Frontiering Talk

Keen to get the scoop on breaking stories? Looking for a site where consumers get to vote on their favourite scoops? Look no further than Scoopt.

The site is a little bit like Digg, which is a technology news site where the number of Diggs (consumer votes) dictate the ranking of a particular story.

Scoopt takes this concept and has created a number of categories including Entertainment, Health and Wellness, Bargains and Deals, Business and Stocks, Politics, Travel. There are subcategories within each, or you can use the search bar.

You have to register to view stories, which I think is a little annoying, but there are some good Scoopts on the site already. Like the story in this section, about the Anti-cancer properties of beer. Enjoy the festive season !

Most of us have seen or heard of the photo-booths (Purikura machines) where you can print out a dozen or so tiny stickers of 3 or 4 poses. The booths were launched in Japan in the 1990’s and are now seen across the globe. The resulting stickers are placed on Laptops, Music players, Books, Folders of belongings and given away to friends to place on their belongings.

Why? It’s all about personalising your stuff!

Now Ututu’s MYSQ (My style So Qute) is an interactive video booth which shoots 30 seconds of a performance at a cost of JPY 500 (EUR 3.65 / USD 4.50 / AUD 6.0)

Built-in floor sensors and a MYSQ ring worn on one’s hand is the clever technology that is used here. It monitors the movement of the person(s) and enhances the movie file with cool visual effects. When the 30 second shoot is over, the system creates a movie file and gives the movie an id tag shown on the booth as a barcode. You scan the code with a camera phone and it downloads the movie that you can then enjoy, send to your friends and a QR (bar) code flashes on-screen. Scanning the code with a camera phone instantly downloads the movie, ready to be enjoyed or sent to friends and family.

It’s pretty cool, and just another service that is going to make having a Video player in your phone something to put on this year’s Christmas wish list !

It’s Christmas time, and people everywhere are trying to find time to purchase gifts for friends and family.

My wife was up at the shops doing exactly that today, and in the process discovered something rather interesting.
She had just picked up a skim board for our 8 year old son and was waiting in the queue to pay for the product. Another lady walks up and politely asks, “What is that?” My wife explained that it was a board that you use to “skim” along the shallow waters at a beach. “Great, I will go and get one”, replied the lady and off she went to grab a skim board for herself (presumably as a present). No advertising, no product brochures, but seeing my wife dressed in sports gear with the product was enough to convince someone to also purchase the product.

10 minutes later, my wife was in another store holding the recently purchased skim board under her arm. Another lady again politely asks .. “Where did you get that?” From Rebel Sport (the name of the sports store), my wife replied. Another sale based on the assumption that “if you chose this, it’s good enough for me”.

Now, I know the factors of Christmas dictate a certainly urgency in decision making, but isn’t it interesting how product placement, in the arms of a new customer, can make a louder statement than television.

Maybe it’s time Santa’s helpers need to be dressed up as genuine consumers walking around department stores with products under their arms!

If you are like me, you don’t really have time to discover new music, and either rely on recommendations from friends, or cherry pick from whatever is being played on the limited selection of radio stations.

I think internet radio helped broaden my musical tastes, in that I could select a much narrower niche, such as Roma’s Groove Salad which they describe as “A nicely chilled plate of ambient beats and groves”. This effectively allowed the chosen station to expose my ears to similar genre music by different artists.

Recently I discovered a cool new website called Pandora.
The basic idea is that you feed Pandora with artists or songs that you like, and it creates your own radio station, playing similar tunes. You then “guide” Pandora by telling it that you really like, or like it’s selection. As the learning process continues, you end up with your own radio station! No downloading of software is required, and registration is free (although you need to enter a US zip code). The free version is ad supported, and if you don’t like the ads, you can upgrade to a subscription model for around $36 / year.

The ads for albums don’t exactly match what you are listening to, which is one area I would improve on. But the performance from my fast broadband connection was pretty good, and I do think this is one example where the the basic need of “Can you help me discover more music that I’ll like?” is met.

Here’s an updated article on the background of the Pandora business from Fast Company.

McChronicles has been in the Blog-o-sphere for nearly a year now, “Chronicling the McDonald’s Brand Experience From The Customers’ Point Of View”.

Issues like why too many napkins come out of the napkin holder are discussed, as well as pictures from McDonalds restaurents and pretty much anything related to the dining experience of eating at McDonalds.

No wonder McDonalds is paying a close eye on McChronicles which has in many ways become the unofficial voice of the McDonalds consumer. McChronicles is not the only consumer blog about the Golden Arches. McDonalds of the world is a blog that is a container for pictures of McDonalds restaurents.

Do any consumer blog sites exist about your brand or company?
Brand managers should be tracking online commentary as one of his/her priority tasks.
What are your customers saying?

So you need a photo shoot, and stories of consumers using your brand.

Ok, hire the agency $100K, who will find you some models $30K, and organise the photoshoot sessions $50K, and you supply the product $10K.

Or .. if you are Mercedes, you could always get your consumers to do it for you !
Not only free, but Priceless !

Check it out here!

Ever wondered where your site traffic visitors come from?

Digital point provides an easy to install script for you site here.

With Geocities button installed on your site you can start to see where your visitors are coming from. Note: You can see this button on the right hand side of my blog in the Misc section.

Here’s the Frontiering Talk traffic map for the last 24 hours.

It’s quite amazing how global the internet reach is.

Firefox has just announced a campaign to generated consumer generated Testimonials and Ads.

They have even created a website utility that allows you to record a testimonial directly from your webcam.
As part of their Spread Firefox website, Mozilla is lauching this campaign to support the upcoming 1.5 release of the Firefox browser.

Check out 3 of their ads here where you can also register your own submission.

This is a great example of a brand tapping into the passions of their own consumers and also involving them in the marketing of the product. What’s the first thing a consumer will do once they submit an ad or testimonial for Firefox? Tell their friends to log on and watch it! What are you doing to tap into Consumer Generated Media for your brand?

Reading Ian McKee’s The Power of Influence blog about Using New Marketing to Prove New Marketing I decided to read and express interest in this fascinating initiative. Basically, Joseph has offered to give a free copy of his book to “Blogger Evangelists” in return for a reviewing the book.

Joseph Jaffe, who writes the Jaffe Juice blog, wrote to me last night accepting my offer to write a review of his book, “Life after the 30-second spot“. Judging from Joseph’s blog, I am sure the book will be educational and entertaining, but I will write an honest review on Frontiering Talk in a few weeks after I have read the book.

What I wanted to highlight today, was my interest in the effect this initiative will have on the sales of his book. Judging by the 80 or so requests that have been made in response to this initiative since his article on Nov 8th, I think it will be a great success. 60 highly influencial people writing reviews which are read by 1000’s of readers. Word of Mouth Marketing (or in this case “Word of Pen”) should make a big impact!

I wish Joseph well with this initiative.

Tags: WOM

Ever wanted to know what you would get if you placed all the Google News headlines into a visual Map? Well Newsmap has done exactly that.

Here’s how they describe it .. which I think pretty much sums it up!

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap’s objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.
Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. It’s objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news, on the contrary it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it.

You can search by country, by category (Finance, Business, Technology etc). Your own personalised Newspaper is getting a lot closer !

As the festive season gathers momentum, Online shopping is still growing, Internet IPO’s are back in Vogue, and Google’s Ad revenue surpases $9 billion!

My friend Ian McKee from Vocanic, writes a blog called The Power of Influence, and he posts here about Google’s rise that makes them the 4th largest media sales company.

Ian writes

And what do they have to sell?
Word snippets approximately 12 words long. Your entire brand proposition in 12 words
No big creative ideas, no room for copywriting prowess, no room for creating emotional connections.
Just 12 words and a link.

Google have effectively enabled a way that enables small websites to sell advertising space, thereby creating a whole new industry in Search Word placements.

Compare this with China’s Sina.com where most of their revenue comes from selling ads on the main pages which you buy based on the page, and what time the ad will appear (they are planning to move to a cost per click model as customers become educated in the advantages of ad relevance. The deeper into the internet you can place an ad, the more likely it is that the ad you place is relevant for the target niche, and the higher your changes of converting the click throughs into purchase. The Long Tail of the internet is making it more possible for small business to compete, as a global small niche can be much bigger than the whole local market.

So as we enter the 12th month of the year, ask yourself what are your 12 words and a link saying?

GfK NOP’s Roper Youth Report on teens shows that they have a influencial voice in purchasing decisions surrounding technology.
The study also examines the increasing individualism in teens and the flow on affect for marketeers.

The presentation highlights :-

Kids and technology seems to go hand-in-hand.
Kids are early adopters of technology and are fast to adapt to changes and updates.
Kids’ fascination with the latest trends and cool gadgets, is helping parents stay informed and it actually influencers their purchasing decisions.
Kids are happy to share information on technology, communications and entertainment.
With more and more kids sharing information online, news and opinions travel faster than ever before.

Individualism and need for identify in teens is important.

New technologies are providing ways for teens to express themselves (e.g. Myspace.com)
Mobile phone choice, ring tone, wallpaper, music playlists are all helping teens differentiate themselves and as such there are more and more niche groups emerging such as Christian Punk Rock.

So the message for marketeers is to not be frightened of innovation when communicating to teens, and to ensure that any messages are used to help fulfill teens identity. Niche groups such as Reggae Pop and Christian Punk Rock are emerging and this may provide opportunities for developing niche messages rather than using the one size fits all method. i.e. you communication should fulfill the identity of teens, remembering that not all teens are the same. Whilst this is more difficult, and potentially requires more thought, many of the communication channels (podcasts, web sites, etc) are less expensive than tv!.

Watch the 30 min presentation here

Perhaps you should rethink your teens communication strategy?

Since Whirlpool launched their American family Podcast, I have been wondering about whether other companies would follow suit by creating or sponsoring their own podcasts. I think for most companies, it is far easier to sponsor an existing Podcast that is operating in the niche target demo.

The going rates for a 15 sec sponsorship which is usually placed before and/or after the podcast is around US$45 per 1000 subscriptions, which is pretty good compared with Radio. Podcasts can attract very niche audiences and although they can be downloaded globally, there are ways to sponsor Podcasts that attract local audiences. I suspect eventually we will see technology that allows different ads to be placed in the same podcast, depending on where the download is made.

So, is anyone outside the technology or car industry actually sponsoring Podcasts? An example is Nature’s Cure which an acne product is sponsoring the Emmo Girl Talk which is run by a 15 year old girl.

The business models for Podcasting are still emerging. ChinesePod are offering Chinese Language training delivered via Podcasting. Their regular free podcasts are usually around 10 mins in duration .. perfect for when you are commuting to work, or waiting for a meeting. Chinese Pod also offer a premium learning environment that is Subscription based. I meet with the guys from Chinese Pod during Ad Tech Shanghai and was impressed with their business model. You can sign up for their free trial, and if you like it, for a small fee, become a subscriber.

Even the current media companies are signing sponsors to their podcast programs, as reported here by Katy Bachman of Mediaweek.

So for companies wanting to get their feet wet with podcasting, it should be pretty easy to find a relevant existing podcast to sponsor. I suggest talking to your existing consumers and finding out what Podcasts they are already listening to. Consider temporary sponsorships which provide brands the ability to sponsor 1 to 3 programs, without the ongoing commitment of a long term relationship. Promotional Podcasts are another viable option which companies could consider that coincide with a particular campaign.

Getting the right call to action in the actual ad, is also an important challenge. Most Podcasts have associated blogs, and therefore you should consider an integrated campaign including audio and the web. Creating a special offer will also provide the right measurement tools for you to track the response rates to your sponsorship. More on Podcasts in the coming weeks.