Communications

Weighing the Odds on Marketing Predictions for 2013

Phillip Nones Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

MarComm Crystal Ball Predictions for 2013One thing each New Year invariably brings is a passel of marketing and communications forecasts for the upcoming year.

And 2013 is no exception. I’ve seen more than 25 articles in the business press over the past several weeks that take a stab at predicting the future – and that’s without even looking to find them.

With each prediction list containing anywhere from 5 to 25 items, there’s a lot to consider – and also a good deal of overlap. The big question is, how many of these predictions will turn out to be accurate, as opposed to wishful thinking?

I thought I’d highlight some of the more interesting forecasts and list them here  — along with my odds on the likelihood they will come true.  So here goes … see what you think:

2013 MarComm Predictions from the Experts

Responsive design” and its ability to detect devices and deliver a satisfying viewer experience will take center stage in 2013 now that smartphone sales have overtaken PCs and more e-mails than ever are being read on mobile devices.
(Michael Della Penna, Responsys)
Chance of happening (my odds): 100%.

Special characters in e-mail subject lines are here to stay.
(Chad White, MediaPost E-Mail Insider)
Chance of happening: 100% (unfortunately).

Twitter will start personalizing Twitter feeds in 2013, based on an algorithm consisting of influence, engagement, alignment, gravity, and subscriber interests.
(Rich Brooks, Flyte New Media)
Chance of happening: 90%.

Google+ will become a “must use” service not because of its social elements, but because it will be the central hub for managing a company’s “official” online public presence in the eyes of Google.
(Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends)
Chance of happening: 80%.

Mobile transactions and payments will become huge – the biggest “disruption” in local search – and making it much easier to close the research-online/buy-offline loop and calculating actual ROI on specific marketing campaigns.
(David Mihm, SEOmoz)
Chance of happening: 70%.

After struggling for years to gain adoption, the QR Code will die – a good concept done in by its clunky interface and application.
(Peter Platt, iMedia Connection)
Chance of happening: 70%.

Triggered e-mails will give sophisticated marketers a sustainable competitive edge over other markers.
(Chad White, MediaPost E-Mail Insider)
Chance of happening: 60%.

More industries such as the financial, legal, accounting and medical fields will get serious about social media in 2013 as clarity about potential regulatory issues is established.
(Stephanie Sammons, Wired Advisor)
Chance of happening: 60%.

2013 will be the year of visual marketing. Video in e-mail will finally take off, thanks to HTML5 video capabilities.
(Ekaterina Walter, Intel)
Chance of happening: 60%.

2013 will be the “year of the invisible computer,” finally fulfilling writer Donald Norman’s prophecy made back in 1999 wherein people don’t focus on the technology at all, but on what information and services the technology can deliver.
(Peter Platt, iMedia Connection)
Chance of happening: 50%.

Marketers will use fewer social sites in 2013, preferring to have a solid presence in one or two channels rather than to try to dominate in every single platform.
(Ed Gandia, International Freelancers Academy)
Chance of happening: 50%.

Apple will launch iRadio, taking on Pandora in Internet radio and integrating into the iTunes iOS app.
(Richard Greenfield, BTIG)
Chance of happening: 50%.

2013 will not be the “year of the [fill in the blank],” but will build on the digital accomplishments of the past.
(Peter Platt, iMedia Connection)
Chance of happening: 40%.

By the end of the year, one in three paid clicks will come from a tablet or smartphone as the “living room on the go” enables seamless content portability for consumers.
(Sid Shah, Adobe)
Chance of happening: 30%.

SlideShare will be the fastest growing social network in 2013.
(Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute)
Chance of happening: 20%.

The number of podcasters will double in 2013, tapping into 1 billion smartphone users and their desire for accessing quality, on-demand talk.
(Michael Stelzner, Social Media Examiner)
Chance of happening: 20%.

Voice assistants will become the rule than the exception, in response to consumers’ increasing expectations for immediate and customized support in all forms of outreach.
(Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys)
Chance of happening: 20%.

The age of the PC is over in 2013, as a true “pivot point” is reached due to the penetration of smartphones and tablets.
(Will Margiloff, IgnitionOne)
Chance of happening: 20%.

2013 will be the year marketers stop using the term “social media” when referring to campaigns … and Facebook will “own” mobile advertising.
(Peter Shankman, Geek Factory founder)
Chance of happening: 10%.

Marketing budgets will now be established based on outcomes, not history, eclipsing the traditional dynamic of building budgets based on “last year” figures.
(David Cooperstein, Forrester Research)
Chance of happening: 10%.

2013 will bring the death of static web pages.
(Raj de Datta, BloomReach)
Chance of happening: Nil.

So, what do you think of these fearless predictions? Which ones are most likely to come true?  Would you place different odds on some of them? Feel free to share your observations with the other readers.

The Confluence of “Mature Marketing” and B-to-B MarComm

Phillip Nones Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Conference attendees, mature marketing and B-to-B buyersIn recent years, a seemingly endless stream MarComm literature has been published focusing on how to communicate effectively with different target groups. 

Whether it’s seniors … baby boomers … Gen-X or Gen-Yers … minority populations … B-to-B or technical audiences, marketers have all sorts of helpful advice coming in from all sides.

The more I’ve been reading this material, the more I’m seeing confluence rather than divergence. 

For example, there’s a high degree of commonality between marketing to “mature” consumers and B-to-B audiences.  The overlap is huge, actually.

Consider these aspects of crafting strong MarComm messages that make good sense for both B-to-B and mature audiences:

  • Sticking to the facts about products or services.  Both audiences tend to make judgments and decisions based on “information and intelligence” rather than “emotions or peer pressure.”
  • Providing lots of content.  “More is more” with these audiences, which tend to be far more voracious in their reading habits and appreciate the availability of copious information.
  • Avoiding “hype” in MarComm messages.  These audiences have “seen it all” and aren’t easily bamboozled.
  • Avoiding “talking down” to these audiences.  They are experienced people (and experience is the best educator); they have good instincts, too.
  • Designing communications so that these audiences will stick around and absorb what marketers have to say.  This means avoiding small type, garish colors and gratuitous design elements … not to mention the slow-loading graphics or animated visual hi-jinks that pepper too many websites.

None of this is to contend that emotions don’t play a role in driving purchase decisions.  But the reasoning processes that mature audiences and B-to-B buyers use to filter and evaluate MarComm messages are far more consequential than any “creative” aspects of the message platform could possibly deliver.

It would be nice if more marketers would remember this when crafting campaigns that target the “thinking” audiences out there.

Persistent Myth: The Ten Most Persuasive Words in the English Language

Phillip Nones Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

Advertising word cloud - persuadable wordsIt’s something many of us in MarComm have heard about and read about for years now: Which words are the most persuasive ones in the English language?

In fact, it’s been the topic of entire news articles since the 1960s.

The words in question sound just about as relevant today as they must have back when the first “definitive” list was published:

  • Discover
  • Easy
  • Guarantee
  • Health
  • Love
  • Money
  • New
  • Proven
  • Results
  • You

It’s a solid list … and it certainly seems like these words would be among the most persuasive ones in our language.

It’s also plausible that some sort of formal “research” would have been conducted to come up with the list in the first place.

But that doesn’t appear to be the case at all.  In fact, it seems more likely that the list was dreamed up on the back of a napkin by an advertising copywriter looking for an interesting new copy “angle.”

Allegedly, the first appearance of the English language’s  most persuasive words was in a trade publication called “Marketing Magazine.” But no evidence exists that such a publication ever really existed.

Instead, it appears that several businesses decided to publish a list of persuasive words as a way of promoting their own products and services.  Attributing the list of words to a third-party (fictitious) publication with an authentic-sounding name gave their promotional messages an added flavor of credibility.

The list appeared first in a New York Times advertisement in 1961, and it was picked up several months later for an ad run in the Washington Post by Levitt & Sons, a real estate developer (of Levittown fame) that was promoting its new Maryland-based Belair at Bowie development at the time.

Both ads touted the elusive “Marketing Magazine” as the source for the list of most persuadable words.

And then the group of words began to morph, as “lists” of this kind are wont to do. More “experts” got into the game … more words were switched out or added … and more sources were cited as being the wellspring of the research: Duke University; the University of California; Yale University’s Psychology Department (!).

But who really cares about the provenance of the list? As it turns out, these “persuade” terms are among the most popular ones that advertising copywriters have used for years.  And for the most part, the terms retain their power to persuade, 50 years on.

For the record, other words that have made it onto the list at various times include:

  • Amazing
  • Announcing
  • Bargain
  • Compare
  • Easy
  • Free
  • Happiness
  • Hurry
  • Improvement
  • Introducing
  • Miraculous
  • Now
  • Offer
  • Quick
  • Remarkable
  • Revolutionary
  • Safety
  • Sensational
  • Suddenly

Regardless of which words actually belong on a “Top Ten” list as opposed to being the runners-up, there’s one thing you can say about all of them: They’re oldies but goodies. 

And this, too:  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.  (The more things change, the more they stay the same.)

Radio audiences: “Stickier” than you might think.

Phillip Nones Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,

Radio audiences: Stickier than you might realize.It’s a pretty common belief that when commercial breaks come on the radio, the audience scatters to the four winds.

And that view isn’t just held by laymen … those in the broadcast industry itself tend to believe that.

A study conducted by Arbitron, Media Monitors and Coleman Insights, released about six months ago, discovered that ad agency personnel believe that the typical radio audience is one-third lower during commercial breaks than during the lead-in.

Among radio industry personnel, those feelings are only slightlycloser to reality; they believe that the radio audience is about one-fourth lower during commercial breaks than during the lead-in.

In fact, a parallel study conducted by the same researchers found that these industry perceptions are way wide of the mark. Their evaluation, which covered nearly 18 million commercial breaks and ~62 million minutes of ads airing over a 12-month span on ~865 radio stations, revealed these interesting findings:

  • The average radio station aired 2.6 commercial breaks comprising nearly 9.0 minutes of advertising per hour.
  • The average break was ~3.5 minutes in duration.
  • On average, more than 93% of the lead-in audience stuck with the station during commercial breaks.
  • Longer spot breaks (4 to 6 minutes) still delivered ~90% of the lead-in radio audience.

These figures are significantly higher than the perception of industry observers. But one perception did turn out to comport with reality – the fact that older radio listeners are more apt to stay listening through the commercials than are younger listeners (~98% versus ~90%).

The study also determined that listening behaviors don’t differ at all between the different seasons of the year. But the audience for music stations is somewhat more prone to “wander off the reservation” compared to listeners of radio stations with spoken-word formats:  Fully 99% of the news-format radio audience stays on the station during commercials, while only ~88% of music format station listeners have the patience to stick around through the advertising.

The bottom line on the study’s findings is that radio is delivering audiences for commercials at levels that far exceed advertisers’ expectations.

So, the radio industry’s job is two-fold: Change the erroneous perceptions about audience levels … and also convince advertisers that the audience is actually listening and learning during the advertising breaks, not tuning out.　

This last bit may well be a lot harder to accomplish!

You can read more findings from the radio audience research here.

When it comes to advertising … the Super Bowl is supreme.

Phillip Nones Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,

Super Bowl XLVISuper Bowl ad placements have the reputation of being the most pricey ones on television. And based on an analysis by Kantar Media of Super Bowl ad activity over the past decade, that perception is quite accurate.

According to Kantar’s analysis, over the last ten years the Super Bowl game has generated more than $1.7 billion in network ad sales from more than ~125 companies.

Just five Super Bowl advertisers account for more than one-third of the activity, led by – no surprise here – Anheuser-Busch:

Anheuser-Busch: 10-year advertiser … ~$239 million
 PepsiCo: 10 years … ~$174 million
 General Motors: 8 years … ~$83 million
 Disney: 10 years … ~$74 million
 Coca Cola: 5 years … ~$67 million

It doesn’t seem that long ago when the rule of thumb was that a 30-second ad for the Super Bowl game would set you back one million dollars.

That’s not the case any longer. In fact, the average rate for a :30 ad increased by ~40% over the past decade, reaching $3.1 million in 2011.

[And for 2012, the ad rate is expected to be even higher at $3.5 to $4 million per spot — a double-digit increase.]

At such stratospheric prices, you’d expect only a handful of ads to be longer than 30 seconds. That’s true to a degree; only about one in five of the Super Bowl ads are :60 spots. But compare that to just ~6% of ads on broadcast networks being long-form.

And if it seems as if you’re seeing more advertising during the Super Bowl game than in years past … you’re not hallucinating. Back in 2006, the volume of commercial time for ads during the game was ~44 minutes. That rose to ~46 minutes as of 2011, and will probably continue to creep upward in 2012 and beyond.

Most Super Bowl advertisers are big consumer brands. But Kantar also finds that nearly one-third of Super Bowl advertisers allocate more than 10% of their annual media budgets into the game. Clearly, it’s not only the big Hollywood film studios, car companies or food brands that are shelling out the bucks for the Super Bowl.

Kantar Media also compared advertising volume for the Big Game against the dollar volume of ads placed during other major televised sports events, such as the Baseball World Series and the NCAA Final Four Mens Basketball. In nearly every year, the one-day Super Bowl out-pulled these multi-day sporting events when it comes to raking in the ad dollars.

To sum things up, even in the world of advertising where the only constant is change … some things don’t change all that much.

The Google+ Social Network: Net Plus or Net Minus?

Phillip Nones Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Google Plus, Google+What’s the latest with Google+? The big splash predicted when the new social platform hit the web has been more of a ripple instead.

Underscoring this, recent news reports have suggested that Google basically missed the boat on social media … and that rival Facebook is far too well-established to face anything more than just token competition going forward.

It’s true that many people find the prospects of building and engaging in yet another social media channel a wearying thought, to say the least. There are, after all, only so many hours in the day.

But Google doesn’t want to cede the social media marketplace to Facebook without a fight. That’s understandable, considering the billions of dollars in potential advertising revenues that come from being able to serve ad messages to people who are connected to others who “like” a product or service.

The results charted to date on Facebook confirm that displaying friend “likes” adds an extra measure of credibility to advertising. That’s manifested in a clickthrough rate that’s three times what’s typical for other advertisements on the social platform.

The launch of Google+ this past summer hasn’t resulted in huge user adoption, that much is clear. The Google+ social platform has managed to nab ~40 million users, which isn’t a shabby number in and of itself. But it pales in comparison to the more than 800 million active users on Facebook.

But despite this less-than-stellar performance, we see clues as to where Google is going with its social platform. That’s because Google’s equivalent of the “like” button – the “+1” notation that shows up on Google’s search engine results pages – goes further than simply communicating the news to those in someone’s own Google+ network. Google is also mapping that information through to its Gmail account base.

Google’s Gmail service has hundreds of millions of users, and those who use the site regularly have accumulated dozens or hundreds of contacts. So when a user clicks +1, Google can show that result not just to the user’s social friends on Google+, but also to his or her contacts in Gmail.

[For those who cry “foul” on privacy grounds, Google maintains that clicking the “+1” button is a public action and therefore not subject to privacy considerations.]

The jury’s still out on what the social map will look like in a couple years. There’s little doubt Facebook will still be the biggest guy on the block. The question is, to what extent will Google have taken the 600 pound gorilla down a notch? Stay tuned …

Are Mobile Communications Taking Over the World?

Phillip Nones Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,

Mobile communications taking over the worldHow hot is mobile communications these days? Extremely, according to Internet marketing über-specialist Aaron Goldman, who recently cited a number of information factoids to back up his contention:

 There will be ~5 billion mobile devices in use by 2012. That’s the equivalent of ~70% of the world’s entire population.

 Penetration of smartphones has now reached ~38% in the United States … and higher in Europe and Asia.

 The average smartphone user in the U.S. and U.K. has 23 mobile apps on his or her phone. (In Japan, it’s even higher at 45 apps.)

 Four out of five smartphone users use their phone to shop or research purchases while they’re in the store.

 Even more interestingly, ~43% of mobile Internet usage actually happens at home. Evidently, the desktop being mere steps away isn’t as convenient as whipping out the phone to get the needed information..

 Mobile makes up ~20% of all searches on Yahoo, which translates into ~528 million Yahoo searches on mobile devices every month. (Google isn’t far behind, with ~15% of its searches on mobile.)

 Mobile is clearly making strides in the local market; just under 30% of all mobile search queries are ones with “local intent.” For desktops and laptop PCs, only about half of that proportion are “local.”

And Goldman has another interesting stat to share: Nearly 40% of smartphone users access the Internet while using the lavatory.

Now, when Internet surfing takes over from bathroom reading … that’s proof above all else that mobile has definitely arrived!

The Twitter Machine: Keeping Hype Alive

Phillip Nones Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Americans' Twitter usage isn't getting anywhere near Facebook'sI’ve blogged before about Twitter’s seeming inability to break out of its “niche” position in communications. We now have enough time under our belt with Twitter to begin to draw some conclusions rather than simply engage in speculation.

Endlessly hyped (although sometimes correctly labeled as a revolutionary communications tool – see the North African freedom movements) the fact is that Twitter hasn’t been adopted by the masses like we’ve witnessed with Facebook.

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project estimates that fewer than 10% of American adults who are online are Twitter users. That equates to about 15 million Americans, which is vastly lower than Twitter’s own claims of ~65 million users.

But whether you choose to believe the 15 million or the 65 million figure, it’s a far cry from the 150+ million Americans who are on Facebook – which represents about half of the entire American population.

You can find a big reason for Pew’s discrepancy by snooping around on Twitter a bit. It won’t take you long to find countless Twitter accounts that are bereft of any tweet activity at all. People may have set their acount up at one time, but long ago lost interest in using the platform – if indeed they ever had any real Twitter zeal beyond “follow-the-leader.” (“Everybody’s going on Twitter … shouldn’t I sign up, too?”)

This is the purest essence of hype: generating a flurry of interest that quickly dissipates as the true value (or lack thereof) is discerned by users.

Of course, Twitter does have its place. Some brands find the platform to be a good venue for announcing new products and sales deals. And it doesn’t take long for the best of those deals promoted on Twitter to leech their way into the rest of the online world.

Other companies – although far fewer – are using Twitter as a kind of customer service discussion board.

And as we all know, celebrities l-o-v-e their Twitter accounts. What a great, easy way to generate an endless stream of sound-bite information about their favorite topic: themselves.

Analyses of active Twitter accounts have shown that a sizable chunk of the activity is made up of media properties and brands tweeting each other … a lot of inside-the-park baseball.

What’s missing from the equation is the level of “real people” engagement one can find on Facebook in abundance … and maybe soon on Google+ as well. That’s real social interaction – in spades.

Actually, you mightn’t be too far off the mark if you deduced that Twitter is the digital equivalent of a bunch of industry insiders at a cocktail party … saying little of real importance while trying to appear “impressive” and “hip” at the same time.

But who’s being fooled by that?

Blockbuster lives! (But for how long?)

Phillip Nones Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Blockbuster logoI blogged recently about the financial travails of Blockbuster and its pending sale … indeed, whether the brand would survive or be liquidated instead.

Wednesday evening’s auction was the scene of some drama as various groups contended with each other for the right to purchase this white elephant. As the evening wore on, Dish Network was vying with Monarch Alternative Capital for placing the high bid.

It was a true battle between old and new forces … with Dish Network seeing Blockbuster as a conduit for augmenting its suite of services, and Monarch looking only to liquidate Blockbuster’s substantial real estate holdings while shuttering the enterprise for good.

When the dust finally settled, Dish Network was the victor, agreeing to pay ~$228 million in cash at closing, which is expected to occur within the next few months. In total, the deal came in at ~$320 million, which tracks with the current value of Blockbuster’s assets.

What in tarnation is Dish Network thinking of doing with Blockbuster? It turns out that the company is hoping to use at least some of Blockbuster’s ~1,700 store outlets to facilitate cross-marketing of its satellite programming and related video services.

The industry is already abuzz with what this really means. Is the Blockbuster acquisition by Dish Network a master-stroke … or a big blunder?

Dish Network looks like it will attempt to keep Blockbuster afloat by having it provide free or discounted rentals as a value-add to Dish’s pay TV subscribers. But industry watchers are also looking at potential online opportunities which could turn out to be more lucrative, since Blockbuster holds streaming rights to various video titles that Dish can use to expand its existing streaming offerings. It could also roll Blockbuster licenses into a Dish-branded online video-on-demand service offering.

In a likely related move, Dish Network has also acquired the assets of financially troubled satellite operator DBSD North America. That purchase provided access to a broadband spectrum that Dish can now use to roll out wireless networks for voice or data communications. This way, it wouldn’t need to rely on the broadband networks of other Internet service providers to stream the content to its satellite TV customers.

But with the pace of change and the fickleness of customers, any effort to bring synergy to these new acquisitions must happen very quickly. Dish Network doesn’t have the luxury of time to make things work; it’s got to happen in weeks and months rather than years.

So the coming months will be interesting in seeing how the Dish/Blockbuster union pans out. One thing is certain: Blockbuster won’t end up looking anything like it does today. But on the bright side, the brand won’t be thrown into the dustbin of corporate history – at least not yet.

And that probably surprises more than a few industry observers – the ones who have been loudly predicting the death of this iconic brand for months or years now.

A Green Fog

Phillip Nones Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Green marketing hypeI’ve blogged before about evolving consumer attitudes on “green” products, and the telltale signs that “green fatigue” may be setting in with at least some people.

And now we have survey results that lend additional support to this observation. Harris Interactive conducted an online survey of ~2,350 U.S. adults in November, 2010 – one which is done annually by the polling firm. A comparison between the 2010 and 2009 survey results suggests that fewer Americans are engaging in various green behaviors in their daily lives.

While the year-on-year differences may be slight, the overall trend in participation is down. To illustrate, here are the comparative percentages of respondents who report that they “always” or “often” engage in certain “green” activities:

 Turning off lights when leaving a room: 81% (versus 83% in 2009)
 Making an effort to use less water: 57% (vs. 60%)
 Purchasing locally grown produce: 33% (vs. 39%)
 Purchasing locally manufactured products: 23% (vs. 26%)

Are there any areas where the trend is up rather than down? Actually, no. But Harris did find one area of stability: The same percentage of respondents in both years reported “always” or “often” engaging in recycling activities (68%).

What about other environmental activities? Again, the trend lines aren’t going in green’s favor:

 Purchased energy-efficient appliances (e.g., Energy Star): 30% (versus 36% in 2009)
 Donated or recycled electronic devices or parts: 32% (vs. 41%)
 Switched from bottled water to filtered tap water: 23% (vs. 29%)
 Purchased a more fuel-efficient car or hybrid vehicle: 8% (vs. 13%)

In fact, only one of the nearly 20 activities that were surveyed by Harris showed a positive “green” trend for 2010 versus the year prior — and that was switching to paperless statements for personal financial accounts.

Big whoop.

In trying to understand what is causing the change in behavior, it’s too simplistic to cite the economic recession. After all, 2010 was a less challenging year on that front compared to 2009, when the economy was really in the dumper.

For clues, we might turn to several other consumer research studies. The 2010 Green Gauge® Study conducted by GfK Roper gives us some possible reasons. That study concluded that there’s a sense of “green fatigue” among U.S. consumers. Clear majorities believe that green products are “too expensive” … while one–third of the people surveyed believe that green products “don’t work as well” as the alternatives.

But a more startling statistic from the GfK Roper study is that nearly 40% of the people surveyed feel that “green products aren’t really better for the environment.”

That shows a pretty skeptical public! And what about the issue of truth in advertising? The newest Green Gap Trend Tracker survey from Cone, just released this month, found that well over half of the ~1,035 adults surveyed do not trust the “green” claims made by products and brands.

Interestingly, even with so much of the consumer participation trending down rather than up, these surveys also found that more people today actually consider themselves to be environmentalists or green/environmentally aware.

So, consumers see themselves as green-friendly … but it’s all in how someone defines the term. As it turns out, it’s a murky definition that has people all over the map when it comes to the actual behavior.