05/13/10 07:57am

That Darn Twitter

This is the first of a series on Understanding the Digital Mashup. More and more advertisers are realizing that while their brands and products are represented on the social Web, they don’t have a strategy for how to leverage these online exchanges.  In the past week I’ve had this same conversation with large consumer brand owners as well as small business owners and it tends to always lead to the same place.  Regardless of size, each is openly challenged by the question of ‘Why’ they are there (in the social Web world).

While there are various levels of engagement companies are taking, the largest fear of being overly aggressive is the two-edge sword of open community feedback.  If not properly managed, these networks can provide a conduit for brand bashing and exposure to customer service issues that are much deeper than online commentary about a current media campaign.

‘This stuff isn’t going away; it’s only going to grow.  It’s best to get a proactive strategy together rather than a crisis management plan with regard to your brand on the social Web.’

Playing in this space now requires that you budget time and capital for it.  No longer can you lob one-way marketing ‘grenades’ over the wall without a few of them coming back over and exploding in your camp.  At a minimum brands have to understand that there is a conversation going on out there about YOU.

Taking Twitter as an example, the explosion of interactions has grown to a rate of over 2.5 million ‘tweets’ per day.

According to Kevin Weil at Twitter, ”Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second. (Yes, we have TPS reports.)”

At GOC we are building this social Web thought process into each campaign strategy for clients.  Whether we manage the logistics or our client’s carry the social Web elements in-house is no matter.  We want to make sure it’s part of the brand planning conversation.

I’ll share more on how folks are measuring and reporting this dearth of information on my next post.

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01/14/10 08:29pm

Mobile Internet – The next delivery channel

January 14, 2010

Here we are, halfway through the first month of the New Year.  But now that we’re fully back from the holiday festivities, there was one thing that caught our eye during the last month of the old year.

In December, Morgan Stanley released their Mobile Internet Report in which their global technology and telecom analysts provide an assessment of where that market is headed.

Among their projections:

• Within 5 years, more people will access the Internet through a mobile device than they will from their desktop
• Mobile web is the fifth cycle of wealth creation and destruction in the computer age and, as before, the leaders in the previous cycle will not sustain their position, assuming they survive at all.
• Facebook – with its updates, chat, messages, media sharing, apps and VoIP calls — is becoming a desktop + mobile communications hub. It is positioned to become “…a communications platform/engine of one-to-one, one-to-some and one-to-many (and visa versa) for the mobile Internet…”
• Consumers want to find and watch video via the wired + wireless internet.  Mobile use could surprise for many years.
• 3G is the key to success of the Mobile Internet, but the surge in usage may force carriers to off-load to Wi-Fi.

Indeed, exponential growth in use of many 3G networks has resulted in considerable consumer frustration.  Consumers are likely ready to adopt and embrace the mobile Internet faster than the technology can support it.

And this report came out only about 6 weeks after Google purchased AdMob for $750 million in a move designed to push the search giant beyond simple text ads and into mobile display ads.

If you’d like to download your own copy. Morgan Stanley has a number of versions of it available here:

http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/mobile_internet_report122009.html

But be warned: they’re all huge!

As an option, you can view an Executive Summary slide presentations here:

http://www.slideshare.net/kvjs/morgan-stanleymobile-internet-reportexec-summarydec-2009

It’s fascinating to ponder how the mobile Internet will develop as a delivery channel for brand messaging – and in every direction: from the brand, to the brand, and about the brand.  Add to that the possibilities for geo-locating mobile device users and hyperlocal advertising…and you’ve got an incredibly fluid, shifting landscape for content creation and distribution.  We think it’s exciting….how about you?

More » GoConvergence