This blog is supposed to be mostly about media and media consumption. So, on its surface, it seems a bit off topic to be taking exception to people like Faith Popcorn and her opinions about consumer purchase habits. But I think there is a connection to be made between opinions on the consumer’s buying habits and the consumer’s media consumption habits.

First, let’s start with Popcorn’s assessment in a recent article from Women’s Wear Daily where she asserts that frugality in shoppers is here to stay:” [Popcorn's] view that the economy won’t be returning to its previous levels anytime soon. ‘It’s not going to happen. Not ever. It’s permanent and we’re getting used to it ‘. . .”

Now, it’s very trendy to say that the consumer has changed, and changed permanently. It seems really smart to say that the austerity that we have seen over the past year and half due to the Great Recession is a permanent and everlasting. But it’s also b.s. in my humble opinion.

Image Link

The fact is the consumer is not stupid. When times get tough, they know they have to pull back and change some habits. But when the economy comes back, so will the debt-driven buying. People are not dumb, but they also have short memories. I agree more with Craig Leavitt in the same article that quotes Popcorn: “I don’t think there is a new consumer . . . Some of the habits are a bit exaggerated now. She’s more careful and probably spending a little less. But as long as you continue to excite the customer, she’s still happy to buy. She was more open before, but it’s a requirement now to get her excited about what she’s buying.”

The consumer is simply altering the way they have always consumed. People have not stopped consuming, they have just become more careful in how much they pay for certain items or where they buy them. But it is human nature that when things get better, and people are more optimistic, they will go back to bad habits. So, for anyone to say that changes in the way people consume are permanently altered is just silly.

What they have done is taken advantage of choice. When times get tough, they have many, many more places to shop, to find information, and to purchase now than they ever did before. The economy is on the rise, not on the decline - no matter how small the percentage may be. But this time around, when things got tough, the consumer had lots of other places to go - including the web, Wal-Mart, and Craigslist.

What has changed is the environment - the marketplace. New players have entered, old players have died. And as technology and the entrepreneurial spirit continue to make things evolve, consumers have adapted. But they have not changed fundamentally. They just have more options.

With options come challenges to those tied to the old, tried and true ways of doing things. Retailers who were slow to adjust got hammered. Those who created new opportunities for themselves in the economy were rewarded. Those who are left behind or who don’t get the change want to blame the change on people. The blame is in not keeping up with the world.

Such is the case with media. I am tired of hearing people say that the consumer is hard to find, that somehow consumers are more disconnected and fragmented than ever. B.S. There are 500 million people on Facebook - was there EVER a TV network that had 500 million viewers? I would hardly call that fragmented or disconnected.

What has changed is that the consumer is not confined to a few choices or options. TV is not dead. Not by a long shot. In fact, TV consumption - time spent watching TV - is up. What is true, rather, is that consumers have more choices. So, they may not be watching NBC primetime, but they are watching. They’re watching on the big networks, on cable, On Demand, and on Hulu. They’re watching - they’re just choosing to watch in lots of different places and lots of different ways.

Like other aspects of the economy, consumers simply have tons of choices when it comes to media consumption. Technology has changed. New businesses have sprung up that did not exist before. How and where to reach them has changed. Some companies and agencies are more able to adjust to that change and take advantage of it than others. Others want to say that the consumer is fragmented, difficult, or “in control.”

Consumers have not changed - they still want to consume entertainment and information. And they will always want that. They are just quick to adapt and adjust.

But, as an industry, we have just not kept our eyes on the ball. Overall, the media industry is using outdated measurements (like GRPs), outmoded tools (like planning tools that are heavily biased toward TV), and outdated formats (like static :30 commercials) to try and drive strategy and execution in an increasingly digital and interactive world.

We can blame the consumer for being difficult and for changing on us. Or we can accept the fact that it is media technology and sources that have changed, and we have to catch up.

Thankfully, my children are smart enough to realize that Slaton is an idiot - that losing your cool and endangering others is not a good thing. I think we all learned that lesson in kindergarten, at least my kids did. But that’s not really what I want to talk about.

Image Link

The burning question for marketers is how did Jet Blue handle things? In this age of transparency and Twitter, did Jet Blue - a company known for social media savvy - get it right?

First, we should be clear about what Jet Blue did. And the truth is, they didn’t do much of anything. On Facebook and Twitter, they were mostly silent about it. They did steer people to a clever blog post they created that alluded to the situation and which garnered a lot of comments. But mostly, they just said nothing.

Which was brilliant.

And then, a few days later, they announced their All You Can Jet pass. Coincidence? Maybe. The one they did last year came out about the same time, but you have to admit the timing was pretty good. At the very least, they stayed focused on their business, and stayed out of the hypecycle.

Really brilliant.

Now, some social media pundits were very adamant that Jet Blue had missed a golden opportunity. You can see what these experts had to say in the New York Times article on the subject.

Ironically, however, in this case, it was best for them to simply stay out of it. And, interestingly, Jet Blue’s “reputation” in terms of positive and negative commentary actually improved over the course of the first week of the story as they stayed mostly silent on it.

By staying silent and carefully considering what they needed to respond to or not, Jet Blue got this one right. I am not sure if this was actually their strategy, or if they were simply “stifled by their lawyers” as AdAge implied. But it doesn’t matter. The story is blowing over, and Jet Blue seems unscathed by it.

From my perspective, Jet Blue did right to stay out of it because it was really an isolated incident of bad behavior. No one could logically blame the airline for the actions of this flight attendant who simply lost it. Nothing about Jet Blue’s policies, training, or talent management had any bearing on this situation. Reasonable people understand that the airline did nothing to cause this action, and their handling of it - assess the situation, consider the right next actions without rushing into anything - was appropriate.

So, what’s the lesson?

First, transparency is important, but so is tact. Sometimes staying quiet and letting things blow over is the best option.

Second, a quick response is important, but so is careful consideration. Sometimes it’s better to get it right than to just do something.

Third, building a reputation for customer service, listening, and communication pays huge dividends. At Jet Blue, it’s not just corporate speak or marketing hype. They have built an organization that shows it cares about customer service. Because they have done so, their own customers were their best defense in the Slaton maelstrom.

These are good lessons for all of us. Not just airlines.

I’m talking about the ability to actually select the ads that you watch, and even offer feedback on ads you have seen which then dynamically alters the next set of ads you see. Think Pandora for ads.

Before you steal this idea, I am claiming Intellectual Property on it. If you like it, you can pay me for it. Unless someone already has the idea trademarked. Anyway . . .

For some time, Hulu has been offering users the ability to select the ads they want to see, and has found success in it, and Starcom (a sister Publicis agency) has endorsed “The Ad Selector” which allows users to select the ads they want to see. Now, Facebook is offering ads that allow advertisers to include “endorsements” of their business or service in ads sent to friends of fans. These passive endorsements - users do not actually indicate that they like the ad or approve of sending it - enable brands to leverage the voluntary activity of users on a website like Facebook.

Link

And there has been an explosion in data exchanges which sell ads to brands and their agencies based on the past actions of the users - customizing ads to users to show them products related to what they have recently done or seen on other sites. While users do not choose to see these ads, they can control the targeting of them through the sites they visit or deleting cookies - a sort of ad selection process from the back door. Sort of.

It seems to me that all of these solutions are circling around a potentially inevitable state - where users actually take a more active role in selecting the ads that they see via a combination of data and self-selection.

Pandora works in some ways like this system. Users initiate the process by indicating a musical genre or style that they like. Pandora has created a database in which music and songs are classified against various attributes, and sends likely matches to users based on algorithms using this data. The user then controls how the service continues to deliver music by liking or disliking certain songs and artists - and the service adjusts on the fly.

What if we could offer the same system to consumers? Facebook is already getting us used to liking and disliking things via the “like button.” How much of a stretch is it to add a technology like this to cable boxes and digital online ads? If it was as simple as checking a box or clicking a button, you can bet people would do it if they really had control.

What would the implications be for the advertising world?

First, ads would probably get better. If users voted en masse, we wouldn’t rely on survey data months after an ad runs to tell us whether or not it worked or users liked it - we’d have the data right away. And even better than a click-through rate, we would know how users felt about the ad, not just if they acted on it. Ad agencies and brands would be forced to react to this immediate feedback and make their ads better.

Second, consumers would probably like advertising a lot more. Not only would ads get better, user control would bring more satisfaction - at least we assume. If users were able to control the ads they see, and have ads tailored to what they have specifically indicated, we can assume they might not mind advertising so much. Some of the data around ad selection supports that.

Wow. Better ads AND a receptive audience. Sounds customer centric. Sounds like an improvement. Heck, based on where technology is, at least online, it’s even possible.

I wonder who has the guts to implement it?

Image from Razorfish Headlight blog

Ads were usually sold in fairly general audience packages: by demographic or by context/interest. For example, one could buy inventory to target women based on the audience make-up of sites in the networks, or could buy inventory to target sports enthusiasts based on sites focused on sports content.

Fairly soon, ad networks and data re-sellers started to offer even more granularity in what audiences could be bought based on behaviors (if they bought, if they had been on sports sites but weren’t currently on them, etc.) or by known demographics based on registration information (when signing up for an email account, for instance, a user might identify their gender, age, location, etc.).

Although buying audiences in this way based on bid models is not new, there has been a flurry of activity and conversation in the space based on a couple of trends that have been outlined in the press. I recently read the following article from Business Insider on the topic.

The first is the rise of exchange desks at many agencies (Razorfish is owned by Publicis which runs the AOD platform) which are allowing them more control over the inventory for their clients, and allow them to leverage buying power better. The second is the rise in concerns over user data which some ad networks and exchanges use to target consumers. Concerns over privacy are a topic for another day, but, as you can read in some of my previous posts the concern is generally over-blown.

What these networks do is change the relationship between buyer and inventory creator in a fundamental way. Rather than the power of the agency being based on the power of media buying leverage (the more I buy, the lower price you will charge me), the power of the agency needs to now be based on the power of the information collected by the media agency in terms of performance AND, more importantly, their ability to act on it in a rapid and accurate way.

In many of these exchanges and networks, there is no set price for the inventory, rather, inventory value is based on how the audience performs - the advertiser sets the price they are willing to pay based on the performance of the inventory. What this means is that agencies need to be better at assessing real client data in real time rather than on aggregated audience data culled from surveys on an annual basis. This means that, while the importance of upfront negotiation does not go away, it diminishes in importance.

The implications of this are tremendous. First, as more and more media moves to digital (TV is obviously becoming increasingly digital) the ability to buy and sell ads in a bidded-network fashion will increase. This means that even TV ads will be evaluated not on the initial purchase price, but on the effectiveness of the media against client goals. Don’t believe me? Check out Microsoft’s Navic.

Second, media buying as it stands today may become more akin to search than it is to strong-armed up-front buys. In a world of auction pricing, there is no advantage to scale, and there are no discounts that can be given based on how much you buy. Rather, the market sets the price. It becomes more like the stock exchange than it does a retail outlet. The power in scaled leverage will be on the aggregator or ad exchange side, not on the agency side - the buyers who then resell - because they can take low-value inventory and re-bundle it in more valuable ways.

For media companies still focused on the power of media buying leverage as their backbone and upfront buying, it’s time to look out. Getting better at bid-modeling will not be a nice to have, it will be a necessity. And the current focus on time-honored but ultimately wasteful metrics like reach and frequency will give way to real metrics like traffic and sales which will be able to be measured in a variety of ways.

But, let’s not get too carried away.

The limitation of ad networks and exchanges is that they are indifferent to where the inventory is. You are buying the audience, not the property, they say, and isn’t that what you want really anyway? Well, sometimes yes, but sometimes no. Sometimes advertisers will want to advertise on a particular show or website precisely because the context matters. While I can buy sports sites or sports enthusiasts on networks, that doesn’t mean that they are more inclined to pay attention to my ads or communications when they are on a travel site or a webmail site.

There will always be premium value to be on premium sites - to know exactly when, where, and how your ad will show up. For heavy direct response clients, they may not care so much. But for clients where the brand is paramount, or where the context is part of the message, it will continue to matter a great deal.

This doesn’t mean that brands won’t have to start paying for this inventory in a bid-model fashion (although I doubt it because it generally drives prices lower on some inventory rather than higher), but it does mean that context, and scarcity of valuable context, like the Superbowl, will never go away or be discounted in some broad, generalized buy. Sometimes, the context does drive the value.

But the incoming tidal wave is not going to be stopped. We just have to ride it.

And, by at least some measures, they were hugely successful. They got tons of buzz, tons of press, tons of views, and they did a brilliant job of connecting the brand/product to the ads. Something that is very hard to do. How it translates into increased sales is anyone’s guess (AdAge wrote that sales of the advertised product were actually down after the ads ran, but we’ll see how that pans out over time).

No question that these ads went viral. And they were powerful examples of how to leverage social media. But amidst all of the flurry and accolades is one key question: was the effort truly social?

Image link

That begs a question, obviously, and was part of a really good discussion I had the other day with our Director of Social Media Ryan Turner. The question: was it an example of what success in social looks like? My take was no, mostly because they were an ad campaign and not truly social, despite the fact that some were calling this the triumph of social media.

It might help if we define social - which is not an easy thing to do. At its heart, social is a dialogue between people using digital technology to foster that communication. The dialogue can be with family and friends, colleagues, or companies we choose to do business with, and it can occur on a number of platforms and communities. But the point is that there is dialogue, which implies communication with someone - a give and take, an exchange that can be continued, that is ongoing, or at least has the potential to be.

If you agree with that premise, then the Old Spice Guy campaigns were not social, although they brilliantly used social. Instead, the Old Spice Guy ads were a carefully orchestrated campaign.

W+K planned the campaign very carefully. They shot the initial spots. They sought out bloggers and Twitters to respond to, but not in a random way. Then they quickly scripted and shot response ads. In general, they focused on people who had a large number of connections and/or were celebrities in their own right to respond to. Not completely, and not totally, but it is the fact that they were able to capitalize on celebrities and semi-celebrities that started the buzz. This was no groundswell in the truest sense of the word - it didn’t start because a bunch of nobodies stumbled upon the ads. No, it was a carefully calculated communication program.

And good for them. Again, I am in no way disparaging their work. It is amazing work - one of the best campaigns we’ll see this year. And it was risky - it took guts to do it, because it easily could have flopped - and the risk paid off big. But let’s make sure that in our hurry to jump on the bandwagon and proclaim that social has arrived, we take a step back to consider if that is indeed the case.

In many ways, this could become the next Subservient Chicken - it may become the acid test for social in the same way that the Chicken was for viral. Everyone will want one. Many will try and do it, but few will succeed. Because you can’t capture lightning in a bottle very many times. And the Subservient Chicken envy that followed led many advertisers down the path trying to match cleverness with poorly planned attempts of their own. I can see it happening again.

What we need to remember is that clever use of social is not necessarily social per se. And we have to remember that ad campaigns are ad campaigns, not matter how they try and dress themselves up. This ad campaign, and Subservient Chicken were not accidents - they were carefully planned and orchestrated, and took guts and determination - and some genius - to make work.

So what, you may ask? What difference does it make? After all, good advertising is good advertising, and social marketing is hard to evaluate beyond buzz it creates. All very true.

But the goal of social marketing is not really to make ad campaigns. And that’s the point. At its core, social is about creating a dialogue with consumers, not creating ads which are one-way communications. Yes, you can use social media platforms as opportunities to build buzz with customers - and that is legit - but social media in general is not an ad platform. It is, or should be, a dialogue platform. A communication platform that goes beyond simply calculated and orchestrated campaigns.

It’s ultimately probably nit-picking, but it’s a good conversation to have. Am I going to suggest to my clients that they don’t use social to build buzz or support campaigns? Of course not. Again, that is a valid use of the customer communities that are created. But I do have a responsibility to help my clients leverage social in other, more holistics ways - as a way to listen to customers, to respond directly to them, to create useful services for them that are dialogue or sharing based, and to foster meaningful dialogue.

There’s more to being a truly social brand than clever ad campaigns or awards or buzz. Ultimately, it’s about building a relationship with customers.

I was always raised to believe that payment is in fact a contract. In that contract, you indicate the type of relationship you wish to engage in. If I pay a premium for some product or service, I expect a lot in return, and I care a lot about that product or service. If I am most concerned with the lowest price, I don’t expect more than the basics, or I am at least willing to compromise on some level of quality or service.

Image link

And, it’s also a truism that how you compensate drives behavior. If you compensate someone on hours worked, you incentivize them to work longer hours. If you compensate someone on completing a project, you incentivize them to finish the project as quickly as possible.

However, if you compensate someone in a way that indicates you are mutually invested - that you will pay for quality and reward that quality with guarantees of more work or continued loyalty - you are setting up a situation in which both parties win: you with high quality, the service provider with a valuable return client.

Ultimately, this is the issue when it comes to agency compensation. Clients want to get the best service, talent, and output possible from their agencies but are under pressure to reduce fees from upper management. Agencies are under pressure to compete for the best talent and deliver high quality service and output, but are often put in situations where compensation practices encourage them - or even force them - to focus on the wrong things.

I recently read an article in AdAge which talks about this very issue. The author of the article rightly indicates that everyone is generally frustrated when it comes to compensation models. In my job, particularly my previous role, it was my least favorite activity, especially when procurement got involved.

The problem with procurement-led compensation negotiations is that, in the words of a previous client of mine, they treat everything like it’s floor cleaner. As if paying less for something meant you were getting a bargain. While that may be true when what you are negotiating over is toilet paper with little impact on your business, it seems pretty ridiculous when it comes to compensating agencies, who ultimately should be partners in your business. But, we regularly see procurement trying to beat down prices without the requisite view of what it is that agency and client are trying to achieve together.

What is strange is that compensation models have not changed much over the years, and still largely encourage bad behavior, and I would argue outmoded behavior, in both agency and client.

The traditional percent of media compensation, while easy to administer and understand, is probably the worst compensation model but still widely used. It rewards agencies for spending money, it doesn’t tie compensation to effort (we all know that the number and complexity of campaigns is more relevant to effort than the cost of campaigns). Agencies have to make an investment in people, technology, overhead, etc. to service a client. But percent of media compensation gives them little guarantee that they will get paid as reductions in budget mean reduction in fees.

And in the modern era of paid-earned-owned media, tying compensation to percent of media makes even less sense. As we indicated in our Outlook report, and I wrote about in a previous post, media-based compensation, even tying agency compensation to media ratios, dissuades agencies from considering non-paid media and/or creating low-cost (but effective) experiences.

Project-based compensation is better, but is not perfect either. It at least encourages each party to think about scope and the effort required to deliver a campaign or website or project, but it rewards agencies for reducing costs and getting projects done on time rather than perfecting product, and it often pushes clients to want to “squeeze” as much out of the project as possible, leading to lots and lots of scope creep.

Ultimately, however, both compensation models are out of step with what both agency and client really want - a long-lasting, mutually beneficial business partnership that pays fairly based on both effort and outcome. Compensation models, if constructed carefully, should mirror the type of relationship that we know brings the best behavior:
• They encourage shared risk and reward based on mutually agreed upon results. Both parties share equally.
• They are focused on the quality and performance of the end product. And they honor the effort that it takes to get there.
• They reward quality with the promise of a larger, longer relationship.
• They pay homage to the “you get what you pay for” adage.

I know it’s not easy to find the right model and there is certainly no one-size-fits-all solution, but in the end, agency and client should be working as partners to find solutions and build the types of relationships that are built on mutual benefit and shared risk and reward. Otherwise, we run the risk of creating relationships that are myopic and one-sided, which do not benefit either party in the long or short run.

Music is an amazing thing. Studies have shown that it, more than any other sense, can bring back powerful memories and emotional attachments. “While all the expressive therapies capitalize on autobiography in one way or another, the sensory power music in particular quickly stimulates both long-term personal memory and emotion in ways no other art forms do.”

In fact, studies on patients with Alzheimers have shown that even those who are losing more and more of their memory over time are still able to recall songs from their past.

So what happened to all of the jingles? Yes, I guess there are a few still around. There are the super-lame Kit Kat spots that try to mimic the “Gimme a Break” jingle via people cracking and chewing on Kit Kats.

Link

There was the super-awesome “Free Credit Report.com” commercial - with the classic line “too bad I didn’t know my credit was whack cause now I’m drivin’ off the lot in a used sub-compact.”

But mostly now commercials are jingle free - not necessarily music free - but free from short catchy songs that make us remember brands. Recently, Forbes put out an article which named the greatest jingles ever. The interesting thing was that I could recall all of the songs and most of the words.  Most of the jingles we hear today are in fact not new, but re-hashes of previous successful jingles.

Don’t confuse jingles with the use of music. There are lots of commercials that use music to help make a point or create disruption or entertain. For example, the Kia hamster commercials use music to this effect very well. I’m not sure if I love them or hate them, but I do watch them, and I do connect hamsters and Kias.  For all that’s worth.

Makes me sad for the loss. I mean, what is more memorable and catchy - the “Be a Pepper” song, or lame Dr. Pepper ads starring KISS and KISS look-alike little people? Not even close.

So what happened? Why have we lost jingles? Is it because creatives think the jingle is below them? I would argue that if anything can cut through the clutter it’s a simple catchy song that people sing over and over again about a brand.

Afterall, it’s an expression of the brand that people can take with them. It’s an expression of the brand that has been scientifically proven to drive memory and emotion. Aren’t those the very things that we claim we want advertising to do in order to change peoples’ perceptions and behaviors?

And the way that media is interconnected today, it seems a natural extension that music in one arena, say a TV commercial, can find life in other arenas - being passed around on facebook or uploaded onto YouTube. They can become ringtones, or can be used as audio ads in services like Pandora. For the truly creative, the possibilities are great.

So, here’s the challenge - how do we bring the jingle back? Do we have the guts to?

That is still correct. I do think that iAd and the coming onslaught of better mobile ads will help transform mobile devices into more ad friendly mediums, but to me the iAd-type solutions are probably more for mobile devices like the iPad – which have large displays – than for the cell phone which will continue to be limited by its small form factor.

The real revolution in mobile, I think, is location. The rise of services like Foursquare which leverage both social and location have the potential to transform the landscape of mobile advertising on the handset. They allow marketers to not only live in the consumer’s pocket or purse, they allow marketers to reach out to them in extremely relevant ways – when the consumer is in a store, or close to a place of business, or at a restaurant and about to order.

image link

This seems to be a POV gaining traction with brands all over the country. A number of articles in brandweek, the Pittsburgh Post, and ClickZ last week alone reported on what brands are doing. Some really interesting stuff.

For mobile advertising to work we need to think about location, and to consider it in 3D - in terms of time and space. The limits of most advertising is that it does not really have to consider place most of the time. When advertising on the web, on TV, in a magazine, we are not really thinking about where the consumer is consuming the content most of the time. Instead, we think only about the context of the content – what show, website, or magazine it is in.

Mobile changes that relationship. If we can think of mobile marketing as a time and space medium, we start to think differently about the tactics we use. And we can start to think more holistically about how we communicate with consumers.

Consider the following thought experiment. Let’s say we are marketing for a national fast food restaurant. If we think broadly about mobile opportunities, we might do some of the following:
• We offer consumers a texting program that alerts consumers when there are specials and new products. When users are sent texts, they have the ability to adjust what messages they receive and when they receive them. For instance, we give them the option of just receiving coupons for special offers, and we give them the option of only receiving these offers on specific days of the week when they can actually take advantage of them. That way, we limit the annoyance of texting and send messages relevant to time and space.
• We create a foursquare offering in which consumers are given a special offer when they are close to a restaurant. Instead of just waiting for the next text, then, a consumer can get an offer based on where they actually are.
• When the consumer is in the store, we can set up QR code or bar code programs that offer consumers content and information relevant to their store visit and product purchase. If a consumer is a regular chicken sandwich buyer, we can ask them questions about products, get their feedback, ask them to be part of product testing, etc.
• If we can combine all of this information – and we should be able to if we can tie all consumer activity to an email address – we can start collecting really valuable information on them, and provide them even more relevant messaging – whether they are on a mobile device or not. With a properly sophisticated system, we can use the data collected to send targeted emails or online ads, and better understand their buying and shopping patterns.

If we start thinking more holistically and more broadly about mobile, and consider it as a real time and space medium, we can start creating truly meaningful communications for our clients.

What we know is true today is that people use the internet, and search engines specifically, to search for news. When a major news story hits, one of the first things people do is go online and search for information. So, it only makes sense that, if BP is going to launch a PR campaign to save itself, it puts digital advertising front and center. To not do so would be stupid.

As Forbes points out, BP is rumored to be looking to spend $50 million in TV to address the crisis and manage their brand. How is buying keywords like “oil spill” or “bp oil spill disaster” any different? (On a side note, I find it interesting that they did not buy those keywords on Bing, only on Yahoo and Google. Seems like a miss.)

And only the very dim don’t know that the differently colored links at the top of the search engines, which, by the way, say “sponsored link” aren’t ads. So no one should be surprised that clicking on the link leads them to information created by BP. Information, by the way, that is meant to look like a news source, but only contains very positive stories. (On another side note, I find it interesting that they are not better ranked or more ubiquitous in natural search. That feels like another miss. )

So, is this good brand management or not? Is this effective crisis management or not?

The Huffington Post recently ran an article that asked the question about whether or not what they are doing is unethical. The author makes the point that, distasteful or not, they would be irresponsible as marketers not do so - not to buy keywords and lead consumers to PR. And, he doesn’t think they’ll make much difference in the long run anyway, so what’s the harm?

Really?

Could it be that BP is simply making things worse by buying those ads and driving people to a PR site if we assume that people aren’t stupid, and aren’t fooled by the whitewash content?

I would argue that it’s not their keyword strategy that is wrong (although, I have to say that it is not very good - they should be doing a lot more than they currently are based on my side bars above), but the way they are responding overall in the digital space that needs to be overhauled.

Their take on crisis management, although in the guise of being very digital, is off. And off big. It is being run and managed by the spin doctors who think, somehow, if they keep talking like nothing bad is happening, we’ll all forget. Fortunately, it doesn’t work that way (except, I think, in politics). Lots of ads won’t help. Lots of keywords won’t help. They miss the point completely.

BP’s big miss is that it is not leveraging the power of digital to actually do something positive for itself and for the environment that it is helping to destroy. BP’s big miss is acting like all media is about talking to people. BP’s big miss is treating the digital space like a PR channel, rather than a communication channel.

To get a good sense of the missed opportunity, let’s play the “what if” game.

• What if BP decided to be totally honest about what is happening in the Gulf?
• What if BP allowed people to comment, to post, to ask questions on its website?
• What if BP actually opened up a dialogue with people online, had conversations, forums, townhalls with people?
• What if BP used digital to actually appear human, concerned, and sympathetic by giving people a place to volunteer, to donate, to help in the clean-up?
• What if BP used the power of digital to listen to scientists and environmentalists, engineers and chemists all over the world to get their advice, ideas, and input on what to do next?

No, I don’t think BP is wrong for buying keywords associated with the disaster. That is the smart thing to do.

I think BP is wrong for not thinking more broadly about how they could turn their response to this disaster into something more than a PR festival. Their actions, in my opinion, make them look more guilty, more unethical, more bumbling. They could have turned something awful and made it at least into something proactive. Better yet, they could have taken something awful, and used it as an opportunity to bring great minds together to make sure nothing like this ever happened again.

Instead, they are using it to try and cover up a monumental mistake, like a little kid trying hide a mess under the rug.

What a big miss. What a huge message and learning opportunity for brands.

And I am not alone. Loyalty programs work, which is why so many businesses use them. People get addicted to points, and because of it, they share (knowingly or not) tons of information with the loyalty program owners. Loyalty programs that work well encourage their users to check in frequently, record every movement and interaction, and reward their users for doing so frequently.

In a way, loyalty programs are like a game. The more I interact with my airline, the more miles they give me. The more miles they give me, the more apt I am to use them, and find different ways to get even more points. I want to collect more and more of this currency. Companies then use the information collected to tweak products and services, and tailor offerings and messages to me.

And speaking of games, there is a rise in a type of social gaming which combines the power of collecting with competition which make them particularly addicting. Two of the best known examples are the location-based social service Foursquare and the Facebook applications by Zynga such as Mafia Wars and Farmville. A recent Ad Age article discusses these programs as does a recent eMarketer article.

Millions of people participate in these programs, and are willing to share their status, pinpoint their location, and annoy their friends all for the sake of collecting points and badges and gaining status by reaching certain levels or becoming mayors.

Link to picture

What these programs really do is play on two very powerful parts of the human psyche: competition and hoarding. Indeed, both are central to our survival and evolution, and both are bred into our DNA. The need to compete – to win, to outdo others – is central to passing our genes along. It is competition for scarce resources that compels us as the most base level (because the individual best able to collect and use these resources is the more likely to be able to breed).

And collecting resources is something that we are also bred to do. From our deep human past as hunter/gatherers, we are compelled to collect resources when they are available so that we can compensate and take care of our needs in times of famine – again, increasing our likelihood that we will be able to breed.

Brands have been very active in creating loyalty programs that allow users to collect points: soft drink companies, credit card companies, airlines, hotels, casinos, retailers, restaurants, etc. use loyalty programs to reward users for buying and coming and to entice them to come back. As long as the rewards are valuable and attainable, they are powerful.

But these programs have usually lacked this second aspect of competition, which can make them even more addicting. The reasons why are generally obvious: you don’t want consumers to have a bad experience because they lose, or to feel like they won’t have a chance to win. Loyalty programs need lots and lots of members to be successful for businesses.

But games, especially the fun, social, and simple games like Farmville and Foursquare, offer brands the opportunity to add a little friendly competition to the mix. And the combination may prove to be extremely valuable.

These games offer brands the chance to associate with complementary addictive programs. They offer brands the chance to interact more often, and offer rewards more frequently than they can do on their own – particularly for expensive and/or infrequent interactions. And the fact that they are local makes them especially enticing. Brands can really enhance their local presence with them.

For instance, retailers and restaurants are starting to encourage “mayorships” by rewarding mayors and those close to being mayors on Foursquare reduced prices, free drinks, badges, and the like. These programs encourage customers to visit more frequently, and have the added bonus of “virality” by the fact that status, etc. is sharable via social programs like Twitter and Facebook.

I think it is still too early to determine who the winners or losers will be in this growing social gaming world. I find the Zynga games to be uninteresting and annoying myself. I strongly want to “unfriend” the people who play those games incessantly. But I do think that Foursqure is onto something. The connection that they are making between gaming, loyalty, competition, and real-world businesses is potentially very powerful.

Brands should pay careful attention to these programs and the powerful effect they can have on their customers. Any brand with a physical storefront needs to consider how it best can get involved with Foursquare.

The key to making these programs successful will be based in a brand’s ability to think beyond the confines of a campaign timeline. These programs will not work in short bursts – they have to be part of sustained, meaningful programs. Brands who are willing to really dive into these programs and do them right will be rewarded.