffled some feathers in Hollywood, where for years studios focused their outreach on trade publications and other mainstream media.

I’ve been spending some time lately researching the brand monitoring space. A portion of the various vendors of these services (Biz360, Brandimensions, Cymfony, Factiva, MotiveQuest, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, and Umbria) have approached us to ask about potential conference sponsorships over the years, and a few have presented at one or more Blog Business Summits.

I read that Peter Kim of Forrester had conducted in-depth evaluations in Q3 2006 of the main players in this space, and also “conducted client reference interviews with 17 user companies, including ABC, Activision, BP, Citigroup, CNN, DaimlerChrysler, Fleishman-Hillard, Hewlett-Packard, Nike, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Toyota, VeriSign, Verizon, and Xerox.”

The result is a PDF file available for $995.00 here, or for free(!) here.

After reading the report, I still had a few questions, so I called Peter Kim up and grilled him. He was very patient with my ignorance, and very generous with his time. Here is the short synopsis of what I concluded from the call:

To get an analysis across all major media (Web, Television, Print) that reveals what is being said (and how often) about you or your products — you’re talking a price tag of around $75,000.00. The alternative is do it yourself ad hoc (Google searches, Technorati, etc.) for “free.” Of course “free” means a ton of staff/your time.

How much of this stuff is algorithmic? It varies, but non-trivial human involvement is essential for all of the profiled services. At least one company (Brandimensions) employs an army of 400 part-time humans to manually catalog and tag news etc.

Another interesting note is that the market for these services appears to be booming. Kim said that many of the services were growing their client lists at a rapid clip, and based on the recent coverage of VC funding for buzz monitoring firms, there seems to be no lack of investor enthusiasm.

It’s been announced that business communications Goliath Ogilvy has partnered with Technorati to provide clients with, “engage in online conversations and build relationships with online communities relevant to their brands.”

Sounds like competition to me…
In all seriousness, it’s cool that Ogilvy is doing this. And I’m really curious as to how they’ll leverage Technorati’s ever-growing database of syndicated content to add value for their clients. I wonder how they’ll parse and make sense of it all. There’s a lot of data out there to assimilate and synthesize. And then managing the outreach is quite a feat.

We’re playing now with some new tools in that arena right now, so my brain is definitely in the monitoring/engaging space.

—
Many thanks to Blog Business Summit speaker and all around kick ass guy Kevin O’Keefe.

Today, I got a boilerplate comment on my personal blog from a person who was trying to correct some “misinformation” about her company’s product that was being spread via the blogosphere. (To read the whole troubled tale of woe, check out my personal blog.)

The problem: my blog post was more about my reaction to a larger issue brought up by the product than it was about the product itself. She didn’t respond to any of my thoughts, she just did a boilerplate hit-and-run on my blog and left. She didn’t even bother to identify herself.

The whole thing got me thinking a bit about best practices for commenting on someone’s blog on behalf of an organization. This is what I would have recommended she do differently.

• Identify yourself. You don’t HAVE to leave your full name, but at the very least, leave your first name.
• Address the blogger by name. Even if most of your comment is a boilerplate statement, show some courtesy by attempting to discover the blogger’s name (or handle) and using it when addressing him or her.
• Respond to the specifics of the blog post. Even if you’re responding with talking points, tailor your response to issues raised in the specific blog post instead of just posting a general blob of information.
• Acknowledge feelings, opinions and concerns. If the blogger is pissed off about something (whether or not you think she has a right to be) try to acknowledge the validity of the opinion/emotion/concern. Even if you disagree, try empathizing. It helps to diffuse anger and promote a spirit of reconciliation.

I’m sure that these are pretty common knowledge to many of you, but they bear repeating as long as there are people out there who do social media outreach the wrong way.

I read Chris Pirillo’s recent post about the trouble he’s been having with canceling his Comcast service and remembered Andy’s post about the exact same problem a few months back and our commenter Thomas who said the same thing happened to him.

I remember the big blowup over the guy who recorded his frustrating attempt to cancel his AOL service and the ensuing changes at America Online. I wonder what it will take for Comcast to have a similar wake-up call.

I found Dave Winer’s post about the end of information embargoes via Robert Scoble’s blog and I think both of them have excellent points.

As we all know, information has a way of slipping out onto the Web before companies are ready to announce it publicly. That’s only going to increase, unless of course blogging peaks in 2007 and goes downhill from there. You simply can’t keep an announcement bottled up until a press conference like you used to.

Unless of course, you’re Steve Jobs. Robert Scoble points out that Jobs’ system of “shock and awe” is envied throughout the public relations sphere. There is an ingrained sense of command and control, he argues, and that’s not going away anytime soon.

I’m not ready to draw too many conclusions yet. But I’ve had enough experiences with the world of public relations to know that command and control isn’t going anywhere just yet.

BTW, I was fortunate enough to meet Dave Winer at Chris and Ponzi’s wedding. I got a little weak in the knees when I found out who he was. I hope he was amused, rather than irritated, by my starstruck-ness.

Jeremiah Owyang (newly of PodTech) e-mailed me today and made me aware of this e-mail he had received.

Edelman, which was recently embroiled in a blogosphere scandal, set up a pro Wal-Mart organization Working Families for Wal-Mart. The organization’s website uses blogging architecture. It was recently revealed that all the content on that site is written by Edelman staffers.

Edelman covered a lot of their bases, but it looks like they forgot a crucial step: reserving the domain most closely associated with their organization. Now the anti Wal-Mart group Wal-Mart Watch has regitered the domain workingfamiliesforwalmart.com and has set up a spoof website there.

There’s a stereotype in the blogosphere that whenever people sit around getting great ideas, the first person to register the domain wins. The same is true here. Anytime you’re doing anything on the Web, it’s a good idea to register any and all domains that are even closely related to the project you’re working on.

Technorati Tags: edelman, wal_mart, working_families_for_wal_mart, jeremiah_owyang

Since we launched our first blogger gathering back in 2004, we’ve not only had to assess blogger influence metrics for our own events, but for several other companies as well. We recently began assisting the Consumer Electronics Association in their efforts to insure that the best aligned bloggers get in as “press” to their January 2007 CES expo in Las Vegas.

While there is no “blogger” checkbox in the 2007 CES application form, bloggers who apply as press and supply appropriate permalinks to “articles” are being routed to us for evaluation. While it’s still early in the process, we’ve processed several dozen blogger requests and are pleased to report that CEA is very happy with the results of our research.

We know from our conferences and consulting that PR firms worldwide are working hard to cultivate and prioritize bloggers for their clients, so let me share the approach we are taking.

In a nutshell, we are looking for individuals that a typical CES exhibitor would want to have come to their booth. The ultimate blog(ger) would have the following attributes:

a) Lots of eyeballs: A highly trafficked blog

b) Lots of influence: Inbound links, bookmarks, and subscribers aplenty

c) Lots of posts: 1 or more posts daily over a significant period

d) A “real” blog: RSS feeds, Permalinks, compliant code, etc.

e) Highly topical content: a blog or writer who mostly/exclusively writes about the kind of products being displayed at CES.

f) Other intangible assets: Passion and/or significant expertise etc.

Luckily we have automated most of the data gathering required to capture and analyze the two dozen plus metrics that give us the full picture of a blog(ger.)

Consider Engadget or Gizmodo. They have all 6 attributes. Most “A listers” have 3 or 4 (what they lack in topicality, they make up for it in other areas.) Notice how a passionate, knowledgeable newbie will be accepted — we’ve approved promising bloggers with a PageRank of zero and a non-existent Alexa ranking.

After hosting our own events and discussing “influence” metrics at length with Robert Scoble, Mary Hodder, Jeremy Pepper and many other gurus, we’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t afford to ignore those up-and coming “A”, “B”, or even “C” listers. Topicality and passion are critical and can transcend page views. Many PR firms don’t understand this yet.

More detail on this subject to come. If you are a blogger who is headed to CES, please let us know, as we plan to host a party for bloggers at the show. Just email steve AT blogbusinesssummit DOT com. We’ll be mailing all of our conference speakers and attendees as soon as we have booked the venue.

Technorati Tags: CES, consumer electronics show, Jeremy Pepper, PR, Jeremy Pepper, Robert Scoble, Mary Hodder, vegas

I’ve argued to both Jeff Jarvis and Jason Calacanis that there’s room to establish best practices when it comes to commercializing social media. Today, Jeff argued that, no matter how well-intentioned, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s guidelines for marketing disclosure in social media are based on the “science of manipulation.”

In a perfect world, he’d be right. But we live in an imperfect world. In an imperfect world you can’t create a new, global publishing medium and expect that businesses aren’t going to try to leverage its inherent strengths for direct benefit.

Going by WOMMA’s very well thought-out guidelines when leveraging social media for commercial purposes is a near-optimal solution for an imperfect world.

Just a quick link this morning to a post by Jeff Jarvis in which he chronicles the influences that have changed the media landscape over the past 10-15 years and the ways that Public Relations have had to change with it. I’m curious to hear what Weber Shandwick’s Jeremy Pepper might say in response.

There are two very notable bits of blogospheria surfacing from the aftermath of the Wal-Mart/Edelman “fake blog” scandal. Both can be found in the comments on Steve Rubel’s post about the snafu.

1. The call to make Steve Rubel Edelman’s blogosphere ombudsman… Rubel is taking quite a beating for his lack of immediate response to the controversy. Several of his readers have put forth the idea of making him Edelman’s blogosphere ombudsman. I think it’s a fantastic idea that would make him Edelman’s equivalent of Scoble.
2. When you want to apologize to the blogosphere, call Robert Scoble… I find it remarkable that when businesses want to get the blogosphere’s attention to manage a crisis, they call Robert. I think that really says something about the respect he commands in this space. Robert seems satisfied with the mea culpas of Richard Edelman and Steve Rubel. The rest of the blogosphere will likely follow.

And of course, I wouldn’t be any kind of a self-promoter if I didn’t at least mention that Robert will be speaking at our conference next week.