Marketing 2.0 / Web 2.0
(Free Download) Seth Godin & GrokDotCom Sync Into Meatball Sundae
Recently, Seth Godin joined us for an exclusive interview on WebmasterRadio.fm to discuss his latest book, Meatball Sundae.
“What’s a meatball sundae?” Good question. Basically, it’s what happens when everyday products are out of sync with new marketing tactics. For the full story, listen to the podcast (or download it for free!) below. But first, here are a few extra scoops from Seth & Bryan’s interview. Bon appetit!
Bryan Eisenberg: In the introduction, you admit that you’re breaking your own rules about book publishing. First of all, your last book, The Dip, only came out six months ago. Secondly, Meatball Sundae is, what, two or three times the size of The Dip? We see why Meatball Sundae is, well, meatier – but why does it have to come out now, while your last bestseller’s still busy marketing itself?
Seth Godin: The ideas don’t work for me… I work for the ideas. When the book was ready, it had to go out, because the market wanted/needed to hear them. So far, every time I make a silly non-strategic decision that benefits the ideas, it seems to work out okay. So I’ve learned not to get in the way of the ideas.
BE: People are very good at saying “I agree,” and you’re an easy guy to agree with. But what are the really tough questions – outside of the 14 trends you mention in the book – that marketers need to ask themselves so they know whether they’re marketing meatball products with sundae tactics.
SG: I’m not asking for agreement with this book. Not at all. From the title on in, I’m asking for a lot more than agreement. I want action. I want organizations to make fundamental choices and to follow through with them. So, “I agree” will really bum me out.
BE: What are some of the changes organizations will have to make? What are the stumbling blocks, and how will they know if they’re headed in the right direction?
SG: The biggest change is to decide to realign to get the wind at your back. To reorganize and re-strategize to get out of the last industrial revolution and move into the new one. That’s not easy, but you’ll either do it or struggle. Now’s the time, not five years from now.
BE: When you’re talking about the lure of running Super Bowl ads and the like, you say, “The web is astonishingly bad at reaching the unreachable . . . Mass is still seductive, but mass is so expensive that marketers balk at buying it,” and the example you use is that Time magazine is much thinner these days than Gourmet. How do we stop marketers from worrying about driving all this traffic — from reaching out to anyone and everyone — and get them to focus on creating a great experience for the ones who actually want to reach them?
SG: Who is so much more important than how many. And interactivity proves it. You can measure it. You can see what happens, not in months, but in days. Smart marketers are already smelling it, which is one reason they’re running away from magazines so fast.
BE: Trend #2 in Meatball Sundae is “Amplification of the Voice of the Consumer and Independent Authorities.” This made me think of the November 2005 cover of Forbes magazine (“Attack of the Blogs: They destroy brands and wreck lives. Is there any way to fight back?”). Back then, the idea seemed pretty over-the-top. What would you tell marketers today?
SG: Fighting back is such a bad idea. Join is a much better one. Make great stuff, be respectful, tell the truth. Not so hard to describe, pretty hard to do.
BE: How do you know when your organization is ready to serve a sundae? And once you do, how do you match the toppings to suit your customers’ needs? For instance, it seems pretty clear that not every business should be blogging. Is it possible to serve meatballs to some people and sundaes to others, or is it truly either/or?
SG: Oh, I think organizations can do both, just as GE was able to sell blenders and nuclear power plants for a while. The mistake is when one division or one brand tries to do both. When you’ve got need-based, factory-driven commodities colliding with the idea-driven, speed focused web, it’s a big problem.
BE: You talk about the shift from “How many?” to “Who?” (“Just as a store in a busy mall doesn’t have to worry about converting every browser into a customer, high-traffic Web sites and advertisers get sloppy about being efficient.”) As marketing optimization experts, our firm sees this all the time and we still don’t understand why anyone would want tons of traffic with few conversions. But how does a business know when its marketing is inefficient? Are there any telltale signs across industries?
SG: I would never try to tell the guys at Ford about crankshafts. I also won’t tell them about web conversions. They need to learn it, evolve it, test it, measure it. If this is the core of the business of the future (and it is) then a rule of thumb isn’t going to cut it. My point: get in early, spend the money, do the learning.
BE: How do you like your sundaes? (Inquiring minds want to know.)
SG: I’m such a weird eater. It would be Ciao Bella chocolate sorbet, with a teaspoon of Steve Herrell’s hot fudge, a tablespoon of Marshmallow Fluff and a Starbucks Biscotti, chocolate, please. Except that if I was making it, I’d leave off the hot fudge, cause I’m an ascetic.
For the rest of this exclusive interview, click here (or right-click to download).
Click here for Seth Godin and Bryan Eisenberg
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Written by:The Grok
In (Mild) Defense of Firebrand
The advertising-as-entertainment, “live” (but not really), model-hosted, YouTube-ish site Firebrand.com just launched its beta site, and it definitely could be worse — especially considering its ambitious value proposition. Basically, Firebrand’s counting on becoming a destination spot for entertaining commercials, and the only people who might tell them they’re wrong — at this early stage, anyway — are are those who remain at least part-time singers in the choir to which they’re preaching.
When I first heard of the site, I said it sounded like “the ad industry’s collective Wet 2.0 dream.” The beta seems to reflect that impression, with a heavy dose of racy* and/or funny and/or creative ads, most of which seem more suited to winning awards than selling product. But there are exceptions, and it is nice to see a venue for (at least some of the) commercials that exceed 30 seconds. And since the US lives inside its own media bubble, it’s good to see a new venue for international commercials like this one from the Barcelona City Council:
Sure, they probably weren’t thinking of someone like me when they made the ad, but suffice it to say, there’s now an even slimmer chance you’ll ever find me double-parked in Barcelona.
Then there are funny and memorable ads like this one for Skittles:
There’s also a bit of irony here for brands who’ve tried to push their own ads on specialty micro-sites; brands like Budweiser, which spent G-d-knows-what creating Bud.tv, only to have me see this ad for the first time on Firebrand instead:
If GrokDotCom was the first place you saw this ad, that could mean one of at least two things:
- Firebrand could be a success as a destination spot for branded content.
- Bud.tv shouldn’t make people register and log in, and then not allow bloggers to embed the video (something I’m presuming because I refuse to register for the site).
Here’s the Firebrand “Manifesto”:
We love commercials. We submit, with rare exception, that theyre the best stuff on TV. In under a minute you get the best directors, the sickest special effects, the funniest writerswhats not to love?
We love commercials. 1984. Mean Joe Green. Whasssup? You know you love them, too. So lets gather round the best of them. Sort them. Judge them. Share them. Love them.
We love commercials. The eye candy. The laugh out louds. The did-you-just-see-thats. The most loved, the most emailed, the ones we still talk about today. Let every day be Super Bowl Monday.
Welcome to Firebrand.com. (The best stuff on TV, online. )
Seems a bit heavy if you don’t consider the ads to be the best thing about TV. But that’s pretty common. The seductions of overstated “About Us” copy when there’s no copy on the homepage (as if to say, “You must know who we are, right?”) are hard for most startups to resist. Since it’s a beta launch, I’ll reserve judgment for now. Still, they might want to run that through the We-We Monitor.
What do you think? Will Firebrand go the way of Bud.tv, or does it help to have all these commercials in one place?
[*The first commercial that was showing when I went to the site this morning was for Naturisme.fr, a French “naturist” site — and no, I don’t mean organic food in the literal sense — which wasn’t exactly work-safe by “violence good, nudity bad” American cultural standards.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Traffic Delusion and Social Networking Insanity
“Advertising only accelerates the inevitable” –Roy H. Williams
In Roy’s practice, advertising builds brands and drives traffic for his offline clients. Roy cautions his clients not to get ahead of themselves. If all the traffic (read: visitors) he drives get what they expected, then the business grows organically from repeat customers and word-of-mouth. If these visitors don’t get what they want, their lackluster experience will erode the brand. In other words, they would be refilling a leaky bucket with new traffic. Unfortunately, the supply of new traffic is never unlimited.
Jeffrey Eisenberg likes to ask, “Are you paying your marketers to make promises that your business has no intention of keeping?”
On the Web, how much traffic is enough?
If your site has a few thousand visitors a month, what would you do with a few thousand per day? Sadly, with average conversion rates barely hovering in the low single digits for most markets, for most of us, a sudden boost of traffic would do little more than squander our audience. In fact, we’d simply do it faster. When your funnel leaks like a sieve, do you really want to turn on the fire hose? Conventional wisdom on the Internet says ‘yes,’ but I challenge you to ask yourself if that’s wise, or just more convenient.
Bryan touched on this topic yesterday, and Robert Scoble, Dave Winer and the Guardian are debating the concept over at Techmeme. Scoble claims he wants a “smart” audience, not a “big” audience. (Sounds like he’s found conversion.) He can model a smart audience, plan an experience for them, then measure and improve upon that plan. A big audience — just for the sake of winning the Web’s version of “Best Looking” superlative (technically speaking, of course 
) — I’d imagine leaves him with the same void some people feel when they grow up, only to realize they’d peaked in high school.
Let’s contrast this with a story I read in yesterday’s Internet Retailer. Our friend Dustin Robertson from Backcountry.com has been experimenting with one of their brands on MySpace. They’ve spent a year, added 3,000 friends, and still can’t find a correlation (forget causality) between MySpace and sales. He acknowledges the experiment costs only a few hundred bucks per month, so their current plan is to keep it going.
Typically, when I hear things like this, Einstein’s definition of insanity comes to mind (or Franklin’s or Twain’s, depending on who you believe originally uttered the quote). In this case, though, it’s more a symptom of the low relative cost of doing business online, and the large numbers the ‘net provides. We’ll happily chase our tails on the logic that we only need a small success to realize the value of a home run.
Funny. Given that thinking, I’m surprised more people don’t take the, “If we build it, they will come” approach to traffic. Of course, that only works if you build what visitors want, and give it to them the way they want it. Do that, and you just may be amazed at how much profit you can squeeze out of the traffic that stops by for a visit.
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Written by:Howard Kaplan
3 Triggers of Word of Mouth
Seth Godin gets to the heart of the matter after reading about how viral marketing works only 15% of the time, according to JupiterResearch. He sums up how to get word of mouth in 4 words: “Just make great stuff.”
Our own Holly Buchanan blogged about one company’s viral efforts this week in “Would You Buy a Bra from This Man?” Zafu.com’s campaign started off with a small mailing as part of a test and has started to take off. This ad polarized the audience. Thankfully, Zafu offers a great service that already gets people talking. The video just helped the conversation along.
So how do you make something great?
The Three Word-of-Mouth Triggers:
Recall the last few times you participated in word-of-mouth culture about your experience with a product or service. The product either exceeded your expectations or fell substantially below them. Either way, that word-of-mouth was a result of the product’s performance along with one or a combination of the following triggers:
Architectural: This is a product, package, or store design. When a product or experience is planned or controlled for a specific effect, it’s architectural. Aesthetics and a unique appearance and experience are architectural triggers.
Product examples: iPod, Bose, BMW, “Halo” (video game), RAZR, and Michael Graves’ products
Experience examples: McDonald’s playgrounds, Apple retail stores, Starbucks, and Krispy Kreme stores
Kinetic: This is energy and performance, in the show business sense of the word. Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, which the well-known book When Fish Fly is based on, is the quintessential example of a kinetic trigger. Hipness, selection, fashion, and outstanding product performance are also kinetic triggers.
Product examples: BlackBerry, Tony Hawk (video game), Red Bull, Starbucks’ products, and Airborne
Experience examples: Any slot machine, Cabela’s stores, HDTV, JibJab’s first presidential video, JetBlue, and iTunes software
Generous: A generous trigger occurs when perceived value substantially exceeds the price of a product or service. Extremely large portions in a restaurant, oversized seats on an airplane, and consistently low prices are all generous triggers.
Product examples: Kia, Vonage, Skype, Hyundai, and McDonald’s Happy Meal toys
Experience examples: Great AYCE buffets, Wal-Mart, Steepandcheap.com, and the first-generation iTunes Music store.
(Note: Roy H. Williams, the “Wizard of Ads,” was the first to identify and label these triggers in his Monday Morning Memo.)
The more remarkable the experience, the stronger the word of mouth. Just barely exceeding expectations isn’t enough. In other words, “Just make great stuff.”
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Can Wal-Mart’s Facebook Campaign Survive Transparency?
It all seemed so innocent at first. A few weeks ago, when Wal-Mart announced it would market to college students on Facebook, the idea seemed simple enough: Allow students to use their Roommate Style Match group (Facebook subscription required) so they could coordinate their dorm room shopping. Now that it’s been up for awhile, though, Wal-Mart’s getting grilled by detractors.
BusinessWeek’s Burt Helm noticed this gem of a Facebook comment:
“do people realize WHY prices are so low at Wal-Mart? cause THEY DO NO PAY LIVING WAGES to employees in America and THEIR CHINESE FACTORIES ARE BASICALLY SLAVERY.
WAL-MART IS HATEFUL AND IS A BLIGHT ON AMERICA.
Facebook should CUT ALL ITS TIES to Wal-Mart. GET WALMART OFF FACEBOOK!”
To which Helm adds:
I actually think it’s a good call on Wal-Mart’s part not to censor the page or take it down. This discussion is inevitable. And looking at the feed of comments now, it has actually spurred a pretty healthy bull session on Wal-Mart’s role in the U.S., with several students coming out in favor of the retailing giant. I think it’s smart PR for Wal-Mart to host this discussion, even it was totally inadvertent.
The retail giant seems happy to stay on the sidelines for now. Jami Arms, a spokesperson from Wal-Mart told Reuters:
“We recognize that we are facilitating a live conversation, and we know that in any conversation, especially one happening online, there will be both supporters and detractors” […]
Still, PodTech’s Jeremiah Owyang thinks they should be more proactive:
[…] I highly recommend that Wal-Mart consider trying a community strategy using a transparent and authentic blog or video blog series that addresses the very brand issues that they are getting slammed on. I took at look online for a “Walmart blog” and didn’t see any from the company, why is this? It’s going to be very difficult to try a community marketing strategy with eCommerce hooks without first addressing the brand detractors.
Now I’m confused. How exactly could a blog be more transparent than this Frontline documentary on Wal-Mart? Could any company’s self-reflecting stab at “citizen journalism” be more transparent than that of objective, professional journalists?
Linking to our recent discussion on transparency, Copyblogger’s Brian Clark wonders if we really want authenticity in the first place:
[…] Some so-called business blogging experts think “keeping it real” is rule number one, even when it’s completely inappropriate.
The secret to effective marketing is to focus on the needs of others, rather than our own egocentric need to “authentically” express whatever we’re feeling at the moment. We teach that to our children, and yet we’re to believe it doesn’t apply to social media?
Where do we draw the line with transparency and authenticity when what people really want is a story that adds value to their lives? What if no one likes the real you?
It’s a good question. Wal-Mart brings a welcome dose of transparency in terms of product reviews, but the documentary finds their executives coming off as rigid ideologues who readily justify an NSA-style employee spying program, its contribution to America’s vast trade deficit with China, reports of bullying manufacturers, and a creative definition of the phrase “living wage” in terms of the company’s commitment to saving consumers money and increasing “shareholder value”.
Fortunately for Wal-Mart, its loudest critics don’t seem to shop there. It’s a good thing they can take the heat; they’ll need that attitude in order to stay on Facebook.
Has the brand people love to hate finally learned when to stay quiet? What do you think? Should they stay or should they go?
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Wikipedia and the Wisdumb of Crowds
Last week, Wired reported on a program that allows us to see who’s editing Wikipedia. Invented by Virgil Griffith, a graduate student at Cal Tech, the WikiScanner has finally brought transparency to the encyclopedia that considers us all to be experts.
A few of my favorite revelations:
. There may be some irony here.
Nortel - Accounting scandal, what accounting scandal?? This sweeping rewrite of Nortel’s page removes all mention of the 2000-2004 accounting scandal that resulted in investigations from the RCMP and the Attorney General, the CEO being fired for cause, numerous directors being shown the door, etc.
. They replaced the critical and best-selling book “Fast Food Nation” with the more friendly book “McDonald’s: Behind the Arches”. They also removed a link to anti-McDonald’s site “McSpotlight”.
Don’t be a Web 2.0 lemming!
Sure, Wikipedia is directionally helpful. For instance, I learned that lemmings aren’t suicidal, they’re just stupid. As you may know, the rumors of these rodents jumping off cliffs en masse are overstated. If you’re looking for myth coverage, Wikipedia’s the place to be. Meanwhile, MSN’s Encarta tells us that lemmings “…swim lakes and rivers, cross mountains, and eat all vegetation in their path. Eventually, some reach the sea; attempting to swim it as if it were a river, they are drowned.”
Reminds us of the a few corporations, does it not?
It’s not surprising that governments and corporations are being outed for their Wikipedia spin-jobs; what’s surprising is that it didn’t happen sooner. How is it that Wikipedia couldn’t have done this themselves long ago?
Unfortunately, there’s no Wikipdeia entry for “wikiality,” one of Stephen Colbert’s invented words. Still, this video can illustrate the true PR costs of “wikilobbying”.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Facebook Follies and LinkedIn Lure
Michael Eisenberg (no relation), a partner and blogger at Benchmark Capital, is in need of a new name for his blog, Six Kids and a Full Time Job, now that a 7th has arrived — talk about a full-time job! — shares his experiences with FaceBook and LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is valuable and connects me to many entrepreneurs and potential recruits but, anecdotally, the “senior staff” is hanging out on Facebook and searching for contacts!
Jeffrey and I have been doing some similar experimentation. Jeffrey’s been focused on LinkedIn (here’s his profile) and I’ve been frolicking on Facebook (here’s my profile). GrokDotCom readers should feel free to befriend either one or both of us.
While LinkedIn currently has a greater volume (in numbers) of our “friends,” the velocity of requests on Facebook has been much greater as of late.
Are you on either one?
Many are thinking differenty about Facebook than they do about LinkedIn. Others are concerned with how much time they waste and how to manage it. According to the Telegraph, over 70% of businesses in the U.K. have blocked Facebook from within their company.
What’s your experience with both? Have you used either one successfully in your business? What do you think the future holds for either one?
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Grokcast: Arik Czerniak, Co-Founder of Metacafe
In this week’s episode, Bryan Eisenberg speaks with Metacafe co-founder Arik Czerniak about the past, present and future of online video. Since 2003, Metacafe.com has become one of the most popular user-generated video sites. Actually, they’re one of the biggest websites of any kind, with around 30 million unique visitors, and a massive half-billion streams — every month.
In just a few years, the company has seen a lot of change in the video market, from Google’s YouTube acquisition to an influx of competition from newer startups. Through it all, the company has stayed true to its vision, letting fans upload videos of refrigerators that can launch a cold beer right into your hand.
What could be better than a beer-launching fridge? Well, unlike YouTube — which has made some gestures to share the wealth — Metacafe pays the folks who submit video as much as thousands of dollars per month.
Bryan & Arik discuss:
- Why the video market is no longer just for skateboarding dogs.
- The rise of Metacafe, and user-generated content in general.
- How to make a living by submitting video to Metacafe.
- Viral marketing, and how to create videos that people want to watch.
- The “micro-boredom” epidemic, and how to fix it.
Click here to listen to Arik Czerniak & Bryan Eisenberg
To download this podcast for your next flight, car ride, or trip to the beach, right-click here
If you have any follow-up questions for Arik, let us know in the comments and we’ll do a follow-up post with his answers!
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Written by:The Grok
Monkeying Around With Web 2.0 Strategy
Steve Rubel’s post on “Why We’re Like a Miliion Monkeys on Treadmills” made me smile. Bryan and I are also way too often asked questions about how to create a Facebook, blogging or Web 2.0 strategy. Our answer is similar to Rubel’s:
Surely, channels are where the action is at. However, it’s important to remember they are just that - and they change. Circa 1998, perhaps when many of you were 10, The Globe.com, GeoCities and Tripod were all the rage. They faded from our horizon over time. The same thing will happen to many of today’s hot sites. In fact, I advise marketers not to invest too much time in creating “a Facebook strategy” as much as they don’t have “an NBC strategy” or “a New York Times strategy.” Instead, I encourage them to people watch, learn and then plan based on their audience and the big picture.
The most interesting action is in sociology. In other words, how does technology change our culture and how we interact with media, the web and each other - and to what end? This was a major realization for me a few months back and you have probably noticed it in my writing, which is less channel focused. These days, I am far more interested in what people do with technology rather than on what the latest new “shiny object” is. … [read the post]
By the way, I know where Rubel got that great monkey picture he used for the post.
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Should Marketers Get a Second Life, or a First One?
A lot has been written about Second Life over the past few days, mostly because it seems marketers are fleeing the popular online community in droves. After a mad rush by large brands to plant their flag in Second Life, folks like CenterNetworks‘ Allen Stern are questioning whether the virtual world really needs a “Ben & Jerry’s Island.”
We spent most of the session on the “Ben & Jerry’s” island. During the session, we were able to fly around, look at a wall of the history of B&J, and chat with other people. Wait, that was one person during the entire 30 minute session. I asked what it cost to create the island and Don nodded when I suggested $50k.
Don also noted that we are only in the first inning of virtual worlds. I agree with his statement. It reminds me a bit of when the Web first started to commercialize. “Who would use the Web to buy insurance” is a statement I heard several times from an executive at an insurance company.
Technovia’s Ian Batteridge has a similar take, writing that:
. . . the approach that most corporates have taken with Second Life has been the same as they took with the early web “We must have a Second Life presence! Build it and people will come!”
But SL isn’t static media, and that, unfortunately, means that the static media approaches you can take with a web page won’t work. SL isn’t a medium which is suitable for researching information unless that information is best communicated via 3D models. A museum might profit from simply building an island and waiting for people to come - a corporate won’t.
On face value, I agree with both Stern and Batteridge. But they raise an interesting point: If those marketing on Second Life are using prehistoric Web tactics — i.e., stuff from the broadcast or “push” marketing playbook, left over from the old media days – why in the proverbial world might they work in a virtual one? This is uncharted territory to be sure, but wouldn’t product placement and viral promotions among Second Life, er, citizens make more sense than paying $50k to setup shop just to say that you’re kinda, almost, virtually there?
Ah-ha… the plot thickens! Over at WebInkNow, David Meerman Scott* tells us of a staffing company that’s paying real money to Second Life temps. Might these virtual folks end up staffing the virtual islands, thus creating a real economy? And does virtual ice cream taste any good? Like “astronaut ice cream” perhaps?
For now, I’m skeptical. But there’s a lesson here for all of us: Before pushing a new online presence, make sure you know what success really means in advance. Otherwise, those virtual islands might leave your company a bit… shipwrecked.
[*For those who missed it, don’t forget to check out my recent interview with David Meerman Scott on his fantastic book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
