THOUGHT (aka Centric's Blog)

Let’s bring Don Draper forward to the Centric offices today. At first, he’s cool. He sees posters of our print work on the walls, he’s stunned by the big flat-panel television (and high definition shows), and he thinks that computers are just an evolution of a typewriter. Then we start going to websites.

"What the hell are these?" he asks.

We tell him: this is the way most people communicate these days. They put up MySpace pages with photos, they put up YouTube videos, they research purchases by going to corporate websites, they talk on forums. We show him iChat. He looks a little troubled.

"So this is like a videophone?"

No, no, we tell him. It’s everything. Phone. Text. Pictures. Instant messages. Video. We show him YouTube.

"Wait a minute! Anyone can put any movie they want up here?"

We tell him about copyright and DCMA. He shakes his head and looks around for the scotch tumbler. Not seeing it, he sighs and leans forward and stares at the screen. "But that won’t work. People do what they want."

We just nod.

"How much does this cost?" he asks.

To post a video? It’s free.

"No, no! The whole thing. This internet."

A lot of people get it bundled in with their cable service. If not, it costs, well, five to eight dollars (in 1960 dollars) a month for access.

"For how long? How many minutes do they get?"

Minutes? It’s connected all the time. People can use it as much as they want, pretty much.

Don looks a little pasty and gray. We show him how you can do video ads, and he waves us away. "No. That’s no good. You don’t need to finish the ad. You don’t even need to look at it. You should be doing television or print!"

We tell him, sorry, online has been proven to be 2x more effective than television and 8x more effective than print–and that the way things were going, finding newspapers and magazines to place print in might get pretty difficult in a couple of years.

He’s white and shaking now. We don’t bother pulling out the iPhone. We just let him click around on the big screen, watching as his eyes get bigger and his complexion loses even more color. "So, anyone can talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime, anyhow? For free?"

Pretty much, we agree.

He shakes his head. "This won’t work. This doesn’t work. If people can talk, they can talk about how Uncle Milt died of lung cancer and how his doctor told him to quit smoking. And the words are right there for all to see!"

Or their video, we say. We show him a modern high-definition video camera. He just looks at it and asks how much it costs.

In 1960 dollars, about ninety dollars, we tell him.

He fumbles in his breast pocket and pulls out an old-fashioned pack of cigarettes, but we stop him, saying, You can’t smoke in here.

"Why?" he looks like he’s ready to cry.

You can’t smoke in any public building. It’s against the law.

Suddenly he’s pissed. "What kind of communist state are you living in? It’s like you’re living in Russia!"

We don’t have the heart to tell him, but he sees it in our eyes.

He swallows. "China?" he says, in a very small voice.

We shake our heads.

Don collapses in a chair, curling up into a fetal ball. "Send me back," he says. "Send me back! Send me baaacckk!!!"

————–

So, what’s the point of all this, you ask? The point is that we can look back at some imagined time and consider it a golden age. But the golden age of advertising wasn’t the 60’s. Sorry. Not even close. Putting up a roadblock ad that people have to see in a handful of different media was child’s play. You could buy the reach. Then it was just a matter of clear communication.

Today, media is fragmented. There are dozens of different tactics you can use online alone. And many of them require customer engagement and interaction. There are no roadblocks. There are only circus tents and beckoning shops and cool parks. And the ones that connect with people are the ones that will work. And the ones with real, honest connections to the brand are the ones that will be the most successful.

No, the golden age of advertising wasn’t the 60s. The golden age of advertising is right now.

No, not as in "it cost a million dollars to produce this widget," but as in "we got a million bucks of response from this widget."

Let’s back up a minute. Here’s the backstory: Warner Brothers came to us to help promote their new animated movie: Batman Gotham Knight. This usually means that we create a microsite and a MySpace presence. This time, however, we added a Facebook presence—and a relatively full-featured widget:

The widget allowed people to see the trailer, browse stills, and find out more about the movie, and it had an interesting social feature: When you installed the widget, you became a member of The Concerned Citizens of Gotham City. The more people who installed the widget, the brighter the Bat-signal would glow.

Pretty cool, huh? But what is much, much cooler are the numbers the widget generated:

• Before the launch of the movie, the widget generated nearly 1MM pageviews
• As of this writing, it has generated over 1.4MM pageviews

Now remember: these are pageviews, not impressions. This means that nearly 1MM more interactions were facilitated by the widget before the launch of the movie—and, even after launch, with no additional investment in the campaign, the numbers continue to grow!

Here are a few striking things we noticed:

1. The widget killed the microsite, both in terms of unique users and pageviews. Wait. Let’s repeat that: the widget beat the microsite for unique users and pageviews. These are people who might never have bothered to come to the Batman Gotham Knight microsite—and a real testimonial to the need to "get out where the people are," rather than trying to bring them to your site.

2. The widget performed about as well as a million-dollar paid media buy. To drive 1MM clickthroughs to your site, you’re looking at $500K-2MM for a typical AdWords program. Or, $1.2MM for a network banner buy with $1.20CPM and 0.1% clickthrough. Or $1MM for targeted online ads with $10CPM and 1% clickthrough.

3. The numbers keep growing, even after the campaign has ended. With a media buy, when the spending stops, your media stops. Period. End of story. With a popular widget "in the wild" on social networks, the numbers continue to grow.

"Well, yeah, that’s cool," you might be saying. "But our audience is older/less hip/not on the social networks/won’t use widgets."

Oh really? Let us introduce you to two statistics you might find interesting:

• Widgets have a 67% reach across the worldwide internet audience, according to ComScore Widget Metrix
• Over 40% of moms are on MySpace

Now, sit back, think about your brand and what you might be able to offer in a widget. And think what a long-term, persistently growing, permanent presence in the social spaces and blogosphere might do for your results.

Welcome to the world of today—a world where all the rules are changing.

If you read this article, you might get that impression.

Here’s the Cliffs Notes version for those of you who don’t want to wade through the article: Google AdWords has an equivalent cost per click of $0.50 on average. This means it costs $500 for 1000 clicks. However, television charges only $20 to show your ad to 1000 people. So, television is much less expensive than Google AdWords.

Um, well . . . no.

The fact is, you can’t compare the two numbers at all. Cost per click (CPC) is measuring a cost per action. A click means a person has seen the ad, read it, and decided that they were interested enough to click on it. However, cost per thousand impressions (CPM) is measuring the cost to show an ad to an audience that may never see it (thanks, TiVo), much less be interested in it, or respond to it.

Anyone can see which is the higher value. CPC is delivering a targeted lead that has already said, "I’m interested enough to act on this." CPM is simply how many times your ad appears.

In fact, anyone who has spent time hands-on with internet marketing wouldn’t bet on banner ads (which may have only a $1-5 CPM) beating AdWords in terms of cost per click. Why? Because the response rate is so low. A 0.1% response rate on a $1 CPM network buy is a $1.00 CPC–2X the average for Google Adwords. And, guess what: a 0.1% response rate is good for network buys.

Television? Forget about it! Without heroic measures, you can’t track an individual television ad impression to an action. And even if you could, nobody with any practical experience would expect television’s equivalent CPC to beat AdWords. 

I’m really into these guys.

Sure, they’re part of the Disney machine, but check out who they’re dating. And, while you’re at it, check out the punky new wardrobes on the cover of their new CD. Hey, their iTunes bio states they sound like the Ramones so I am totally down with them. Sadly, there is a fly in the proverbial ointment.

Call me old school but here’s what’s missing and it’s not all Nicholas’s fault.

First of all, their fans couldn’t care less how the tracks on their CDs are sequenced. Other than the cover art and the little 8 point shout outs, the fans look for individual songs. Gone is the art of album programming. If the kids don’t care, why should the brothers? Guys, remember how cool it was to sit and listen to an entire album? And, stare at the album cover while you listen. For hours.

Sound quality. We know that the brother’s fans couldn’t care a lick about sound quality. Do they even play their music through speakers anymore? I bet their sound engineers still care. My buddy who sells $10,000 speakers cares a lot.

They main thing these Disney guys are missing are the cool girls. Cool girls like bad boys. The more dangerous, the better. Look how those vampire books are selling. Are the guys in Twilight Disney guys? I don’t think so.

So, where am I going with this?

Truth be told, I don’t really listen the brothers Jonas. I just know these guys are missing a lot about what makes artists - artists. The Web and peer to peer file sharing has hurt the DNA of recorded music and those who make a living from it.

And, there’s not a thing Disney can do about it.

A quick look at the iPhone App Store will show you several dozen social network connectors. These include the ones you’d expect: mobile apps from MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Wordpress.

But there are also a whole lot you may never have heard about: Twinkle, Limbo, CenceMe, Whrrl, Who’sHere, iCrowdSurf, and more. What’s interesting about these is that they are location-based social networks. They’re using the iPhone’s built-in GPS to put you (and your friends) on a map–so you can tell which of your friends are nearby, or meet new friends with similar interests.

I can just hear the howls of protest now: "I don’t want anyone to know where I am!" "Why would I want to meet random people I don’t know?" and, of course "What the heck does this have to do with marketing?"

Well, all those howls are just fine. Because, you know, if you don’t want people to know where you are, or you aren’t looking to meet new friends, these services may not be right for you. Just like many people choose to abstain from MySpace and Facebook, there’s nothing that says you *have* to participate in these new location-based social networks.

What you have to remember, though, is that there are plenty of people who are comfortable with sharing their lives. If not with the wider Internet, perhaps with their families. Or imagine the busy traveler who wants to spend some time with friends when they’re in the area. Or the virtualized company which wants to make its sales team even more efficient.

Or, at an even more basic level: imagine how many people would like to know if that hot guy or attractive girl across the bar might be compatible with themselves. Or in class. Or in a bookstore. Or at the coffee shop.

Now, I’m not going to place any bets on who’s going to be the MySpace or Facebook of this emerging space, or if established players like MeetUp are going to step in, or if MySpace or Facebook themselves are going to own the location-based social spaces, but the bottom line is clear: put together location and relationships, and you have the potential for a very, very big bang.

"But what about marketing?" you ask. "Beyond location-based ads for local businesses, where is the payoff?"

Ha. Well, first, let me ask this: If the *only* payoff is in location-based ads for local businesses, coupled with advanced behavioral targeting based on openly available social profiles and usage, do we even have to go any further? This is a huge payoff, with huge potential for advertisers.

But beyond that, consider MeetUp. How much business is done at these informal meetings?

Or, consider simply the power of meeting face to face. How comfortable are you in doing business with people you have never met?

That’s what I thought. So don’t be so fast to dismiss these new location-based social networks. It’s just another way for people to connect. And that connection can be for business just as easily as for personal reasons. The potential is enormous.

And it begs the question: how much potential business walks past you . . . invisibly . . . every single day?

You know who you are. All you do is regurgitate news articles from commonly available sources. Are you assuming your clients don’t have access to tagged RSS feeds from BusinessWeek, AdAge, and Forbes? Are you assuming they don’t have time? Are you assuming that four lines of puerile comments really add to those common-garden articles you’re posting?

Before you start a business blog, ask yourself two questions:

1. Do I have something to say? If you’re just doing it for search engine rank, don’t. It doesn’t work when you just repurpose stuff, anyway.

2. Can I post something new and interesting at least once a week on average? If the answer is no, again, don’t bother—a rarely-updated RSS feed is worse for search engine placement than no feed at all.

And, once you start a blog, ask yourself two questions before you post:

1. Does this do anything better than the mainstream media? Or the big blogs? You know, the ones that already cover your industry. What can you do better than them? Regurgitating their news doesn’t do anyone any favors. What unique position pieces, methodologies, tips and tricks, leading-edge techniques, opinion pieces can you bring to the table?

2. Is this uniquely of value to your customer or client? In other words, is it something that they can take and immediately use in their business? Is it something that has not been repeated 85,000 times across the blogosphere?

If you can’t answer both of these questions “yes,” do not post.

So. Please. You know who you are. Take a look at your blog and ask yourself: Am I doing anyone a service by writing this? And if you aren’t, please stop.

For the past two days, I’ve been playing with the Spore Creature Creator.  Did I say "playing"?  I meant "researching."  All in the name of Science, of course.

Oh, hell, who am I kidding?  This is a bundle of ridiculous joy, a Frankenstein lab with Play-Doh bodies, Mr. Potato Head parts, and Pixar life.  You start out with a blobby body that you can contort, shrink, and pummel into whatever shape you want, and then you slap on legs, mouths, eyes, arms and other appendages until you have a creature that runs around, dances, and has offspring.  The children are adorable, all extra large eyes and tentacles, and they mimic their parent’s behavior.  When you’re done, you save your creatures and share them to the Sporeapedia where they’ll eventually become the bestiary of Spore’s sprawling universe.

The best part of the SCC is how easy it is to use.  I wasn’t kidding when I namechecked Play-Doh and Mr. Potato Head.  Making monsters is as intuitive as those simple games.  Move your mouse over the body, the skin goes transparent and the vertebrae highlight.  Spin the mouse wheel, and the muscles around that vertebrae expand. Slap on some legs and arms, move the mouth around, and suddenly you’ve got a creature that blinks in amazement and smiles every time you change its body.

There’s enough depth to keep the statistic nut inside you going for days.  Do I make an herbivore that can sing well to find a mate yet has a weak charge?  Do I add more legs and faster feet?  Or do I just do crazy with eyes ’cause it looks really cool?  The game itself isn’t even ready, and already there are four hundred sixty thousand user-created creatures (and there will probably another fifty thousand by the time I actually finish writing this post).

 What gets me is how easy it is to get attached to these wee beasties.  While a lot of this is due to the fluid animation and charming gestures the creatures make (when was the last time you saw a giant spider do a sumo wrestler’s shiko?  Or, y’know, bat its many eyes at you in a come hither glance?), but most of it is thanks to the magic of the Uncanny Valley, the idea that as a figure becomes more lifelike, a person’s positive emotional reaction will actually dip.  It’s easy for me to get attached to these goofy creatures, but show me the models from The Polar Express, and I get the creeps.  Mr. Incredible and my Striped Faffasquat don’t approach anything near photorealism, and you know what?  That’s fine.

While the creatures and their backgrounds aren’t real, their look still feels right.  I think that’s because Will Wright and his team have realized something that manga creators have known for ages: a simple character in a complex environment means people can easily immerse themselves.  Instead of getting faffing about  with pointless gabble about how 3d their world should be, Maxis is probably going to make something that is pretty to look at, just real enough for people to accept what’s going on (with things like shadows and gravity and movements that don’t look like cardboard cutouts), and then there will be a sudden drop in productivity as people around the world spend their waking moments leading their creations out of the amino acid muck and up to the stars.

One more thing to keep in mind is that Spore is a game, and games are meant to be fun.  That may sound like an obvious idea, what how many times have you heard some sim queen stamp his virtual feet and pout that virtual worlds aren’t games?  Isn’t that another way of saying that they’re not, y’know, fun?  Call me biased (and I know I’m biased, since my professional and geek roots are in games), but if given a choice between developming a pardigm-shifting method of personal interaction or teaching a three-footed horned giraffe how to walk, sign me up for the giraffe cages, dude.  I’ve long yelled (much to the office’s chagrin) that if people building virutal worlds aren’t raiding the ranks of video game developers, they’re missing out on a gold mine of experience.  Immersion, ease of use, fun: these are what you get from a good game.  Along with the giraffes.  Man, they’re cute.