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sarahbrottet — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 11:41:24 CST

Alternatives to a cluttered traditional marketing

sarahbrottet — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:06:29 CST

Faced with radical changes in customers' expectations, marketing has undergone deep transformations, in its content and approach. In spite of the recent good shape of the economy, the consumer has not forgotten the harder times: he has learned to choose wisely, has become a more demanding and experienced buyer.

Consumers are submerged with information every minute of the day. Unless marketing reinvents itself to be more effective, companies will be condemned to communicate to non-listeners. How can marketing reinvent itself?

First, we will analyze how traditional marketing has reached its limits in terms of effectiveness, how the consumer has changed. We will then look closely at new marketing techniques like buzz, street and guerrilla marketing, explain the techniques and tools, study examples that show their power.

As a final step we will focus on the new opportunities that the World Wide Web has created for marketing to renew itself and thrive in the digital age.

_________________________________________________

TABLE OF CONTENT

I. IS TRADITIONAL MARKETING DEAD ?

A. Consumers are overwhelmed by intrusive messages

B. Media versus New Media

1. From analogical to digital: an increasingly digitalized environment
2. Television versus Youtube
3. Radio versus Webcast Radio
4. Press versus blogs

II. THE FUTURE OF MARKETING: NEW WAYS TO DO IT

A. The power of buzz

1. What is buzz marketing?
2. The mechanisms at work
3. Buzz marketing fulfills the needs of a new consumer

B. Limitations of buzz marketing

1. Viral marketing does not work for bad products
2. The result of a buzz campaign is difficult to anticipate
3. Results are not easy to measure

C. Street and Guerrilla marketing: the new national sports

1. Definition
2. The reasons for success

III. ONLINE MARKETING: THE ULTIMATE TOOL OF NEW MARKETING

A. Why should a company be on the web anyway?

1. To be where it must be
2. Provide key information about the company and its business
3. To sell directly
4. To give online customer support
5. To address a market niche

B. Affiliate programs

1. What are they?
2. How do they work?
3. Payment types
4. The edge over traditional marketing

C. Be visible on the web: the purpose of search marketing

1. Search engines and marketing
2. Professional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies
3. Sponsored links: buy visibility on search engines

D. Blogs amplify the spread of the buzz

1. The rising influence of a new medium: weblogs
2. The dark side of the buzz : pitfalls and limitations

Useful Links

laurentcurau — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:10:48 CDT

Buzz Marketing

CultureBuzz.com

Buzzoodle
Buzzoodle's Squidoo Lens about Buzz
Word of Mouth marketing - (cf. Wikipedia)
Harvard Business School article
Buzzmarketing.fr

Viral Marketing

What is viral Marketing ?
Wikipedia article
The Power of Viral Marketing - 5 types of viral marketing

Mass Marketing

Exploding TV
Exploding Radio
Welcome to the on-demand future
The end of the one to many era - Meïdia
The Vanishing Mass Market - Business Week

Street Marketing

http://www.marketing-alternatif.com/
Centre de ressources économie gestion
Le street marketing fait son chemin - L'Entreprise.com

Alternative marketing

Experiential marketing - (cf. Wikipedia)
Undercover marketing - (cf. Wikipedia)

Permission marketing

From permission marketing" to "participation marketing"
Article from fastcompany.com

Seth Godin articles

Small is the New Big - Squidoo Lens
Fiche de lecture Permission Marketing - S. Godin

Online Marketing

Affiliate marketing
e-commerce
Search Engine Marketing
Internet Marketing Strategy

Tim O'Reily : What is Web 2.0 ?
La Fraise : when blogging and e-commerce come together

Key figures about the Internet, Journal du Net (fr)

1. Is Marketing dead ?

laurentcurau — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 10:54:26 CDT

A. Consumers are overwhelmed by intrusive messages

American consumers are submerged with a constant flow of advertisements, which aim at capturing a portion of their attention. Seth Godin has named this principle “interruption marketing”: all advertisements’ function is to interrupt people’s activities to grab his attention.

However, the media’s ubiquity has surged in the last few years. It has been calculated that an American receives around one million messages a year, which amounts to around 3000 a day. If this figure seems exaggerated, one must remind oneself that all stimulations are taken into account.

During a single visit to the supermarket, a shopper is surrounded by about 1000 messages. One hour in front of the television adds a good 40, and a single daily issue of a newspaper contains around 100. Should also be added all the brand names that are printed on tee shirts, logos on the computer, Microsoft’s logo that is displayed every time it is switched on, ads on the radio, billboards, catalogues and unsolicited phone calls that the everyone receives every now and then.

Faced with this avalanche of advertisements, companies are compelled to think of new ways to communicate with their targets, which is more cost effective in regard of the budget/brand recognition ratio.

Picture 1 - Billboards on Times Square, New York City

Picture 2 - "Delete!" campaign, Vienna, June 2005

In April 2004, A Yankelovich Partners poll for the American Association of Advertising Agencies found that a majority of Americans are increasingly annoyed by the tidal wave of advertising they are exposed to:

• 65 percent said they believed that they "are constantly bombarded with too much" advertising
• 61 percent agreed that the amount of advertising and marketing to which they are exposed "is out of control”
• 60 percent said their opinion of advertising "is much more negative than just a few years ago"
• 54 percent of the survey respondents said they "avoid buying products that overwhelm them with advertising and marketing"
• 69 percent said they "are interested in products and services that would help them skip or block marketing"

In response to this loss of effectiveness, marketing strategists have invented a remedy that turned out worse than the evil it offered to cure. They decided to be louder, more aggressive and more ubiquitous in their interruptions. They have thus worsened the impression of aggression consumers have.

This engages marketers in a vicious circle, in which they will have to increase their budgets constantly to stay ahead of the game. The less ads work, the more they have to spend, the more they spend, the more they saturate consumers and make their ads even less effective.

Marketing professionals who have diagnosed this loss of efficacy are starting to turn towards the rising star of new media.

B. Media versus New Media

1. From analogical to digital: an increasingly digitalized environment

Internet has been around since 1997. Narrowband access was the standard. Websites were still relatively few and the content was an adaptation of corporate brochures. Only savvy engineers were able to communicate through forums and IRC channels. Regular people were then starting to use email.
Since around 2001, the introduction of broadband Internet into homes has marked the start of a revolution in the way people handle information, media, and digital content. The bandwidth has increased from 512k in 2001 to up to 18 000 (for some Free subscribers in France).

This surge in available bandwidth has really turned the Internet in a digital multimedia platform, ready to handle heavy content like film, music and high-resolution photography.

Alongside this phenomenon, there was a boom in sales for Pocket Digital Assistants (PDA), digital cameras and movie recorders. As people bought more of these, they demanded more ways to share their homemade digital content, thus maintaining high demand for computers and increased Internet bandwidth.

In 2006, the trend has slowed down. As the market has grown more competitive and mature, bandwidth level is stable and sales in consumer electronics have ceased to increase. The only late boom has been for widescreen TV’s. Internet users have now grown familiar with the medium, and the generation who has grown up with the Internet is increasing in numbers.

In 2006, the massive trend is in media sharing. Dedicated platforms have appeared which let the user do just that. He can share pictures on Flickr, and upload homemade movies on Youtube, and view other people’s content as well, thanks to streaming video.

2. Television versus Youtube

Technological evolution has gradually liberated consumers from TV, which was the only choice for media entertainment since its invention. TV imposed to the viewer to be available at a given time for a given length to watch a program. Channels and schedules are concepts that were built on constraint. These ways have become increasingly difficult to bear in regard to new attitudes and new life habits of consumers.

Active media has won over passive media: with the web and online gaming, time allocation is switching in favour of the web, for the generations who are born with it. The British Ofcom has measured that in 2006, people between 16-24 years old watch 7 hours less TV than their parents, weekly. That is 1 hour less per day.

The greatest online competitors for traditional broadcast TV are websites like MySpace, and more directly by sites like Dailymotion and Youtube, which focus on video content. Youtube enables users to upload their own videos on the web and view other users’ ones. Each video can be commented and rated, and all videos can be searched by keywords and categories.

Thus, anyone can access any kind of content at any time, for no extra cost than a broadband Internet subscription. Instead of fixed programs, Youtube gives access, thanks to the rating system, to a perpetual “best of”; as the best rated videos and most viewed appear more visible to visitors. Music bands upload their music videos. The audience can be such that it can actually reveal a new band to the public. The band “Ok Go” acquired fame through their Youtube music video “a Million Ways”, as it became the most downloaded music video.

With such success stories, companies are beginning to grasp the new importance of the web and are allocating greater budgets to online advertising.

Coca-Cola has launched its “The Coke Side of Life” on July 10th in France, just after the 2006 Football World Cup. Coca-Cola chose Dailymotion and Youtube to broadcast its new set of video ads, before extending to TV. Youtube has somehow served as a laboratory in which the company could measure the success of their new ads before launching them on TV.

3. Radio versus Webcast Radio

In 2005, Arbitron/Edison (www.arbi-tron.com), an American Media Research company, published the results of a wide study of the media and the Internet in the USA. The study has come to the conclusion that around 55 million consumers use online radio and video services. According to the study, users prefer online radio compared to regular radios for the reasons shown in the table below.

Internet radio brings many features that cannot be found on mainstream radio, and has changed the radiophonic experience for listeners. Internet enables the listener to see the title of the song that is being played, to choose the genre, style and country of origin. Also, whereas terrestrial radio offers a limited choice of stations depending on the quality of reception, Internet radio offers a virtually unlimited choice at a constant level of audio quality.

In this sense, Pandora symbolizes the future of radio. It is a good example of the wide possibilities that computerization brought to radio. Pandora enables the user to personalize his radio. The user enters the name of an artist or song. The software will then play tunes that he is likely to appreciate. As the tunes go along, the user can say whether he likes the song or not by using a thumbs-up thumbs-down button, and the software reacts by refining its play list of songs. The company earns money through advertising and affiliation (see part III). Pandora has been voted one of the 50 « Coolest » websites of 2006 by TIME.com.

4. Press versus blogs

Thanks to blogs, companies can potentially do without any middlemen, and broadcast information online in a handful of minutes, in a less formatted form than the press communiqué. " We don’t have a choice. Either we decide to ignore these new media and our industry is at risk, either we try to understand the way they work and their goal ", says Guillaume du Gardier, CEO of PR Planet, a public relations agency established in 2004 that has decided to integrate blogs in its strategy.

Blogs are a new channel to be explored by companies and press relations agencies. Their first advantage is to allow a cost effective, immediate and easy edition, broadcast and update of news, without an expensive and intricate content management system. The possibilities in terms of interactivity are also a great plus. " Blogs encourage a new form of relationship. This is no brochure talk. It enables you to have direct contact, to open up. Concretely, the information is shorter in format, and we can easily include links, white papers, and studies ", adds Guillaume du Gardier.

Moreover, blogs enable companies to publish information in the RSS format. This file format can be used to distribute content. People who wish to do so can subscribe to the RSS feed with the adequate software. The great advantage is that it relies on voluntary subscription only. Hence, journalists’ email boxes are relieved on some potentially useless messages. Nokia, Microsoft and Cisco have chosen to edit their press releases through RSS, for journalists to read.

The media industry is under tough competition from new forms of communication. Movie sharing platforms, web radios and blogs are transforming the media landscape. In the meantime, traditional media, which relies on a declining media industry, must find new ways to thrive in this new landscape.

How can they adapt?

--- GO TO PART 2

2. The future of marketing: new ways to do it

laurentcurau — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 10:53:26 CDT

Consumers are increasingly resistant to traditional interruption (see chart below) marketing. However, companies cannot give up spending on this type of advertising altogether. This is where lies the paradox. Companies cannot go without it, but most of the time they cannot grow with it either.

For the last century or so, one could look at a company’s advertising budget and know whether it would get big or small. Until now, companies like Procter & Gamble managed to gain an edge with great aggressive advertising, get return on investment and grow profitably.

Old-fashioned advertising is not going to disappear overnight, but it is only a matter of time before marketing CEO’s, investors and managers become critical of their huge advertising budget.

The industry needs new ways to do it. Which one will be able to generate consumer awareness and receptivity? The idea of buzz marketing is to have consumers do the job. If a good product speaks for itself, buzz marketing helps build a virus and make it spread, from one consumer to the next (see chart below).

With some 300 million copies sold worldwide, Harry Potter is a blockbuster. From the start, it has not benefited from huge advertising campaigns. It just took off, thanks to word of mouth.

Now Pottermania is cleverly fuelled thanks to some careful spells of buzz marketing. The editor does so by letting very small amounts of information out on the Harry Potter official website, fake information leaks are posted on personal blogs and fan forums. The press acts as an echo and relays rumours.

Let’s have a look at the inner workings of that buzz.

A. The power of buzz

The “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” theory, formulated in the 1960’s by sociologist Stanley Milgram, is a powerful theory about social networks.
According to his theory , all of us know Kevin Bacon six degrees of acquaintance away. In other words, the entire world knows each other through acquaintances with six degrees of separation. Buzz marketing’s goal is to take advantage of this fact to spread messages widely. Let us have a closer look at what mechanisms are at work here.

1. What is buzz marketing?

“Buzz marketing also known as viral marketing or relationship marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message” .

The expression “buzz marketing” made its first appearance circa 1997 with the rise of the Internet and web marketing. It was a term used to describe the phenomenon of the Microsoft’s free email service Hotmail, which spread with the rapidity of a virus from naught to twelve million subscribers in only eighteen months.

2. The mechanisms at work

Numerous campaigns like for Volkswagen’s New Beetle, Budweiser’s ‘Whassup’ campaign, the “Friends” TV series, and the Blair Witch Project were all surprising by the scope and intensity of their success in spite of their initial low profile approach and sometimes tight budgets.

Buzz marketing is what made it work. A well-orchestrated word of mouth has allowed maximum impact with minimum means.
The concept is pretty simple. The virus is inoculated to a carefully chosen target, who then acts as a vector of the message towards a great number of people, who often share similar interests.

Hence, the message does not come from outside the group, but from the inside. It appears like a recommendation in the eye of the people who are contaminated by the virus.

a) Sneezers, the heart of buzz

"We're arming consumers with the tools or knowledge they can take back to their peer groups so they'll be perceived as being in the know. Ultimately, the brand benefits because an accepted member of the social circle will always be far more credible than any communication that could ever come directly from the brand."

- Scott Stern, senior vice-president at Bates USA

The first step of a buzz marketing campaign is to define its target (the end users) precisely. Then, it is crucial to find who are the most influential people among this target group. This step is critical, for they are the ones on which the efficiency of the buzz relies.

These most influential people are the Trendsetters (also called Evangelists). They are the ones who set the example, who create a trend. At this stage, a brand’s goal is to set up a one-to-one personalized campaign to attract and seduce them. These people can be employees, vendors, and consumers — anyone who grows an emotive connection with it.

Apple, for instance, has many passionate evangelists, who work at converting Microsoft Windows users. The resulting new converts are the Early Adopters. Marketers can also target Influencers, who are often experts known for giving good advice, and who rely on rational arguments, unlike the more emotive Evangelists. The Early Adopters then spread the message to the Mass Adopters, who massively adopt the trend. They tend to be less open to novelty, and have a wait-and-see attitude. They do not like to be too different from the mass.

The key factor of success for the word to spread is the amount of respect and trust Mass Adopters have in Influencers and Evangelists, who tend to be intelligent and charismatic characters. Mass Adopters rely on them to filter and analyze the data for them.

The Parisian shop Colette is a perfect example of trendsetter. This shop sells its products in a grandiose setting. Fashion is like a ceremony there. Early adopters converge to this store to get in the know of what’s hot and what’s in. They go there to buy beautiful and uncommon items that will generate want in their entourage. Hence, the buzz is sparked.

b) The transmission channels

Buzz does not travel through a particular medium but is carried through all of them indiscriminately. This is why a key factor of success is to set up a multi-channel approach. Journalists, friend networks, blogs, websites and opinion leaders must spread the word.

Buzz marketing is about the story one can tell about the product, more than the product itself.

3. Buzz marketing fulfills the needs of a new consumer

Buzz or word-of-mouth marketing influences more people to buy, or not to buy products and services, than most other forms of marketing. Why is it so powerful?

a) Buzz plays on the need to share

Consumers have grown to be adults. They are well informed and cunning. They compare prices and level of service. In a noisy environment, the only people they listen to are acquaintances, who are experts in their own field of consumption. And inevitably, some acquaintances will be mavens. Mavens are people who crave to spread their new findings or their latest good buy.

Apple Computer is a nice example of the need to share.

Thanks to its strong identity and brand, Apple has managed to create in the heart of the consumer such an emotional connection that it is not uncommon to find Macmaniacs, who admit to loving their Mac . Mac addicts are in love with their Mac, and love to talk about it.

Hence, they are great evangelists, who aim at converting their entourage, by making them “switch” from the PC world, epitomized by Microsoft Windows, to the community of Mac users. Apple’s recent advertising campaigns “Think Different” and “Make the switch” are clearly an echo of the religious passion users have for their macs.

Picture 3 - Apple plays on its "cool" image

The secret of this is undoubtedly the quality of Apple products, which are not only functional but beautifully designed. A mac evangelist knows their switch will delight his converts. There is thus an “ego” incentive for him. Also, as an expert, he has no reason to lie because his reputation is at stake. This makes the buzz more founded and trustworthy.

According to a study made by Jupiter Communication in 1999, 57% of sales are the result of recommendation (42% for press, 24% for online advertising). Another study by Euro RSCG in 2005 estimates 42% of under 30’s admit to being influenced by their peers in their brand choices.

The challenge for brands is to take advantage of his dynamic by transmitting their message in a “peer to peer” mode (2), rather than the usual top-down (1).

b) People seek to remain on the cutting edge.

Our consumerist societies have always valued people in the know, people who have a sixth sense to decrypt trends. But what is new, is that is has become increasingly fashionable to be fashionable. More people than ever have become actors of trends, instead of just waiting to follow them.

However, this same consumerist society also values symbols of belonging, that make individuals part of a community, be it skaters, painters or geeks. There lies the paradox: to be trendy and original, yet recognized by peers as being part of a larger community. Nobody wants to be the unique representative of a trend. People want to share, to belong. These two contradictory tensions thus immensely contribute to spread the buzz.

Brands have hence had the idea to appeal to this kind of behaviour, and some products have been born again, thanks to this method. The famous hip-hop band « Outkast » had a huge hit with a song in which they sang “Shake it like a Polaroid picture”. Polaroid immediately identified the opportunity and contacted the band’s manager. The camera-maker gave away cameras to Outkast band members, who used their cameras on stage to take pictures at the Grammy Awards 2003. After the actual show, the Polaroid cameras went from hand to hand, and celebrities (notably Paris Hilton, Macy Gray) took pictures of each other all night long. As a result, Polaroid cameras were all over the official photographies of the event. The Polaroid experience was all over the tabloids overnight.

The buzz was immediate. Polaroid had taken advantage of the Grammy Awards to revive its fading image. The company saw its brand awareness surge to 58%. In the following two months, Polaroid.com got more traffic than the whole previous year, and online sales increased by 90%.

Ad Age Magazine voted the Polaroid buzz campaign in the Top Three most un-traditional advertising campaigns of 2003.

Picture 4 - Polaroid buzzing in the tabloid papers

c) Consumers enter a win-win situation

Traditional advertising functions like a game, with its winners and losers. Every time a product attracts consumer attention, the company wins over a part of his time, and the consumer loses a bit of his time. If the message he has listened to is irrelevant for him, he has doubled his losses.

Buzz marketing parts from this logic. A new game emerges in which everyone wins. First, the consumer wins by recommending a product. It reinforces his reputation among the hive as a useful source of information. And because he respects his peers, he will refrain from recommending products that will not make his life better.
Then, not only the receiver obviously gains a valuable recommendation for himself, but he in turn gains the ability to be a contaminator, transmit the message and reinforce his own reputation.
Finally, the company wins over new customers, who will be receptive to its message in the future.

The other strength of buzz is its accuracy. With traditional advertising, brands bombard the public with a more or less targeted message, hoping that some will eventually hear the noise.

Buzz works in a different way: by definition, it spreads only to those who are concerned by the message. On top of that, the contaminator personalizes the recommendation and adds his user-experience. The superiority in accuracy of buzz compared to TV or radio ads is striking.

In short, the buzz formula :

1. Make a remarkably good/different/bigger … product (e.g. Apple)
2. Make the message effortlessly transferable (e.g. Hotmail)
3. Choose the hive well
4. Make sure the transmitters gain from transmitting the virus (ego)
5. The virus must persist: enough people must be using the product for the others to feel left-out losers (e.g. the Palm Pilot, mobile phones)

B. Limitations of buzz marketing

With such success stories as Hotmail or the Blair Witch Project, viral marketing can sometimes be perceived as a miracle solution. Advertising budgets are often the first ones to be squeezed during difficult times, and the low-costs of a buzz campaign can seem extremely attractive for brands.

Unfortunately, miracles do not exist, and buzz campaigns are more art than science, complex to set up and track.

1. Viral marketing does not work for bad products

It is an obvious truth, but a truth nonetheless: no matter the marketing campaign, a bad product will not sell. The success of products like Apple’s iPod, Volkswagen’s New Beetle, the Palm Pilot or Microsoft’s Hotmail are primarily linked to the high quality of these items. Quality will make the buzz last and will make sure the buzz is a positive one. Bad consumer experience can turn the buzz into a negative one.
Viral marketing’s role is really to amplify a sleeping word of mouth.

2. The result of a buzz campaign is difficult to anticipate

The success of buzz is always prone to uncertainty. A certain number of rules of thumb and techniques are here to increase the odds of success in the spark and spread of a buzz. However, word of mouth is tricky art, rather than an infallible science. A key factor of success is to outsource some parts of the communication to consumers. However, this amounts to losing some share of control over the message, with sometimes some unforeseeable side effects.

3. Results are not easy to measure

To launch a buzz campaign is one thing, but to measure its effects and effectiveness is another. Where companies rely on consumers to relay their message, traditional tools for measurement become obsolete.
Some lead agencies like Supergazole, Culture Buzz or DMC, have begun setting up statistical tools based on the number of downloads and transmission of a viral ad, but overall, the killer tools have yet to be invented.

C. Street and Guerrilla marketing: the new national sports

1. Definition

a) Street marketing

Street marketing is an advertising campaign set in the street, in close contact with the consumer. This kind of campaign has been around for years already, but its use tends to be more and more diverse.
Reintroduced a few years ago to communicate with youth consumers who seemed oblivious to TV and radio ads, street marketing has now extended to every category of consumer.
Mainly utilized for product launches or to communicate strange alternative messages, street marketing today can be seen in different forms: sticker distribution, flyers, gadgets, samples, and events.

Picture 5 – « Antarctica, go before it’s too late ».

Street marketing operation in Oslo for Kilroy, a travel agency specialized in extreme destinations. (May 2006)

b) Guerrilla marketing

Confronted with Napoleon’s army of conscripts, the invaded Spanish responded with ambushes and traps, which was highly unconventional at the time. With very little means, the Spanish rebels were able to inflict heavy losses to the “Grande Armée”. It was thus called “the little war”, which translates in Spanish into “guerrilla”. Guerrilla marketing is the philosophy of low budget unconventional warfare, applied to marketing.

Guerrilla marketing, as described by Jay Conrad Levinson in his popular 1982 book Guerrilla Marketing, is “an unconventional way of performing promotional activities on a very low budget”.
The success of a guerrilla marketing campaign is based on the degree of creativity involved in the concept, and the ephemeral aspect of it that will surprise viewers and trigger a buzz. Guerrilla marketing uses original, unconventional methods to reach the same objective as those of traditional advertising.

The TriBeCa alternative marketing agency carried out a guerrilla campaign in September 2006 for Lee Jeans in Paris. To promote the opening of a new store in rue des Rosiers, the French agency disseminated denims (and denim accessories) all around the neighbourhood. In the jeans’ pockets, passers-by could gather flyers. This campaign has not gone unnoticed, and several websites have talked about it, which shows that this type of campaign is hype.

The concept proved appropriate in this particular case: passers-by were invited on the spot to visit the new Lee store, an immediate transformation that adds up to the buzz created by the new opening.

Picture 6 - Lee Jeans' guerrilla marketing campaign, September 2006, Paris.

Here are interesting examples of guerrilla marketing:

Picture 7 - Mr Propre in the streets of Düsseldorf (June 2006)

Picture 8 – Guerrilla campaign Papa John’s Pizza home delivery service, by Saatchi & Saatchi in Peru, June 2006

Picture 9 - Nike turns public bins into basketball nets

2. The reasons for success

a) Brands can reach untouchable targets

Street and guerrilla marketing enable brands to communicate with their targets in their own familiar environment, during events or in moments when they are relaxed and receptive, ready to enjoy a product in a laid-back way.

These alternative marketing techniques are effective when the targets are busy and time-conscious people, such as businessmen and young professionals. They are highly unstable and volatile, interested in brands and their goings-on, and very much aware of the latest marketing techniques. These characteristics make them difficult people to catch unawares.

b) Big impact, low budget

The cost of this kind of campaign turns out to be very affordable, especially when compared to the cost of a TV or press ad campaign. “The key factor of success for street marketing lies more in its originality and the creativeness of the event, rather than in the budget”, says Delphine Manceau, professor at ESCP-EAP in Paris.

--- GO TO PART 3

4. As a conclusion

laurentcurau — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 10:45:27 CDT

There is no doubt as whether the developed world has entered a new era. It is here to stay. Our time is that of digitalization and content sharing. The media industry is undergoing a digital revolution.

TV and radio networks, as well as newspapers are in deep crisis. There are less and less readers, less and less viewers, less and less listeners. The power is shifting to consumers. Increasingly so, they are getting accustomed to on demand and personalization. They can choose what, when and where, and they are losing the habit of sticking to TV schedules.

And as traditional marketing was so intricately tied to the media, marketing follows a mirrored pattern, and is also under deep transformation.

Here are attempts to synthesize all this:

So, does that mean Internet is killing the TV Star? Not sure. TV did not end up killing radio, but rather forced it to adapt to the new rules of the game. How will TV adapt? It is too soon to know.

What is sure however is that the transformations in the media industry have forced marketing to explore new techniques. Praised by a few agencies and brands, these new techniques have proven effective in communicating with the « new consumer », who has become more wise and well informed than ever.

However, companies that hire viral marketing agencies seem to have done so more as a trial out of curiosity, rather than with the intention of making viral marketing a pillar in their communication. If viral marketing has proven itself to be effective, why don’t companies massively adopt it?

3. Online marketing: the ultimate tool of new marketing

laurentcurau — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 10:19:52 CDT

A. Why should a company be on the web anyway ?

1. To be where it must be

Source: http://wwww.internetworldstats.com

In 2006, approximately 1 billion people have access to the word wide web around the globe. Whatever a company does, it cannot ignore this billion people, because its competitors will not. It must have an online presence to have access to the people of the world who are connected.
Internet users are also the mostly educated and wealthier than average people. They represent an interesting prospect for companies who plan on selling over the Internet.

2. Provide key information about the company and its business

Business is mostly about contacts and networking. It’s not only what you know but also whom you know. The business card tradition embodies this necessity, and the web can have the function of a business card that can be found 24/7, at a very low cost.
On top of serving as a business card, a company’s website can be used to provide valuable information about its business. For instance, it can give details on its core competencies, service, endorsements, and types of payment that are accepted.
The company can also provide real-time information so critical to its customers that it can actually increase its level of service.

• Is the product in stock?
• In how many days can it be shipped?
• Given a query, what other products can be recommended to the customer?

The web gives companies the possibility to do just that.

3. To sell directly

This may seem the main reason to go on the web, but the Internet will not make products sell like magic. The Internet in only a different medium, and is not sufficient as such to increase sales. Therefore, a company must still go through the whole process of thinking through well its offer, target and strategy.

Once this is done, the website through which the company is going to sell must focus on making the visitor click on the right buttons and facilitate as much as possible the buying process.

As Seth Godin put it in « The Big Red Fez », the visitor is not an engineer who will put up with technical jargon. He will not give some effort to understand what you are up to.
In fact, the visitor is more like a time-conscious monkey, looking for a virtual banana to click on.

Picture 10 - The "banana" is clearly visible

Here at Amazon.com, the banana « Add to shopping cart » is clearly shown and calls for the user to click on it (picture above).

4. To give online customer support

Companies can relieve their customer support teams by publishing online the most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on their website. Dell has done this and cut customer support costs substantially. This also enables sales people to focus on sales, rather than spend most of their time answering recurrent questions from customers.

5. To address a market niche

Internet has contributed in abolishing boundaries in the way a company considers a market: geography has much less impact than ever before. Thus, some market niches suddenly become worth addressing. The merchant website artoyz.com sells designer toys. A brick and mortar shop of this kind would hardly be profitable due to its geographically limited influence. The web enables such a merchant to be accessible by art toys fanatics from all over the world, at any time.

For more information, read Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory.

B. Affiliate programs

1. What are they?

Affiliate programs are also called « associate programs ». In such a program, the affiliate is paid by the merchant site to send traffic to him. The affiliate will then be paid according to the agreement he has with him. He can be paid according to the number of visitors he has sent to his affiliation partner, or according to the sales these visitors have made.

2. How do they work?

In order for an affiliation to work properly, one must be able to keep track of visitors and their actions. This is crucial, as it will enable the affiliates to determine how much they will be paid.

According to the agreement, somebody has to measure:

• How many people click on a merchant’s link on an affiliate website
• How many people end up buying something or performs a particular action once the affiliate website has sent them to the merchant’s website
• How many people have seen the merchant website’s banner link on an affiliate website

Somehow, there are issues. Someone has to keep track of these programs, in order to know how much is to be paid to each affiliate. Also, it is time-consuming for companies to recruit affiliates, as much as it is for websites to seek out adequate companies.

Amazon takes care of its own program, but often affiliates do not trust merchants to be truthful in their measurements and bills.

The solution is to join an affiliate network. Affiliate networks, such as TradeDoubler, act as brokers, and offer the following services to either party:

• Track all activity
• Arrange all payments
• Help affiliates set up the necessary links on their site
• Help recruit affiliates by including an online merchant's affiliate program in their directory
• Enable to view reports of their traffic.

3. Payment types

There are three basic types of affiliate program payment arrangements:

a) Pay-per-sale (cost-per-sale for the merchant)

When a visitor brought by affiliate actually purchases something on the merchant’s website. The affiliate can be paid with a fixed or variable commission.

b) Pay-per-click (cost-per-click)

In this case, the payment depends on the number of people who click on the merchant’s banner on the affiliate’s website.

c) Pay-per-lead (cost-per-lead)

The payment is made according to the number of visitors sent by the affiliate who fill in a form of some kind with their contact information. This information is then used as a sales lead by the merchant.

In fact, any agreement can exist, based on any given action. In this case, the merchant will pay the affiliate any time he sends him a visitor who performs this given action.

4. The edge over traditional marketing

The merchant site pays only for the visitors that affiliates have actually sent to his site, not for a hypothetical number of viewers, like it is the norm for TV and radio. With affiliation and pay-per-sale, a company only pays for what it actually gets, and it can measure it precisely.
With the web, advertising is no longer a fixed cost; it becomes intrinsically linked to sales.

C. Be visible on the web: the purpose of search marketing

1. Search engines and marketing

Picture 11 - The three most popular search engines on the web

Each search engine works in its own specific way, with unique algorithms and set of rules. These search engines crawl the web to index Internet pages. In order to provide users with the most relevant content during their search, these search engines look into websites for specific things such as recurrent words or incoming links. The key factor of success in this game is to optimize the website, through content and design, in such a way that it will appear in the results page for the keywords that a company deems relevant to its business.

For instance, let’s imagine a Real Estate Company decides to set up a website. In order to appear well placed in search engines, it will have to make sure its site shows up on the search results page for keywords such as « real estate », « buy house » or « rent apartment ».
The key is to know precisely what the target is going to search for, and design the website accordingly.

Knowing one’s market is crucial, and this is the reason why one can really talk about « search marketing ».

2. Professional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies

All this would be pretty easy if the rules used by search engines to index the web were permanent. But unfortunately for companies, the algorithms search engines change all the time, so there is a need to constantly keep up with them. This can turn out to be very time consuming, so instead of hiring someone specifically for this task, many companies choose to hire a professional SEO company.

SEO companies know the inner workings of search engines. Their mission is to help companies design their website and elaborate content so that their website will be well ranked in search results.
Let’s take the example of Google. Google relies heavily on textual content on a page, and link popularity to rank pages. Understanding this, the SEO company will make recommendations so that a given client site will rank well on Google.

Picture 12 - ”ICN Graduate Business School” better indexed by Msn Search than Google

Somehow, if a company does not wish to go through the process of optimizing its website for search engines, and do not wish to hire an SEO, it can always choose to purchase keywords from search engines.

3. Sponsored links: buy visibility on search engines

Overture, which now belongs to Yahoo!, has invented sponsored links on search engines. Their concept is to sell keywords to companies who wish to appear well placed on the search results page, regardless of their natural position in the search results rankings.
On the picture below, the purchased links attached to the keywords « buy » and «house » are the ones highlighted in blue at the top of the page, and the ones appearing in the sidebar on the right. Every time somebody clicks on one of these links, Google receives payment of the agreed per-click price for the concerned keywords.

Picture 13 - Search results page for the keywords "buy house" on Google

D. Blogs amplify the spread of the buzz

Word of mouth has always existed, but the emergence of blogs as widely used media has sparked a revolution in the spread of a buzz. And in a time when advertising is looking for fresh new alternatives, companies have come to the realization that the web can serve them well.
How exactly does the web help spread a buzz? What are the risks attached to using the web for spreading the corporate word?

1. The rising influence of a new medium: weblogs

Wikipedia, the online user-edited encyclopaedia, defines blogs as « a type of website where entries are made (such as in a journal or diary), displayed in a reverse chronological order. »

Someone who runs a blog is called a blogger. A blogger can post text, photo and video content. Each post is archived and can be found at a permanent unique link, a permalink.

The success of blogs is impressive. As of April 2006, Technorati CEO Daniel Sifry gives a State of the Blogosphere :

• Technorati tracks over 35.3 million blogs
• The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months
• It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
• On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
• 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
• Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour

Chart 6 – The evolution of the blogosphere since 2003

a) The genesis of the blog phenomenon

The blog phenomenon is believed to have started around 1997, when Jorn Barger called his site a “weblog”.

In 1999, another user, Peter Merholz somehow broke the word into “we blog”. Soon enough, the word « blog » became as much a word as a noun, and became widespread over the net. Around 2003, blogs started to turn into a web phenomenon worldwide, especially in France .

b) The reasons for such an extraordinary success

Blogs are usually held by amateurs. They speak of their hobbies and share their thoughts or expertise about particular subjects. This amateurism gives blogs a taste of unpolished authenticity, compared with the widespread formatted corporate style. This probably contributed to the initial success of blogs.

What carried their success beyond just being a new way to publish are their social features.
The first one of them is the possibility to comment on any post. « The traditional media publish information. Blogs start conversations ’ is the motto for Loic le Meur, CEO for Europe of Six Apart, a blog hosting company.

On some of Loic le Meur’s posts, there are hundreds of comments. For instance, the post that shows Loic le Meur’s interview with France’s controversial Nicolas Sarkozy has received as many as 403 comments . This reader-generated content creates incentive for people to return on the blog, thus increasing traffic.

Another central feature is the « blogroll ». A blogroll is a list of links to websites of blogs the reader might be interested in. It has increasingly become a way to show readers to which clique he belongs.

Take the case of a football fanatic. He has set up a blog about his passion and regularly visits websites and blogs that he considers worth while visiting. He compiles a list of these in his blogroll, and readers will see immediately that he is part of a social group around football. The blogroll also constitutes an act of friendship and support, as it is a way for bloggers to increase each other’s visibility on search engines.

So to speak, blogs are platforms for conversations, involving thousands of people for the most popular. In France alone, there are 2 million blogs. This figure is such that brands cannot ignore this population. If a company chooses to ignore bloggers, it will at best lose an edge faced with competitors who have chosen to monitor blogs closely and integrate them in their marketing strategy. But in what way can brands benefit from blogs?

c) Buzz: blogs spread the word

Blogs are made of posts. Posts are commented. Links to other blogs and sites can be included inside these posts and comments. The blogroll gives the reader the chance to read blogs around a similar topic.

As we can see, the structure of a blog is ideal for any idea to spread amongst any given community. This feature is promising for companies who wish to launch a buzz marketing campaign over the Internet.

The chart below shows that the blogosphere reacts to news instantly. They react to any major event, may it be politics, sports (Superbowl), or commercial. The launch of the iPod video by Apple has triggered a huge peak in the number of postings. We can rightly say Apple has succeeded in creating a buzz around its new product.

Picture 14 - Blogs create a buzz for each major event

In this example, Apple has created a successful buzz. But how did they pull this off?

Apple applies a very strict policy of total secrecy around the elaboration of its products. As a result, geeks and fans speculate for months over upcoming products. Needless to say, every product launch is a surprise that creates enormous buzz over the web.

Somehow this is a case of indirect buzz. Apple did not interact directly with bloggers to spark some buzz. So how can companies use the leverage of blogs to trigger a buzz in a proactive way?

d) Using influential bloggers to create buzz

Most bloggers speak of their everyday life, but some run more specialised blogs. Subjects range from baseball to 1930’s paraphernalia or French cuisine. These are the most interesting ones to target for brands. Bloggers who run a specialized blog will be read by a more homogeneous audience. It is thus easy to avoid missing the target.

Warner Bros has successfully applied this strategy with its campaign for the release of the latest Harry Potter film on DVD. First, the firm carefully selected the best and most read blogs that focused around the Harry Potter series, DVD’s and cinema. By doing so, WB was making sure they had the optimal audience for their product. Then, the studio gave away limited series of the DVD to the most influential bloggers, five days before its official launch to the public. The exclusive disclosure successfully sparked many comments and posts on other blogs, creating a large but targeted buzz.

Another approach is to create a mini website with viral content that can be easily shared, thanks to « send to a friend » or « blog this ’ buttons. Personiva has specialized in what they called « personalized branding ». The user starts by uploading photos of him in the system. Then, personiva integrates the photographs into the online video commercial.

As a result of this stardom effect, people feel an urge to share their personal ad with their family and friends. Hewlett Packard has successfully used this for their new campaign « the computer gets personal again ». As can be seen on the screen capture below, the result is impressive.

Picture 15 - HP's "The Computer is Personal Again" viral campaign

The visitor is able to blog his personal HP ad, but he must sign up (by giving away his email) beforehand. HP not only has a way to make the ad spread, but also gets to build up a good relevant database of email addresses.

2. The dark side of the buzz: pitfalls and limitations

The Internet gives companies tremendous power to spread their word. However, they must be careful to use this power cautiously.

• Lose control over the buzz

Not all websites can handle an increase of traffic by the thousands overnight. If the buzz campaign involves giveaways and goodies, the marketing department must make sure it can live up to their promises. If not, the buzz can turn into a negative one and damage a valuable corporate image that could have taken years to build. To counter this risk, it can be a good idea to set up limitations.

• Saturate consumers

If this kind of marketing becomes used too frequently, people will become increasingly resistant. Originality is what makes viral marketing viral. If people become saturated by their friends’ viral emails, they will start filtering them like unsollicited email.

• Fall into stealth marketing (also called "undercover" marketing)

Some brands have had the idea to create their own blog. So far, it could be a good idea. Somehow, some brands have thought of disguising their corporate blog as a personal blog. This technique is often referred to as « stealth » marketing.

HP has used this method successfully with its fingerskilz.tv blog. Everyone believed the blog was run by a bored office worker who posted close-up videos of hands disguised as football players, performing football tricks with a wadded up paper ball. The site successfully attracted 180 000 visitors to it, and many people came up with their own videos, posted on Youtube. It is only after a few weeks that HP revealed the true nature of the blog.

Picture 16 - HP's fingerskilz.tv "personal" blog

While it was a success for HP , it can sometimes turn out as a disaster.

The France-based VICHY cosmetics firm has had a tricky experience of viral marketing through blogs. Everything started with a blog called « Le Journal de ma Peau », written by a thirty-something woman called Claire. On her blog she posted opinions about the latest VICHY products she was trying out. However, something went wrong. The readers of the blog discovered that Claire was a fictitious character, and what looked like a personal blog was in fact run by VICHY’s staff. Regular readers felt betrayed and manipulated, and spoke of it in their personal blogs. All this resulted in a lot of negative buzz over the Internet and in the offline world. The marketing staff admitted that they had been wrong to do this, and made its coming out with a public apology on the blog.

"(…) I have read your comments, and I understand we have a lot more to learn about the world of blogs. Don’t be too harsh…"

Full text here (in French)

All in all, marketing is all about the trust customers have in a brand. If this trust is broken, the company loses.

Bibliography

laurentcurau — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 07:40:36 CDT

Books in English

By Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point - How little things can make a big difference
Blink - The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

By Seth Godin
Unleashing the ideavirus
The Purple Cow
All Marketers are liars
The Big Red Fez - How to make any website better
Permission Marketing

Google Story, by David Wise

Par Yohan Gicquel
Le Street marketing
Le Buzz marketing

Livres en français

Kelkoo - Ils ont réussi leur start-up ! , par Cyril de Lasteyrie

2. Emailing campaigns

laurentcurau — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:27:50 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

1. Blogs

laurentcurau — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:27:28 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Laurent & Sarah's Wiki - Recently Updated Pages

About the Authors

Sarah BROTTET

Laurent CURAU

Alternatives to a cluttered traditional marketing

TABLE OF CONTENT

I. IS TRADITIONAL MARKETING DEAD ?

A. Consumers are overwhelmed by intrusive messages

B. Media versus New Media

II. THE FUTURE OF MARKETING: NEW WAYS TO DO IT

A. The power of buzz

B. Limitations of buzz marketing

C. Street and Guerrilla marketing: the new national sports

III. ONLINE MARKETING: THE ULTIMATE TOOL OF NEW MARKETING

A. Why should a company be on the web anyway?

B. Affiliate programs

C. Be visible on the web: the purpose of search marketing

D. Blogs amplify the spread of the buzz

Useful Links

Buzz Marketing

Viral Marketing

Mass Marketing

Street Marketing

Alternative marketing

Permission marketing

Seth Godin articles

Online Marketing

1. Is Marketing dead ?

A. Consumers are overwhelmed by intrusive messages

B. Media versus New Media

2. The future of marketing: new ways to do it

A. The power of buzz

B. Limitations of buzz marketing

C. Street and Guerrilla marketing: the new national sports

4. As a conclusion

3. Online marketing: the ultimate tool of new marketing

A. Why should a company be on the web anyway ?

B. Affiliate programs

C. Be visible on the web: the purpose of search marketing

D. Blogs amplify the spread of the buzz

Bibliography

Books in English

Livres en français

2. Emailing campaigns

1. Blogs