Customer World

Data-driven advertising - How do we move it beyond the web?

I came across an interesting service platform Meme Machine which has interesting customer-focused applications using data.

Calling itself reactive advertising Meme Machine defines this platform as:

"Reactive advertising is a technology for dynamic customization how display ads look and behave in real-time based on what we know about each viewer and the surrounding factors for each exposure. So instead of one campaign having three different ads, we can run three million different ads, where each is unique for the person watching it. Real-time data and dynamic content are two of the things that makes the Internet really unique. Coming up with the basic ideas for a dynamic ad is just one piece of the puzzle and you also need an engine that can mix up the data and make sure that the right stuff is actually shown to the right people."

Meme Machine has a reaction library and has some cases like Scandinavian Airlines, Swedish Post etc. 

How do we really fuse data that's online, offline and transactional?

To make this more widespread & relevant to a consumer &  marketer, the question that came to my mind really was, how do we use offline data & behaviour for such a service in addition to online information that gets tracked. Imagine a variety of devices and vehicles that consumers today either read, watch, listen, carry along with them - radio( FM), TV, Mobile, Outdoor, Magazines, Newspapers etc.which is not tagged or data rich today.

I believe we still have a long way to go  & innovate here. Here in lies interesting opportunities waiting to be tapped. There must be different applications across devices & media vehicles that must bring this to life. The control, of course, must lie with the consumers to bring all of this together. The applications must talk to each other, pull relevant content, send proactive messages as things happen in each media vehicle or device or by interest tagged by consumers, to bring this conversation & experience to life with each consumer.

Multi-channel marketing poses new data challenges

The world of database marketing has changed since the time we knew it . There were only a few options as one knew it - lists - internal/ external, direct mail and telemarketing a decade or two ago. Today, for companies, customers come from different channels - social media, mobile, website leads thro' SEM or SEO etc. There is a need to track this customer data, organize them in a manner to know where they are coming from, is becoming increasingly critical. Before they know, many customers reach-out to companies from many channels available, in no time, which are available to them. This leads to multiple responses, follow-up and absolutely wasted marketing monies & more importantly a frustrated customer! Only when they organize and track this data across channels can companies do systematic campaigns & profiling of these customers. Not many companies are ready to handle this challenge. In my view, they are sometimes blisfully unaware of the problem and how to manage them!

It starts by building clear customer paths on how customers can potentially reach out to these companies, how they need to be tagged, scoring them by their interest and value, allocating them to an appropriate channel with clearly laid-out follow-up programs by channel. 

Deb Campbell of Clario Analytics has written a nice article on this topic:

Marketers still need to gather and keep the best data they can on their customers, understand them, segment them, track them over time, do some predictive modeling to market relevant to them and target new prospects most like them....Today, marketing channels are exploding all around us, not only with e-mail, search and display ads but also with all the social networking sites.

How does all this affect database marketing?

While the multiplication of channels can make tracking harder, and as a result make it more difficult to amend a database, you still need to know your customers’ needs and wants, and market to them one-to-one. Database marketing best practices haven’t changed as much as how you implement them.

You may have customers who are Internet-savvy and want messaging sent to them digitally. You have to target them, and those like them, in this way. Perhaps another customer segment prefers sales reps to contact them.Where database marketing pays here is that all this information can be captured.....

The solution is to keep your database as up-to-date as possible, with changes of addresses and e-mails, titles and positions. Track and segment your database at both levels, and target prospects with similar preferences and behaviors.

Michelin's famously anonymous intrigue misses a trick or two!

Michelin has come-up with lovely idea to connect with their customers - famouslyanonymous.com. This is a great case for open-source marketing! This is perhaps how marketing will be done in the future for many brands.

The Michelin guide was first published in France in 1900 as a free directory that offered listings of hotels to promote road travel which would in turn help sales of Michelin brand tires. By 1926, they started charging for the guide and also started rating the restaurants. Michelin has its secret reviewers going into restaurants and giving them a 3 star rating to them based on their experience. Now, they seem to be making the identity of these reviewers public and therefore giving it a lot of credibility.

Here's my experience of the customer engagement and the gaps that I saw

I had visited the website as it generated a lot of interest in me due to  high decibel PR. While the campaign seems to be at a teaser  stage just now, the website had some interesting content around the history of the guide etc. I wanted to see the interview with the inspectors section and it asked me to comeback on Oct 5th. This is where they I felt they got it all wrong and dropped the ball!

Take a look at some great opportunities to build  the depth of this engagement further with consumers:

1. Interview Alert:  They could have asked me to register for the interview alert with inspectors as and when it happens on the site. A simple and easy trail that I could have left behind - build a prospect database for the guide. I would have gladly agreed to do so. Oct 5th is quite a long way off and I might just forget to revisit the website amongst my other commitments. Hence, the engagement needs to be at the behest of the brand and not leave it to chance of my coming back.
2. E-book Track: Having come-up with a great story on the heritage of the guide, there was an interesting opportunity that seemed to be available - to capture my identity to build a dialog further. Brands need to understand conversations like this happen over multiple touches with  consumers. The heritage story has interesting levers to "extend the conversation"!
3. Leveraging the power of multi-channel for trial:  There is a huge opportunity for this campaign to use a multi-stage, multi-channel campaign approach which seems to have been missed. There is a great case for using mobile marketing by registering the vistors' mobile numbers and texting them on "interesting happenings on this website or restaurants" when they are not on the net. Also, if  consumers don't pre-book, there can be a trigger for the 'trial' of the guide. Consumers could use mobile texting(SMS) or email alerts to know more about a particular restaurant of their interest and their rating. This could act as a "sampling" for the new guide and encourage more purchase interest in the guide. This will open-up new opportunities for dialog and a continous one too.

In the world of open-source marketing and web conversations, there is a need to look at building the dialog thro' bits and bytes all the time. One must be able to link every "customer interaction chain" into a next step that can fulfil a behavioural objective - reinforce, reopen the dialog, inform, reiterate etc. and this is critical if the campaign objectives have to be met.

Passive to Active customer engagement

I have been writing about this shift for sometime now and the need for marketers to take note of this change to take action. Marketers need to evolve to what I call as "inclusive marketing" methods by involving, empowering customers & building an open channel for a conversation with them.

Davide Raab has provided a very interesting perspective on this change. He writes about the power of social media getting more importance when it comes to active customer engagement as compared to search marketing as these are an 'explicit group' of customers wanting to be involved and engaged in a particular topic, issue or cause. He has provided a brilliant summary of how the marketing focus needs to change. Take a look at the table on various dimensions:

medium	consumer engagement	authority	post-sale relationship	marketing focus
mass media (broadcasting)	passively exposed	conferred	service / support	brand message
database marketing (narrowcasting)	targeted	relevance-based	cross sell / upsell / retention	segmentation
search marketing	activity-triggered	implicit group	Web self-service	content
social marketing	consumer-controlled	explicit group	public engagement	empowerment

Which media forms will grow and engage consumers?

VSS, a leading PE firm that invests in media, communication & information industries released the next 5 year forecast of the communications industry. It has interesting trends on where consumers are expected to spend more time and therefore engage with marketers' brands. This has a direct impact on the kinds of media, investments & marketing programs that are expected to grow during the coming five years.   

What's expected to grow and shrink?

Here are some of the segments and sub segments of the communications industry which are forecast to grow over the next five years and those that are forecast to shrink over the next five years

"VSS reported that direct marketing benefited from the same trends as branded entertainment as marketers increasingly opted to reach their target consumer with one-to-one messaging as opposed to one-to-many. Digital technology has enabled marketers to perfect their techniques in targeting customers. While direct mail and telesales spending declined due their reliance on such stressed industries as automobiles and financial services, direct marketing still registered a 3.2% increase in 2008 to $106.52 billion, and is forecast to achieve a 5.6 % CAGR during 2008-2013. E-mail marketing performed even better, and continues to expand at double-digit rates because it offers a low-cost alternative to direct mail and other marketing strategies"

What is Growing?
Internet Media	Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Professional Information	Subscription Television
Business Information	Mobile Advertising and Content
Education	Videogames
Direct Marketing	Business-to-Business e-Media
Event Marketing	Tradeshows
Public Relations	Digital Out-of-Home
e-Books
What is Shrinking?
Newspapers	Yellow Pages
Consumer Magazines	Business to Business Magazines
Broadcast Television	Home Video
Radio	Recorded Music
Traditional Out of Home	Traditional Consumer Books

Poverty of attention

I often wonder as we have access to more or more information, why is it that it is getting more and more difficult to take decisions ? Jeffery Phillips had a very interesting perspective on the same.Jeffery writes:

"I spotted a statement on a whiteboard that's stuck with me for a few days.  On the white board, in big, messy handwriting, was the statement:

A wealth of information leads to a poverty of attention.

The point of the statement is that what we are missing - what many of us lack in today's working environment - is not enough information, but enough attention to the important things.  We've migrated from decision makers who had to "go with their guts" and could focus their attention on important things, to those who simply cannot (and will not) get enough information and who are distracted by the search and analysis of information, rather than focusing the right amount of attention and effort on any particular problem."

We just need as much minimum information as possible( or just the right information)  and enough  time for attention amongst ourselves to make the decisions.

 

Bye Bye Barcodes. Welcome Bokodes.

Bokode is expected to be the tagging technology of the future.

Barcodes may have been extremely useful to us over years but what it provides is just information to the person who uses the scanner. But in the new era of technology enviroment that we live in, customers  expect tons of information and help about the brands or products that they use. For example - from the exact place they came from, to how safe they are and their carbon footprint.

See how Bokode works:

Bokeh-code or Bokode for short is a barcode design which is has lenses over the pattern. This new development is going to be presented by its developer, MIT, next week at the Siggraph conference in New Orleans. One of its developers, Dr. Ankit Mohan, is very enthusiastic about the Bokode because of its potential to open up a new way of tagging. The Bokode can be used to set nutrition data on food packaging, and even in developing gadgets to be used in video games! The possibilities are endless. This potential alone makes it very different from the conventional barcode being used now in various products.

As mentioned previously, the Bokode is made up of a LED that is enclosed in a tiny mask and lens. The light within the mask contains the information, and this light can appear either dark or bright. And the Bokode can be read even up to a distance of 12 feet!

Looks like there can be interesting customer applications over this to me right from Auto, FMCG, Healthcare brands.

The impending death of voice mail

At the tone, leave a message.....When was the last time you logged into your voice mail box and checked the messages in it? Increasingly, more and more consumers rarely check their voice mail. Consumer don't have the time, it seems, to hear long voice mail messages, they would rather respond to people or friends who called instantly.  Also, it is not easy to search voice mail messages on your phone. Nobody has the patience to go through it one by one!

Here's an interesting statistic from an article that I had read:

More than 30 percent of voice mail messages remain unheard for three days or longer, according to uReach Technologies, which designs voice messaging systems for Verizon and other phone companies. And more than 20 percent of people with messages in their mailboxes rarely check them, said Saul Einbinder, the firm’s senior vice president for marketing and business development. A survey done for Sprint by Opinion Research Corporation found that with the exception of people age 65 and over, adults respond more quickly to a text message than to a voice message. Those under the age of 30 are four times more likely to respond within minutes to a text message than to a voice mail.

If you are a brand having a call center for customer service, how often do you make it easy for consumers to send text messages with their queries, if there is a huge waiting time on the call, so that you get  your service reps to either call these customers back immediately or  quickly respond back with a text message? I have rarely seen companies do so.

Remember, text message box has taken over  the voice mail box!

Getting serious about digital privacy

As a consumer, I have often always wondered every time I had cleared by cache on the laptop, who is accountable or responsible for dropping all the cookies that sit there without my knowledge or even with my "soft" implicit permission - a few of the websites or brands were tracking my behavior using 'app and codes' that sit on my PC. I just hate such intrusions on my privacy for the monetization benefits of somebody else. 

Finally, there seems to be first steps being taken in this direction. The key trade groups - IAB, AAAA, DMA, BBB, ANA announced self-regulation principles. How will they come into effect is critical, what measures are being taken to punish offenders will make a big difference for consumers like me trusting any information that I provide online. Here are some principles that they have adopted:

• The Education Principle calls for organizations to participate in efforts to educate individuals and businesses about online behavioral advertising. To this end, the digital media industry intends, in a major campaign that is expected to exceed 500 million online advertising impressions, to educate consumers about online behavioral advertising, the benefits of these practices and the means to exercise choice, over the next 18 months.
• The Transparency Principle calls for clearer and easily accessible disclosures to consumers about data collection and use practices associated with online behavioral advertising. It will result in new, enhanced notice on the page where data is collected through links embedded in or around advertisements, or on the Web page itself.
• The Consumer Control Principle provides consumers with an expanded ability to choose whether data is collected and used for online behavioral advertising purposes. This choice will be available through a link from the notice provided on the Web page where data is collected.
• The Consumer Control Principle requires “service providers”, a term that includes Internet access service providers and providers of desktop applications software such as Web browser “tool bars” to obtain the consent of users beforeengaging in online behavioral advertising, and take steps to de-identify the data used for such purposes.
• The Data Security Principle calls for organizations to provide reasonable security for, and limited retention of data, collected and used for online behavioral advertising purposes.
• The Material Changes Principle calls on organizations to obtain consent for any material change to their online behavioral advertising data collection and use policies and practices to data collected prior to such change.
• The Sensitive Data Principle recognizes that data collected from children and used for online behavioral advertising merits heightened protection, and requires parental consent for behavioral advertising to consumers known to be under 13 on child-directed Web sites. This Principle also provides heightened protections to certain health and financial data when attributable to a specific individual.
• The Accountability Principle calls for development of programs to further advance these Principles, including programs to monitor and report instances of uncorrected non-compliance with these Principles to appropriate government agencies. The CBBB and DMA have been asked and agreed to work cooperatively to establish accountability mechanisms under the Principles.

 

Download Ven-principles-07-01-09

Augmented reality - the fusing of data, search and advertisers

Here's an interesting cool mobile app released by layar, a company based out of Netherlands.

Basically the app figures out exactly where you are and in which direction you're looking, and then it presents additional data overlaid on top of the camera's image. Be it a bank's ATM that you may want to reach or imagine you reach a locality in your city and would love to find some houses to live here, just use layar and it will find you some houses, real estate agent too and you can call him right away!

Watch it live here:

I do believe it has limitations. It's not all pervasive at it looks:

a. You need an android phone
b. The service needs to be available in your country.This to me is a serious limitation. In a country like
    India, which has a huge penetration of mobile phones, it will serve a real need. In a world of connected
    information that's almost seamless, one cannot be selective in making such a service available. To
    me it must be simple enough to be downloaded and used anywhere in the world. The data on the web
    must be leveraged. This is really where most services fail. You can't have a product on the net and
    expect it to be available only in Europe, US and Netherlands.
c. It still needs the consumer to do something to throw this data thro' this browser. The novelty factor
    may die after some time. It needs to be embedded with what the mobile phone consumer does. I am
    sure this will improve over time.

I do think  applications like these will redefine the way consumers, data providers and advertisers will collaborate in the future.