THOUGHT (aka Centric's Blog)

So, you’re going to do something so brilliant, so compelling, and so funny that people simply have to pass it on to your friends. Something so great it leaps right into the center of the public eye. Something that gets 10 million YouTube views. Something that hits the front page of Yahoo. Something that Leno and SNL make fun of.

So, you’re going to hire the talent to make this happen?

So, you’re going to let them have free rein?

So, you’re going to get that concept your brand police–without them diluting it?

So, you’re going to get that brilliant production past your legal department–without them adding a disclaimer?

So, you’re going to get that finished piece past your CEO–without him seeing what his son’s friend can do cheaper?

In short: notgonnahappen.com.

Viral pieces today are carefully orchestrated, widely seeded, and propagated by networks of people dedicated to doing exactly that. And they usually start with a fanbase. Sometimes a very big fanbase. One that’s hungry for the kind of content they’re promoting.

And yes, I know: this sounds an awful lot like conventional marketing. And it sounds expensive. And, you know what? You’re right. Good viral ain’t cheap, and it ain’t a guaranteed home run–or, in other words, it’s like every other campaign you’ve ever run.

Still want to do viral? Cool. Loosen up. Experiment. Do a lot of things. Do more of the ones that work.

That is the path to success. 

Who put the ad in adversity?

It wasn’t me, I assure you and it wasn’t the advertising community either. They are running scared and who can blame them.You’ve seen the carnage first hand.

You’ve walked into your favorite Lowe’s and found the aisles curiosly empty. You made a last minute reservation at the hottest restaurant in town and for the first time you weren’t laughed at. And the most troubling of all indicators are the gas prices. If the Saudis and OPEC can’t maintain high margin prices, who can?

The publicly held media companies are acting as if they were living in a post-apocalyptic society where all rhyme and reason have broken down and all that’s left are the typical and predictable cost-cutting, budget slashing tactics. Movies have been made, consumer products produced, services have been rendered - so how in the world are they going to sell their stuff with the entire blood letting going on in the ad world?

Not advertising is not the answer. Smart advertising is.

I know what you’re thinking. Here is where Centric gets on its high horse and urges all TV advertisers to get with it. You know, hire us to engage the end users directly and forego the shotgun approach where 8 out of 10 viewers couldn’t remember your message if they had a gun pointed at their heads. Nope, that’s not where I am going. At least not directly.

I have friends in Gannett’s advertising division who say that the first thing they were greeted with last week was the CEO’s unselfish gesture of voluntarily cutting his salary by $200,000. Of course he makes $1.2 million, but that’s irrelevant. What’s important was the companywide shiver that touched everyone below the CEO’s pay grade. Which, by the way, were all 46,100 employees.

But Gannett has it both ways. They have both an advertising and a publishing division. They actually have a clue and a reason to be optimistic. Instead of running from reality, Gannett is actually beefing up its online units with a new mandate. They are hiring hybrids; those who understand and can sell new applications across all of their properties. A sort of new ad community, they say. And, their little known and frequently misunderstood ad company, Pointroll is going even further. And, yes, they are incorporating social media and widgets to their offerings.

Is it a solution for all across the board? No, of course not. But, it’s s a cool and rational approach to the seachange we are all seeing take place at amazing and unexpected speed.

So, unlike the fictional invasion of murderous Triffids, we are not facing extinction. At least not those of  us in the business who have the abilty to change.

It seems to be so. Recently, Centric helped Reason.tv (home of The Drew Carey Project) launch their compelling and honest exploration of Libertarian values in Second Life through the eyes of Drew Carey. So what values did Drew find in Second Life? Well for one, “Second Life: A Virtual Frontier,” exposes libertarians to a virtual world where their beliefs and values can be realized - today.

Second Life residents own land, have voluntary exchange, and create a place where they can do pretty much anything they want without government intervention. Residents can also be whatever they want or create whatever they want. In fact, residents in Second Life gamble, have sex, do drugs, and own weapons. Yet, residents in Second Life live a pretty peaceful life and coexist in an environment that fosters community responsibility and growth.

Since the release of “Second Life: A Virtual Frontier,” Reason.tv has clocked in almost 1 million unique views. In fact, our machinima ranks in #3 in an all-time high record for Reason.tv! Check out the Reason.tv episode “Second Life: A Virtual Frontier” and see why Drew loves Second Life for yourself!

I may be the only one here thinking that you never see the word l-o-v-e in business discussions.

You don’t hear it in meetings or in elevators. And that’s a shame because if you think about it, love matters. And it makes me angry when companies who have the love but don’t see fit to share it.

So short sighted and so cold, they are.

Exhibit one - entertainment companies. The ones who have the good fortune to make and sell things that appeal to a built-in audience of fans who aren’t just interested, but are genuinely in love with their works. The rabid fans who will engage in a brand for years on end and all they want is a little love in return. By love I mean some kind of recognition of their fandom, their loyality, their contribution to the fame.

"Oh, but we have no budget for that. We’ll just put it out there and the fans will find it." Or, "we’ll just depend upon our distributor/retailer or marketing partner to bear the burden." Nice.

Take Coldplay. These guys have it going on. They are one of the most successful and popular bands on the planet. They sell out stadiums, sell millions of  CDs and legal downloads and still give away songs and more importantly take this fame very seriously. Even before the fame, Coldplay understood the importance of engaging their fans in nearly every way. Same can be said for Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails.

But Coldplay is a bit more accessesible than its peers. It helps that the boys have maintained an informal and self funded marketing team. A friend who worked at EMI said the last thing they wanted was corporate control of their message.

The website, http://www.coldplay.com is outrageously inclusive and well designed. They have all of the social networking apperatus you’d expect including a few cool things you didn’t. One that turned my head was the "Oracle" tab. You ask it a question and its A.I. responds, usually spot on. At least I think the A.I responds. This time I don’t think it’s Chris Martin at the keyboard. 

The loves flows back and forth between the band and the fans. The latest eMail blast includes a video contest, new video clips and news; all written in the first person. Sure, there’s a "store" on the site, but it’s not the boys selling out. It’s just love. And no one’s complaining.

We could tell you that creating a single perfect image and message is all you need to propel your company to market success.

And we could say that using established media like television and magazines are still the best way to reach your audience.

And we could also reassure you that emerging tactics such as social media are really just a flash in the pan, and that only kids use it anyway.

We understand why you want to hear things like this.

Your life as a marketer is tough. You’re understaffed and overworked. You’re up against cut-throat competition. And you’re probably being asked to slash budgets even further. While being tasked to maintain company growth. It ain’t easy. So, when you hear something like, "Well, all you need is that grand big idea and one medium and forget the rest," you want to believe. It’s so tempting to think it can be that easy.

But the reality is, those are tantalizing fictions, spun by people who are only interested in accessing your wallet, not in helping you succeed.

The reality is there is no single perfect image and message that can ensure success. The successful image and message may be very different for each audience. For each product. For each economic condition. Finding those successful images and messages may require your brand to be flexible. It may require you moving out of your comfort zone. It may require testing, optimization, re-testing, and testing some more. What you should be hearing is, "There is no single perfect image and message, but we can define a suite of images and messages that are congruent with your brand, and test and optimize them for maximum effectiveness."

And the reality is there is no single medium that is the best way to reach your audience–not TV, not magazines, not online banners, not "viral" marketing, not social media, not mobile, not SEO. We’re operating in a world where there are dozens of ways to reach your audience within every broad category–many of which do not show up on the big planning software that some agencies rely on. The reality is that you should be looking at the most effective, measurable methods for reaching your audience first–then considering other media if there is budget left over. Measurable methods allow you to optimize your outreach. And you can measure almost anything online, whether it’s a banner campaign, SEM, or social media. Television and magazines? These are very, very hard to tie back to sales–or even site visitors.

And, finally, the reality is that emerging marketing such as social media isn’t a flash in the pan, and isn’t just for kids. In fact, over 70% of US adults engaged with social media this year, and 25MM of them are using it to influence their purchasing decisions. This is a fundamental change which has the power to overturn everything we know about marketing–and it cares nothing about your brand, your image, your messaging, your party line. This is a medium in which many are talking to many, without any intermediaries. The rules have changed. And it’s vitally important to protect your brand in this space, and then consider relevant outreach.

The reality is that most marketers don’t want to hear about the realities.

And that’s the penalty for being honest: we can say what you want to hear and win the account. Or we can tell you about the realities and risk losing out. But, in the end, we think you’d rather hear how it really is, and listen to strategies to effectively reach your audiences, than take an even bigger risk of losing everything for some easy answers.

Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

Comments, stories, photos, videos—any of these things can be user-generated content. Some are just a lot more difficult to make. Comments are a snap. Stories require talent. Photos are easy. Video requires production and editing (for anything more than a simple sight gag).

So how come so many companies saddle themselves with the most difficult forms of user-generated content. Yeah, video contests are cool, but they require the most effort. You’d better be thinking of a serious prize—or serious exposure—to make it worth their while. And you shouldn’t expect a whole raft of entries. Or an audience that wants to spend hours watching them.

Photos, on the other hand, are easy. Almost everyone has a digital camera, or a cameraphone. Photos aren’t hard to transfer to your computer. They don’t need editing. And, on the viewing side, the time someone spends with a photo is up to them—they can spare a single glance, or gaze into its depths for minutes.

A user-generated content drive based on photos will get more entries and more views. It will require a much smaller prize. It can even end up being a sustainable, long-term campaign. Take the example of the new Memorex website we just launched.

Every page of the site can be personalized with photos chosen from user submissions in the previous months. The payoff for the photographer isn’t thousands of dollars, or expensive gear—it’s simply exposure to the massive traffic that visits the Memorex site.

This kind of user-generated campaign is designed to for the long term. Instead of a point program, with a big prize and an ending date, this campaign runs continuously, allowing Memorex to forge a stronger connection with their audience—without forcing them to learn all about video editing.

Yes. That’s right.

Today, it was announced that social media, a niche in the wide world of marketing, has overtaken pornography in terms of popularity. I heard this while attending a webinar this morning.

In the mid 90’s, when the world looked at the web as a smorgasbord of pornography first and everything else a distant second. It was nothing to be ashamed of, unless you had to deal with Wall Street. 

Even the home entertainment industry began as a discreet pipeline of X-rated entertainment. The difference here is that it took the home entertainment industry just five years to change the paradign. It took the web business a tad longer.

I can remember a meeting I had with Microsoft in Philadelphia in the 90’s. We were meeting with a chatty young woman whose card read "Internet Evangelist.". Her mission was to check out the product environment in video stores for her PC game software. "Too much porn on the shelves. Bill doesn’t like that," she said. So, we missed out on all of their buggy and slow games that would almost always cause our tiny hard drives to crash. And, of course put the blame on the video store.

And, remember CES in years past. Big porn section. Fun and games amidst the Sony’s and Panasonics. Hey, be honest. Better parties at night. Right?

To me this announcement is more memorable than YouTube grabbing more viewers than network TV. More important than the paradigm shift of young people away from e-mail into the Sidekick world of texting and instant messaging.

Poor porn. From a leader in pre-recorded media relegated today to a second tier business model. Say it isn’t so. But it is.

Your sarcastic comments are welcome.