What do you do when you can put a face on The Powers That Be which affected the way your grew up? Little did I know that this sassy woman, Mena Trott, had a lot to do with my formative years. You know, the ones I spent blogging away my teenage angst on a not so little SixApart server called LiveJournal. Trott and her husband Ben just happened to found SixApart, so upon finding out this fact, I was drawn to learn more about what she had to say. After watching this video? Frankly, Mena is not only the enabler of my creative writing addiction, but she's also someone I'd like to meet personally to talk shop.
In her TEDTalk, Mena talks about the relevance of blogs in today's world.
Seeing as I'm winding down with these blog entries, I found it fitting for me to do a blog entry.. About blogging. My experience here has been primarily academic, but I have a personal blog. I microblog on Twitter. I am a proud citizen of the online world, and am exposed to everything it brings, whether it's advertising or news or recreation. I would not be where I am today without people like Mena Trott. The world would not be where it is today without people like Mena Trott.
To keep this relevant and less nostalgic, blogs have had a HUGE impact on advertising and marketing. They're direct channels to consumers, to companies and other online bodies willing to search them out. Mena makes a point of talking about how blogs connect people, how they "flatten the world" and put everybody equidistant from one another. This is true in the business environment as well. Online, anybody can post a comment or click a rating. Anybody can view a commercial, whether it's once or seventy-five times.
Blogging has put our brains on the front lines of the Internet, our experiences and feelings along with it. I don't think that blogging can hinder advertising at all, because it creates that sense of community and a safe space for people to talk candidly about their experiences, good or bad with a given product or service.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
+ 014 - 05.11.2010 - ACADEMIC
+ 013 -05.11.2010 - NEWS
YouTube is something near and dear to my heart. My senior thesis was written using YouTube as a means to view historical political advertisements, and I feel like I know a lot of the ins and outs of such a website. David Carr tells the New York Times about how the Reuters' Insider is using the YouTube effect for traders.
Thomson Reuters is trying to change television. Its new product, Reuters Insider, is a Web-based video service that captures myriad streams of information produced by the company’s reporters and 150 partners. The service, which will begin Tuesday, is something like a You Tube for the financially interested, albeit one that is available only to Reuters subscribers, who pay as much as $2,000 a month.
Two THOUSAND dollars? YouTube is free! I think if Reuters' wants to make the most of this opportunity, they'd offer it generally. This service, however, reminds me of an aggregator or an RSS feed. It pulls all the relevant information you need and puts it in one, easy-to-access place. I think creating such a thing will bring good things for the financial professions, advertising and marketing already use YouTube- ubiquitously, and I think that Reuters' is making a STEP in the right direction.
+ 012 - 05.11.2010 - NEWS
Stuart Elliott, you never let me down. Here, the marketing tactic that JetBlue is using, experiential marketing, is highlighted. This is something that I find fascinating because I haven't seen it employed much in the industry thus far. Maybe I'm just missing it because it hasn't been done successfully. In terms of an airline, this marketing tactic may be effective.
“Customers who fly JetBlue appreciate it,” said Michael Stromer, director for e-commerce and interactive marketing at JetBlue Airways in Forest Hills, Queens, which makes it “so important to generate trial with potential customers.”
At the same time, “we’re in a world where people do not trust what companies have to say about themselves,” he added, “but they trust what other people tell them.”
Okay. So what's going on here, Elliott details, is that the marketers essentially want the consumers to do their marketing for them.
For instance, Arianne Cohen, the author of “The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life From on High,” praises the legroom on JetBlue aircraft, which offer several more inches than most domestic airlines’ coach cabins. The author is 6 feet 3 inches.
“She’s a perfect example” of what JetBlue is trying to accomplish, said Fiona Morrisson, director for brand and advertising at JetBlue. “Until someone tells you what three extra inches of legroom is, it’s hard to know what it means to you.”
“We were built on word of mouth,” Ms. Morrisson said of JetBlue, which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary. “We want to get customers to use their positive word of mouth to get our story out,” she added, and Ms. Cohen is “tall, she talks about JetBlue in her book and she’s a big fan.”
This marketing tactic can either be very successful, or can prove to be a huge bust. The representation of JetBlue is placed directly into the hands of their customers and it's admittedly a risky move. If I worked for JetBlue, I know that I'd be hesitant about taking such an approach, but the executives seem to be passionate and assured.
Taking a step back from the marketing perspective, I feel like this technique of advertising could work well for hospitality industries. Well, for the consumers of things in the hospitality industry. Certain establishments may take a hit or two, but that's the business. Using this technique brings a bit more honesty to it.
+ 011 - 05.11.2010 - ACADEMIC
Social networking. I feel like I start off every blog talking about them. In keeping with tradition, for this blog post, I actually decided to talk about social networks- or talk about what Nicholas Christakis has to say about them. He talks about 'induction' (if I do this, you do this,) 'homophily' (the 'birds of a feather' idea) and 'confounding' (finding a common ground) in terms of connection, but most importantly, he talks about the connections themselves that people make with each other.
I do want to say, first off, that his study had to do with obesity and weight gain- but the connections between people hold true in many different ways.
Christakis talks about seeing social networks as a living thing. They are born, they live and they die. He also talks about the spread of emotions across a network, for example, like anger or fear in a riot situation. This ripple effect is something that I find valid and interesting.
Mr. Christakis and his colleagues have come up with several different maps and images to help us understand the connections between people. He questions why our networks aren't formed particularly in a conventional, lattice shape, and explains that it isn't the way networks work. He then goes on to talk about the network as a super organism which has the potential to explain crime, politics and other relevant topics.
Christakis delivers the talk dynamically, and when it comes to advertising, it's clear that TRENDING can easily be slipped into the fray of things that can be predicted and explained through the super organism of a social network.
+ 010 - 05.11.2010 - INDUSTRY
I said in my previous post that I enjoy reading blogs, and I do. I have a few linked in my sidebar (Heather B. Armstrong is a fave of mine,) but Seth Godin is also one of my go-to resources. Seth is someone that I've learned a lot from in my academic career, whether it's about 'remarkable marketing' in his book, The Purple Cow, or whether it's a gem of a blog entry like this one.
In this blog entry, he talks about what makes an idea viral.
Now, viral can be defined in many different ways. There are campaigns, like those seen for films like The Dark Knight and most recently, Inception- or there are those for music. One musical viral campaign that I am particularly enraptured with lately is that of iamamiwhoami [WARNING: NOT A WORKSAFE LINK,] the anonymous, explicit artist (believed to be folk singer Jonna Lee,) posting coded videos on an anonymous YouTube account. Seth Godin talks about why these particular ideas and campaigns are so successful.
If it's easy to swallow, tempting and complete, it's a lot more likely to get a good start.
This statement defines Godin's post. It also defines many of the previously listed viral campaigns in some way. Of course, there's the mystery element, but the campaigns themselves are 'encapsulated' in a certain way and are easily defined. The why so serious? campaign for The Dark Knight was largely successful because people knew what it was about and wanted to know more. The iamamiwhoami campaign was simple: anonymity. It was an easy to digest idea; a blonde, disguised girl in the midst of a bunch of explicit, coded images. There was a puzzle to figure out, and it's still in progress. (I might know who the performer is, but that doesn't mean I have figured out her message just yet!)
Godin talks about making ideas appealing and simple. If an idea is highly visual and memorable, he says, it's easier to remember and identify. If it doesn't require much effort to remember, the effort for it to be talked about will be made, and it's only been proven true with recent viral campaigns in the industry.
.. Now, if anyone could tell me what exactly all the coding in the iamamiwhoami videos means, I would be eternally grateful!
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
+ 009 - 05.04.2010 - INDUSTRY
I read a lot of blogs online, that's no secret. I have a little trouble keeping up with my own, also not much of a secret, but I'm back, am catching up and am here to talk about.. a blog. This blog, however, assists with creativity and content. With articles like '8 habits of highly effective bloggers,' 'How to increase your blog subscription rate by 254%' and 'Five grammatical errors that make you look dumb,' Copyblogger.com is a great resource for anyone aiming to market themselves online. Copyblogger.com is a great resource for anyone looking to improve their copy writing skills, looking to learn how to keep a successful blog or just looking for an interesting read. Note the key word of 'looking' in the previous sentence. You have to look and search on this website to find anything. Once you do, the advice they give you is worth the search-and-rescue mission.
It provides an easy, honest, conversational way to launch your blog into the digital ranks.
While we all hope what we have to say is more important than some silly grammatical error, the truth is some people will not subscribe or link to your blog if you make dumb mistakes when you write, and buying from you will be out of the question.
With frank advice like that, it's hard to deny that this resource not only will help copy writers develop their craft, but will help to give solid content to the many blogs on the web.
