Good content = good advertising

There’s a ton of good points made in Brian Morrissey’s piece at DigiDay about Twitter’s emerging role as a media company powerhouse. Specifically he dives into how the company is putting the pieces together to lead a new wave of advertising changes, changes that will put the focus back on quality creative as opposed to the soulless algorithms that have dominated much of the last decade of online advertising.

Here’s the nut graf:

All the innovation, he noted, has been around targeting and bid management for Google’s auction system. What’s been a distant third is creative. Bain made the case that this is backwards. Twitter’s ad system is designed to reward those that create good content. That’s done by people, not machines.

When people talk about “content marketing” it too often means something that is an ad first, with slightly longer text shoe-horned in in some manner. But what Twitter is aiming to do is take content that is already produced – in this case Tweets – and turn them into an advertising unit, which allows for much higher-quality material to filter through than in the other scenario.

It actually makes me think of all the talk about “native advertising, which is back in the news thanks to a new initiative by The Washington Post and now Fortune, which says it will write articles exclusively for advertisers.

Imagine if this kind of situation worked out a bit differently. Instead of new material being written at the behest of advertisers, what if advertisers could pay to promote a story that was already written? So after an article is published – say a profile of a CEO, review of an important new product or what have you – a company could come in and say “We’ll pay $X to stick that to the front page for 48 hours/have that get five extra tweets” or something along those lines.

I can’t imagine it would compromise anyone’s ethics any more than they already are in this new “native advertising” world for existing stories to receive paid promotion as opposed to people being asked to write stories for the express purpose of marketing dollars.

Random Super Bowl ad thought mashup

(Note: I think I’ve said everything I want to say here but I’m not sure. It’s messy to be sure but I wanted to get this all down and shared regardless of the raw form it’s obviously in. Proceed with caution)

Twitter announced before the Super Bowl that about half of this year’s Super Bowl ads would contain a hashtag and according to a MarketingLand tally that turned out to be an accurate number, with 26 of the 52 aired spots including some sort of hashtag, whether it was one for a specific campaign or just a general one. That same MarketingLand piece points out that Twitter was included in 26 commercials while Facebook made it into just four, Instagram and YouTube scored one each and Google+ was completely shut out. Ads, according to a separate study, wound up making up about 30% of the tweets published during the game. Overall across Twitter, Facebook and GetGlue there were 30.6M social media comments over the course of the broadcast, with 24M on Twitter and 400,000 on GetGlue, meaning the balance of 5M or so happened over on Facebook. And of course some brands gained additional buzz because they quickly turned some creative around to take advantage of some timely stories coming out of the SuperDome.

A recent study showed that including a hashtag during a TV show broadcast can increase the social conversation about that show by up to two-thirds what it otherwise would have been. The idea behind using a hashtag is to take advantage of the multi-media-tasking that’s going on as people watch TV while also browsing Twitter or Facebook on their iPad or mobile device.

But I still wonder what the value of doing so actually is. What’s the point of pushing people to participate in a conversation that is not controlled – or controllable unless it’s through some sort of aggregation on-domain – and which has questionable long-term brand value?

I, as a publisher on Twitter, might be moved enough to go post something like what the ads are asking me to, whether it’s sending in a personal anecdote or sharing a memory or some such like that. But what is the brand getting out of it? They can say that X thousand people used the hashtag within Y hours of the commercial being shown, but what subset of that audience took the next step to actually follow the brand’s Twitter profile? And what subset of *that* visited the brand’s site or took some other action where they could get a richer, more full experience and message?

I get why hashtags are so widely used. They give most brands a nice cozy blanket to pull over themselves as they talk about how engaged in the community conversation they are. But the reality is most of them are the result of a brainstorming session and will be abandoned as quickly as they’re thought up.

Also, what’s better, a rise in conversational volume by 2/3 or a 20% increase in the number of visits to a brand website that comes in the wake of the Super Bowl? I say it’s the increase in site visits since that’s something a company can leverage in multiple ways down the road, not just abandon after this particular campaign is done, leaving nothing but the fresh scent of pine where it once was.

Movies and hashtags go to the Super Bowl and YouTube makes the case for early ad releases

A good story finally broke a couple days ago about what movie studios will be advertising their 2013 releases in this Sunday’s Super Bowl. So what movies can we expect to see commercials for?

Universal will show off The Fast and The Furious 6, Paramount will advertise both World War Z and Star Trek Into Darkness and Disney will preview Iron Man 3, The Lone Ranger and Oz. Sitting out the broadcast are Fox, Sony and Warner Bros, despite all three studios having big tentpoles later this year that would be good fits for the game’s audience.

One big part of the advertising that will be done is the inclusion of hashtags, which according to Twitter will appear in half the commercials during this year’s game. The idea here is obviously to start a conversation online but, as I’ve stated before, while such a tactic might generate spur-of-the-moment engagement it’s still unclear what the long term brand value of it is. Especially compared to pointing viewers to an owned platform (ie website) where a stronger brand case can be made.

Meanwhile, there’s been a ton of conversation this year about the viability of releasing Super Bowl commercials early, something that a ton of advertisers have done this year but which seems to be subject to some questioning this time around. Which makes the timing of a new study from YouTube (the platform, of course, most companies release those teasers or full spots on) that claims ads shown before the game broadcast pull in six times the views as spots that aren’t.

The Atlantic steps into sponsored content trouble

I’m not the first person to make this analogy, but the hand-wringing around The Atlantic running “sponsored content” from the Church of Scientology simply does not happen if it had been from a major car company. It was labeled clearly and was, yeah, promotional for the church, but that’s what sponsored content – or native ads or advertorials or whatever you want to call them – are.

There’s a good graf in Adweek’s story about the incident:

More than anything else, the incident illustrates that online publishing is still going through great change and uncertainty. While the nature of sponsored journalism will continue to feel foreign and concern traditionalists, last night’s debacle almost certainly educated some new readers about sponsored posts while publishers will ultimately learn a vital lesson: Native advertising, above all else, has to feel at home in its host publication to have any chance at being successful.

Poynter has a good recap of the story, including lots of background material on the ethical questions around sponsored content and more. It’s a must read. And on the broader topic of sponsored topic they also have a good story on some problems Buzzfeed, which has led the march in this direction, ran into when one or more people demonstrated a unique non-understanding of copyright law. Finally, AdWeek again has an interesting infographic-type presentation of how some publications have addressed this issue in their own way. And AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka has an op-ed of sorts on the topic.

Digging for revenue

The team behind the revitalized Digg is, to their credit, being fairly transparent about the need at this juncture to start thinking about making some money:

Today, our product is about 1% done, but waiting to experiment with monetization models until the product has reached some notion of maturity would be a mistake. In reality, our product will never be “finished,” and designing the business separate from the product would result in a disconnected experience that does a disservice to both.

I like how the team is talking through what they’re thinking about and what they’re trying – in this case a program called “Apps We Like” that has some paid promotional opportunities – since it bodes well for future communication about how the product, including advertising and more, is evolving.

This sort of open statement, which invites a further dialogue, reminds me quite a bit of the early days of corporate blogging, when stuff like this was pretty standard. Then the lawyers got involved and said X, Y or Z couldn’t be said and the marketers can and said A, B and C shouldn’t be said. This is the kind of “throw it out there and see what sticks” approach to corporate communication I like a lot.

Separately, it appears that, at least based on some early data, publishers are starting to see Digg return to its place as a major source of referral traffic. Whether or not that’s sustainable remains to be seen, but success begets success so if the team there can string a few of these milestone stories together it could turn into some decent momentum.

Twitter makes the case for more media company attention and dollars

A curious post on Twitter’s advertising blog extols the value of “amplifiers,” power publishers who, according to Twitter, are heavily reliant on mobile, enjoy consuming, curating and creating visual-heavy material and who are just chomping at the bit to hear from and interact with brands on the platform.

The post seems specifically geared not just to attract advertisers but to attract TV networks to participate in the conversation. A chunk of the post is devoted to talking about how much of the conversation about TV shows takes place on Twitter, how these “amplifiers” are doing a lot of that talking and more. This is very much in line with Twitter’s emphasis in the last several months on attracting networks and other media companies to more actively publish and interact, turning Twitter into more of a consumption platform.

There’s also a chart in the post that shows, once again, how people are following brand updates primarily for something special, be it exclusive deals or insider access to what a company will be doing in the near future. A shockingly low 30% turn to Twitter for customer service purposes.

Hollywood rethinking reliance on Facebook for marketing

Hollywood movie studios are, according to a Los Angeles Times story, beginning to sour on Facebook and its place in the movie marketing mix. The core issue seems to be the lack of substantial return on investment being seen from efforts there, something that’s only been made worse in the wake of Facebook’s algorithm changes, which put restrictor plates on how many people see any given update from a brand page.

Studios, like companies across all industries, saw varying degrees of drops in both engagement and reach around their Facebook updates.

And that’s kind of the main problem that people have had with the September Facebook changes: If they are spending money – either in the form of dedicated publishing resources or Facebook ads – to drive people to Like a page then there is some kind of expectation that the entire audience will see subsequent updates. Instead most Facebook pages see reach numbers that are somewhere in the five percent range.

Something that’s not addressed in the story but is also likely playing into the decreased engagement is the favored studio tactic of creating a new Facebook page for every single movie that’s released. So every single campaign involves reinventing the wheel and building an audience from scratch.

Whatever the case, studios and other companies are on Facebook because of the audience that’s promised on that platform. If they continue to see that promise not delivered on without additional dollars being spent for negligible results then attention will start to be turned elsewhere.

AP puts ads in the middle of its news coverage

Lots of tongues and fingers are wagging as it becomes news how The Associated Press has sold a number of Twitter updates during and within its coverage of CES to Samsung. According to the Buzzfeed story that seems to have broken the news, The AP will publish two Twitter updates each day during CES that are advertising for Samsung. these are separate from its organic, news-oriented coverage of Samsung and other companies at the Las Vegas trade show and they are part of a deal just between the two parties, not using Twitter’s ad products.

As the story points out, the updates that are part of the ad package will be clearly labeled as being promotional and sponsored to create as much distinction in readers’ minds as possible and err on the side of disclosure, all of which is good.

There are two issues that need to be addressed here, though:

1. There’s no way this slips under the radar of Twitter and, more accurately, doesn’t result in an eventual tightening up of what is and isn’t allowed by the platform company. Everything Twitter has done in the last year in terms of its API restrictions has been done, however overtly, with advertising revenue in mind. If Twitter feels companies are en masse going around it to cut ad deals of their own without allowing them to wet their beak just a little and, more accurately, that such moves seriously threaten revenue, terms of service will be adjusted and adjusted quickly and drastically.
2. Go back to the title of this post. Now imagine we’re talking about NBC and television. Ads in the middle of news coverage doesn’t seem at all silly, does it? Quite the opposite, in fact: News coverage without advertising inserted into it would seem odd and unusual. We understand that the production of the news we read/watch/listen to has a cost and that in exchange for access to that news is our exposure to advertising messages.

So the conversation then comes down to the question of whether or not social media – because it has always come with the promise of being more authentic (whatever that means) – is supposed to be sacrosanct in some manner.

In my opinion that’s a conversation that doesn’t go very far. Twitter, Facebook and other social outlets are still distribution points that, in some manner, it is legitimate to monetize. I’m not advocating turning entire feeds over to advertisers and completely throwing off the balance of what’s being published. The audience will quickly defect if it feels it’s being taken advantage of. But when it’s done in a limited, transparent and respectful way then this doesn’t feel like all that much of a violation to me, despite what some ideological purists would like to say.

This isn’t the first time this kind of thing has been done and it absolutely won’t be the last. But there will be repercussions of some kind from The AP’s decision here. It just remains to be seen what they are.

Facebook Tries to Deemphasize Clicks

How can you tell when the ad sales team has taken over an operation? When a company starts to de-emphasize direct actions and play up the impact of message reach on sales. Facebook is the latest example: 

“Just like in TV, they consume the message, and then when they go to the store, they are more likely to consume your product,” said Brad Smallwood, Facebook’s head of measurement and insights. “It’s proof that the click is not the right thing to optimize to…Reach, just like in TV, is also a crucial driver.”

Now don’t get me wrong – message reach is an important metric for a lot of communications programs. But eventually you’re trying to tie that back to some sort of action that impacts the bottom line. And advertising is (at least it should be) the primary form of marketing that is tied solidly back to bottom line results. 

There’s nothing wrong with this sort of shift. It makes sense and, yes, looks and sounds a lot like the kind of pitch television ad sales people have been making for decades as they promise to reach X million households and Xx2 million individuals. But it also makes it perfectly clear that Facebook is now in the display advertising business as opposed to one that focuses on interactions, engagements and other direct actions. 

Movie Marketing Madness: We Bought a Zoo

“Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again” is a phrase that’s familiar to most parents. It’s usually recited after a toddler falls and skins their knee or has something similarly tragic happen to them and are in need of a bit of encouragement. It’s meant to convey in simple terms the same sentiment behind it not being our failures that define us but the way that we recover from those failures and move on with our lives.

We Bought a Zoo, the new movie from writer/director Cameron Crowe, is about just that kind of turning moment in a character’s life. Faced with the struggles of being a single dad after the death of his wife to a young daughter and teenage son Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) uproots the family and buys a rural house in the middle of nowhere. But upon buying it he finds there’s a zoo attached to it that’s facing hard times. The remaining staff, led by Kelly Foster (Scarlett Johanson), though is very loyal and Mee and his family decide to make a go of running it themselves, a process that proves cathartic for all of them and has other unexpected (to everyone but the audience) consequences as well.

The Posters

You know what’s kind of fantastic? The first poster for the movie. Instead of using the very safe and predictable option of using the heads of the cast what is here instead is a tree that has as its leaves green versions of different animal’s paw prints, with a red kite floating above it. It’s original, it’s artistic, it’s creative and it works to convey what is hopefully the spirit of the movie and it’s attitude instead of just promising some attractive looking people doing something or another. Great stuff.

The second poster was markedly less awesome, showing heavily Photoshopped images of Damon with the little girl who plays his daughter on his shoulders and Johansson off to the side, all of them staring off blankly toward some middle distance object while the zoo’s sign is in the background. The top of the poster plays up the fact that it comes “From the director of Jerry Maguire” so it’s clear which part of the Crowe-knowledgable audience this one’s being aimed at.

There was also a poster featuring just a zebra with a bow around its neck that was released to make it clear to everyone that this was a Christmas release.

The Trailers

The first trailer starts out with Damon dropping his kids of at school, embarrassing his teenage son and getting hit on by one of the moms who is doing likewise, nicely setting up the fact that he’s a single dad. He’s struggling with how well he’s doing as a dad and with some other things in his life and encouragement from a friend to start over leads him to quit his job and buy a house that, they discover, is attached to a zoo. That leads to all sorts of complications but it’s clear from the rest of the trailer that it winds up being just the kind of emotional shakeup that everyone in the family needed. There is, of course, a romantic connection at this zoo in the form of Johannson’s character and it’s shown as being generally uplifting all around.

Online

The movie’s official website opens by playing the trailer again. There’s also an invitation to enter the “20 Seconds of Courage” sweepstakes that enters you to win a vacation to the San Diego Zoo.

Moving past that and going ahead to “Enter the Site” you’re immediately prompted to connect with Facebook for some reason that I’m guessing has to do with “The Zoo of You,” the first section listed in the menu bar at the top.

After that is “About the Film” which has a Synopsis, several sections of Production Notes and some background on the Music and how Crowe worked with an artist named Jonsi on the soundtrack for the film.

“Videos” has the Trailer as well as four extended film clips, all of which you can share in various ways online. The “Photo Gallery” has about nine stills from the film and the “Cast” and “Filmmakers” sections give you information about the cast and filmmakers, respectively.

The Facebook page has photos and videos as well as more information on the sweepstakes, soundtrack and more. There was also a Twitter feed that shared with Facebook updates about the movie’s marketing and publicity.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

I caught quite a bit of TV advertising that was done, with spots that emphasized the heart-warming nature of the story and such to make it as family friendly as was possible. The relationship between Damon and Johansson was emphasized in a couple of the commercials, most of which hit the same basic beats as the trailer.

Media and Publicity

The publicity for the film kind of started when Crowe joined Twitter and started sending out pictures from the shooting set.

The next big piece of news came when it was announced (New York Times, 11/16/11) that Fox would be doing a sneak-preview strategy to promote the film, showing it to audiences almost a month in advance of its release, likely in the hope that positive word of mouth would be generated that would be more powerful in the long run than whatever critics might say closer to release. That strategy seemed to turn out well, with most of the early reviews that resulted being pretty positive in nature.

Some more press was generated when a parody Twitter account was discovered (Los Angeles Times, 12/7/11). I’m not sure what made this one notable from the hundreds of other fake or parody accounts that surely exist for other movies, but it was eventually found that the creators of this one were fans who were excited about the movie and not anyone who was trying to take the film down in any way. That being said things did get kind of weird toward the end, there.

I’m sure the cast also make several appearances on TV talk shows to promote the film.

Overall

Well I like it but I’m more or less predisposed to like it being a Cameron Crowe fan. It might look quite a bit different from Crowe’s earlier movies – it certainly doesn’t look like a movie from the guy who brought us Singles though it does seem similar to Jerry Maguire. But the campaign is designed to make the film as attractive as possible to as broad an audience as possible and on that mark I think it succeeds rather well, even if it can’t quite complete on sheer volume with some of this week’s other releases. Quite a nice little campaign, though, for a movie that looks pretty good.