Another popular buzz phrase you have probably heard is the “Long tail”. The long tail refers to a niche based culture replacing the hit driven economy. Products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. The Long Tail is a potential market and the distribution and sales channel opportunities created by the Internet often enable businesses to tap into that market successfully.
The real long tail impact seems to be coming from the affiliate marketing publishers. Those individual bloggers who are given financial incentives for promoting products on their site. Don’t underestimate the power of niche influence.
1. Recognise your antisocial nature … until you fully embrace the fact that your relationship and communication with your consumers has been fundamentally antisocial, you will never be able progress on the road towards becoming a brand that can embrace social media i.e. a socialised brand. Repeat after me, “My name is Brand X and I am antisocial”.
2. Don’t think digital … the answer to becoming a socialised brand does not lie in the digital world even if your relationship with your consumers ends up being based on digital channels. The answer lies in having a credible story, content that brings this alive and channels that help consumers “reach-in” and become engaged. P.S. a credible story is nothing like what you are accustomed to thinking of as a brand proposition. P.P.S. just having a corporate blog, a MySpace page, a podcast, posting stuff on YouTube does not, of itself, make you a socialised brand.
3. Remember – the tools of social media sit best in the hands of consumers (it’s who they were designed for) … use them at your peril, you may end up looking silly. At all costs avoid the My(insert your brand name here)Space syndrome – a lot of digital agencies are getting rich helping clients make this mistake.
4. Stop thinking about reaching out to consumers … that is old media, old media agency planners thinking. Don’t think of the tools of social media as a new channel that allows you to push messages to niche groups. Do the right thing (see point 2) and consumers will use the tools of social media to find you – your audience will select itself. Focus your energy on making your brand a beacon and your brand a host. (I am sure there is a Seth Godin book in there somewhere).
Thanks to Richard Stacy for sending this one in, and gapingvoid:
The Information Architects from Japan have put together a very nice visualization map of the 300 most influential websites. To create the mashup, IA took the sites and pinned them down to the Tokyo area train map. I had been playing with version 2.0 for a little while, and they already have the new, updated 3.0 version. The key change on V3 is that they featured the most influential websites - regardless of category.
Visualizing complex networks is challenging and the folks at Visualcomplexity.com are striving to be the one source place for anyone looking for information on the subject.
Today, I post in celebration of yesterday’s xc-ski session #25 (for 2007-08). The reason it is post-worthy, is because each session was started from my back door - requiring zero drive miles. Brilliant!
The Ford Modeling agency is featured in the new Inc. magazine - with a great article about how they have leveraged YouTube video for company exposure. After creating a number of high quality videos, the agency found that they had created a new media category “organic product integration” - as they call it. Ford partners with (sells placement) fashion brands for “organic” use of products - and discussion, by the models. The videos are getting tons of hits which means big dollars to the media owners; Ford. What a sweet twist on traditional channel strategy. They already have the hot models - so they create, sell, market, and own the distributed content.
The video topic got me searching for some other unique new media uses, and examples of higher quality uploads (not that the normal bike face plant on YouTube isn’t sweet) - and I came across a killer flick on Vimeo.
Advertising Age has announced some trends to watch in 2008. The one that jumps out is strategic alignment, which will be crucial to new media success.
THE POWER OF STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT: Marketers succeed when brand messages are fully integrated and synchronized across all media channels. That requires strategic alignment — leadership that ties everything together — particularly when the forces of change can potentially pull them apart. Strategic alignment is one of the most important roles of the chief marketing officer, and In 2008 more CMOs will ensure organizations are strategically aligned. Lead agencies will be appointed to make sure all supporting agencies carry out the same brand message.
There has been a lot of media focus on our state over the last few days, as the Presidential campaign trail made its way through Michigan. Now this may be the first and last time I ever post about politics - but it hard to ignore the subject when your right in the middle of it. The major point point of interest here, is the platform that Republican John McCain was preaching in our state. Call it realistic or what, but it is suicide to promote that “Michigan is hurting” and that “manufacturing jobs are not coming back”. Misery does not always love company.
All the T.V. analysts thought it was a great approach - that somehow we would all relate to the message and jump on board. The only person that thought it was suicide was Joe Scarborough, and on his “Morning Joe” show stated that he thought the approach was crazy. Mitt Romney took the side of optimism and told the state that good change is on the way. A no-brainer strategy to me.
Michigan is a little depressed - but maybe its because the sun comes out once every 10 days. Or because we are the laziest State in the Country, and people just need to get outside and play once in a while. Or, perhaps, it is because our manufacturing industry is drying up, which has people moving out of faster than any other state. What do we do? I say “Innovate or Die”. It is time to re-tool the manufacturing base and focus on technology integration across multiple industries and media channels. There are amazing engineers, designers, tool and die, fabricators, etc. - in this state - and we just need to figure out a new way of utilizing their skills. Web 2.0/New Media - merging with Manufacturing/Engineering to create a hybrid industry?
For those of you who are into the Harley Davidson scene, you will probably recognize the name Fat Katz. They make trick after market gas tanks and fenders. These folks are amazing fabricators, and all of their products are 100% handmade in Grass Valley, California. We are currently working with them on new media strategy, and building them a new corporate website that should be live within the next two weeks.
Surprisingly, this market has been less impacted by on-line viral networking than most, and seem to still rely on traditional media exposure such as T.V. and magazines. This will be a nice experiment as we try to increase Fat Katz web value for better overall brand engagement.
