7th Mass Media

CNN i-Report now does Fanzone: UGC from sports fans

This has been predicted in many places, but nice to see one of the big brands doing it. The user-generated content by sports fans. Yes, CNN is now recruiting i-Reporters for major football (soccer) teams to provide 'fanzone' content. Just a moment ago, CNN said they are for example looking for someone to do i-Reports from Inter Milan the Italian powerhouse football team.

Golden Triangle, social, mobile and real-time

A good blog by Brian Solis of Futureworks out of Silicon Valley, at the PR 2.0 blog where he talks of the 'golden triangle' of social networking, of mobility, and of real time. He lists the iPhone as a good example of the innovation in mobility, Facebook of social networking, and Twitter of real time. Obviously the more we get to the center of this golden triangle the more the three forces add to combine ever more powerful opportunities but any one is strong, and combining two is always stronger - for example Twitter on mobile...

CNN Mobile more videos than online

My very dear friend and author Chetan Sharma reported that CNN Vice President Louis Gump said today that on their network, they get more videos viewed on CNN Mobile than the CNN online video site. Yeah... 7th mass media eh?

Magical, yes, your phone as shipping radar using Layar and Vesseltracker

THis is sooo coool. Turn your smartphone into a small radar, to see the nearby shipping. The service is called Vesseltracker, and uses the Layar augmented reality browser, to provide info on the nearby ships, distances to them, their movement directions etc. Brilliant. Brilliant. A small boat does not need to buy an expensive radar, just use Vesseltracker. I totally love it. Magical.

Interactive is different from engagement is different from data mining

A brief comment only now, will probably write a blog at CDB about this topic in more detail later. But yes, today I had a dialogue of several messages with a friend on Twitter about engagement marketing, and the friend said then that yeah, Amazon is an excellent case of engagement marketing.

And I went through my usual explanations. And I was reminded, so many people now think that Amazon is a good example of engagement marketing. No. Amazon is a GREAT example of interactive marketing, and a FANTASTIC example of data mining of consumer behavior. But it is not engagement marketing. Engagement is when the target of the marketing efforts, is invited to personally get involved in co-creating the marketing experience, for him or herself. Not for the benefit of others.

So, Amazon is interactive advertising. They get us involved on the site. They ask us to post our reviews. That gives NO benefit to me, or the benefit I gain out of Amazon. It ONLY benefits any other buyer of books etc on Amazon, my ratings. And I can get the full benefit of all the ratings on Amazon without ever posting my own review.

Yes, it is interactive, no it is not engagement marketing. Now, Amazon does make magnificent recomendations to me. That it does with its data mining engine. That is not engagement marketing, that is diata mining. They learn more about me based on my interactions on the site - what pages I view, what I buy, and based on that they make clever and very accurate offers for me. But that was done with me passive. I never told them how I want them to communicate with me, the engine works on analyzing my behavior. Amazon does not engage me in a UNIQUE dialogue. Yes, they created a unique profile, but not a unique dialogue. That is the difference.

What is engagement marketing - L'Oreal asks a girl which supermodel she likes, and then ADJUSTS the dialogue from that point on, that all communciations of make-up pictures, feature that fave supermodel. Then asks what is the fave color, and gives that supermodel only in the colors preferred, etc. Asks who is the fave rock music band, and offers the girl a chance to win tickets to see the band live. That is engagement marketing, a whole order of magnitude more deep involvement - where the target of marketing communications becomes actively involved - to 'co-create' the marketing experience. I don't mean to make ads for L'Oreal with a cameraphone - that would be 'user-generated advertising'. I mean co-create - meaning, that the advertiser had previously desgined an engagement marketing dialogue 'script' with all possible outcomes and options. If she says Kate Moss, then show this picture, etc...

This is engagement marketing. Engagement Marketing is the first new advertising format to capitalize on mobile phones, and works tremendously well on MMS picture messaging, and was pretty much invented where picture messaging was invented (and the world's most advanced mobile advertising market) - Japan..Amazon is brilliant interactive advertising and data mining, but it is not engagement marketing..

So Google bought Admob.. What will they do with it?

I would normally post this at the CDB blog, but today I have one of my biggest blogs of the year posted there (the Digital Divide story) and expect there will be traffic, so don't want to confuse random visitors. So will post my Admob/Google thoughts briefly here. It is 6th mass media and advertising giant Google making a power move into 7th mass media space, isn't it...

What will they make of Admob? Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been saying everywhere 'mobile mobile mobile' and has said the future of Google is not in the PC based internet, but on mobile. So this is first of all not in any way a conflict or surprise. but what is my gut feeling (I have zero knowledge, even as Russell Buckley of Admob is a close dear friend). I think we can safely look at Google's past. They entered the online internet advertising space, didn't try to become the biggest spam email provider or the biggest banner ad provivder - both were the main forms of advertising on the web prior to Google. Rather, Google learned, adapted and innovated. In Adwords, they single-handedly created a giant new advertising platform which is today bigger than spam emails and banner ads combined. And they did this, while the internet advertising itself grew faster than advertising has ever grown in its history.

So fast forward to 2009. They bought the world's biggest mobile ad platform, Admob. Good move, great match. What do we expect? Will this mean Google will only use Admob for banners? or Google will do that and search ads on mobile? No, its as silly as thinking Google would have gone to fight for the spam emails and banner ads of the internet space. They are a true innovator. Now with Admob, they have the connections to sell ads to mobile, but Google is very clever at exploiting the unique abilities of new technologies. Think Google Maps for example. No, what I expect, is that Google top management will devour my book Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media not for its case studies, but for the insights of what makes mobile unique, its 7 unique abilities as regular readers of this blog well know. And then Google will 'unleash' Admob to innovate and develop truly revolutionary ad formats for mobile. I can't wait!

And Ikea? use Augmented Reality to help sell furniture..

Yes yes yes, this is so cool and kind of 'obvious' use of AR technology. Ikea has started to use an augmented reality app to help customers view furniture in their own apartments. Very clever. Described by Mobile Commerce Daily.

Communities Dominate indeed - Giffgaff Scotland MVNO does user-generated marketing

I heard this from my friend John Blckney who is a consultant with Nokia Siemens Networks. He spotted a new MVNO in Scotland he thought I would like, and boy do I like it.. Its called Giffgaff, which literally in Scottish means "mutual giving" or something close to that. And how do they work? their idea is to take all of marketing, and 'outsource' it to the membership of the MVNO. Yes, all of it. Product design? we have seen that in Wikipedia and all sorts of crowd-sourced intitiatives from the computer operating system Linux, to SETI the search for extra-terrestrial life.. But the rest of marketing? Yeah, maybe we have seen some user-generated advertisements yes, some even used by the brands. So that is not really novel either. But all of it? Yes, pricing! User-generated pricing plans. This is brilliant. Who better know what price levels are competitive and what kind of special price plans can appeal to special segments. Customer care? Yes, the Giffgaff members are offered the chance to give some time to take customer care calls - and are of course compensated for this work. Brilliant! You are sitting in the bus for 40 minutes, nothing to do, take a couple of customer service calls on your phone, and be part of the calling centre and make some bonus money. Brilliant. Totally outsourced marketing, to your own customer base. That is communities dominate for sure. I am going to go dig for more about Giffgaff and will post a bigger piece about it at Communities Dominate blog, but first wanted to give you here at 7thMM a heads-up, to mention the company. This is quite radical. Thank you John for mentioning it, yes I love the idea!