Digital Paneling

So, I sat on a digital marketing panel for the Utah Chapter of the American Advertising Federation (AAF Utah) last night. With some illustrious local advertising experts:
Jason Bangerter, Founder StruckAxiom

Dave Nibley, Creative Director Rain

Craig Aramaki, Chief Digital Officer Richter7

Ian Barkley, Business Development Rastar

And Me, Shawn Butler, Digital Strategy Saxton|Horne

Here is a photo of the panel:


Here is a photo from the panel:

(Notice the conspicuously empty front row)

One of my favorite moments of the night was a discussion on social media marketing. We identified that sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even MySpace are vehicles for tactical execution of an overall strategy. Craig mentioned that social networking is not new, that it was a part of human nature to give word-of-mouth referrals to our peer groups. And I shared my illustration that we are simply using technology and the facility of social media platforms to augment a behavior that has been occurring since the days of the cave men: A Twitter post that says "I love the burritos at Cafe Rio" is our modern equivalent to "Hey, Og, eat there! That bush has good berries."

I though it was a clever analogy, and it apparently struck a chord with some audience members!



It was a great conversation in a room full of smart people. And says GREAT things about the future of digital and creative advertising in Salt Lake and the Mountain West area. For more fun quotes, you can search Twitter or go to the Utah Ad Fed's FB Page.

How New Media is Changing Old Media

Billboard Proclaims The Death Of Old Media Through Old Media

In 2007, when I first started using social media as a marketing tool, it was just called “new media.” In the years since, digital marketers have made large strides, like dropping the vague term “new” and replacing it with phrases like “social network marketing” and, most significantly, adjusting the way that brands and businesses interact with their customers. We have learned a lot from our early experiences with social media. Here are some of the lessons social media taught us that are being applied across all forms of media, new and old.

Targeting the individual. One-to-one marketing is not just for social media anymore. With the recognition of the long tail has come permission to “waste” impressions. I am seeing more instances of marketers using traditionally mass media vehicles to microtarget niche audience.

Previously, to hit a highly specific audience like “Investment Bankers for Web-based IPOs” meant taking out a full page in a highly specific targeted medium like The Kiplinger Letter. This is changing.

Recently, Tim Ferriss wrote about an unusual billboard purchased by Zynga in Silicon Valley. He says, “There was no tagline, and I joked to my passenger, who was in the financing and IPO business, ‘I’m not sure who that’s intended to sell.’

The Tag-less Zynga Billboard

[His passenger] laughed and responded with ‘Dude, that’s not for end users. That’s to get the attention of the bankers driving from SFO to downtown.’

Leveraging Pass-Along and Word-of-Mouth. In that same article, Ferriss cites an example of not targeting your audience at all, but targeting the people whoinfluence that audience. “At American Apparel, many of its best-known ads ran in obscure publications or in short bursts on niche websites. Millions of people know about them, however, because blogs thought they were so interesting that they wrote articles about them.”

The brilliance there is that the brand actually got moremileage out of their ad purchases by getting the pass-along value of what is essentially “free” advertising by highly influential bloggers. However, this type of editorial coverage and the buzz it creates is the type of advertising that big businesses have learned they cannot buy through a media broker.

Everything is Clickable. If someone is on a company’s Facebook page, the marketer knows that posting a clickable link will send many customers to get more information. With the increase of tablet PCs and mobile devices, marketers can now make this assumption with every medium. The QR code is an early integration of print with web. At the Smithsonian museums, visitors will see codes on the displays that are scannable with their web-enabled devices that will bring up apps, information and interactive learning.

Visual recognition programs for mobile devices, like Google Goggles, are being used by companies to deliver more information to their potential customers who take a picture of their products or even their logos.

As brands continue to understand the value of engaging with fans and seek metrics beyond impressions, we will see more integration of social, interactive, and location-based media with traditional media. Already, we see more restaurants posting the “Check In to Foursquare” window clings and counter cards to remind visitors to pair their physical visit with an internet visit.

A few years from now, when social media is no longer a “hot trend” but an additional, accepted marketing tool, I would like us to all look back and see that 2011 was the year that all media became “social.”

Apple's iRony

UPDATE: Just read the "interview" responses of Steve Jobs to Walt Mossberg in the WSJ. Ummm... the answer to 3 of the 7 Qs was "[Apple] doesn't talk about future products." All Mossberg was trying to find out was

1. if iPhone was going to be stuck on the same slow EDGE network offered by AT&T,
2. if there would be less expensive models of iPhone released, a la the Shuffle for iPod, and
3. will you be fixing the issues with the iPhone that we didn't like, such as video, IM, and GPS (See article)?

The answer to all Three Questions: "We don't talk about future products." Oh yeah, Steve Jobs? What do you call the last 7 months since your stunt at the MacWorld Conference? The one where you talked all about your future product?

The Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone will hit stores on Friday, June 29th. The media and tech worlds wait like eager dogs at the foot of Steve Jobs' dinner table. But all may not be well in the iWorld-- At $499 and $599 for the 4 and 8 Gig units respectively, some call it overpriced, overhyped and overloaded with unnecessary features.

iPhone may also be overpromising. Recent releases say it will now deliver eight hours of talk time, compared with the five hours it originally promised and the four hours available on current Über-PDA competitors Blackberry Curve and Palm Treo 750. Other small print reveals that ownership of the unit will require a two-year contract with AT&T (NYSE: T). Hmmm... that is a fact that should be printed in Super Bold.

Lastly, serious corporate America is not jumping on the Apple Bandwagon. The technology that allowed Research In Motion Ltd.'s (NASDAQ: RIMM) Blackberry to meld easily was created by an early partnership with business-friendly Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). IT experts report that the Apple app IMAP is a security risk. That's enough to keep most businesses from sync-ing the piece with their internal email systems. That leaves iPhone die-hards with the extra hastle of Re-Forwarding everything from the office through POP servers... something BENEATH most Mac Addicts that I know.

Ad Age Editor Jonah Bloom, says "Rational thinking has nothing to do with it. Consumers will lust after the iPhone and thus ignore both necessity, price and service contracts."
Ah, but will they also ignore the near uselessness of its internet, corporate email, and battery-draining irrelevant features? I vote there'll be a big "no" from the world's business professionals. But what's Apple doing trying to get into business anyways? Stick to Consumer Electronics and your iLife… ipod-toting teens and megalopolitan hipsters will line up for miles awaiting Steve's future table scraps. --Shawn Butler