Hot Styles Now – A Keynote by Mindy Grossman

Several weeks ago, I spent the entire day at Macy’s. Not shopping – department stores scare me a little – but attending a conference on Interactive Retailing. The keynote speaker was Mindy Grossman, the CEO of HSN. I say, “HSN” rather than “Home Shopping Network” because one of the modernizing changes she has made is updating the name – kind of like KFC, but with less to hide.

I found this change in name particularly interesting because in 2002, I did quite a bit of work with HSN. I was one of two marketing leads in Hearst Magazines’ Brand Development Group, i.e., licensed products. Products ranging from Marie Claire fashion to Good Housekeeping cookery to Cosmo hair accessories and Country Living quilts were frequently featured on HSN and QVC. Seeking to find a fit between the HSN brand and the Marie Claire flair was tricky, so I coined the phrase “Hot Styles Now!”

Well, it seems that Mindy Grossman has updated the HSN brand to a point where we don’t need either Home Shopping Network or Hot Styles Now. These are some of the things she has done:

Coined the catch phrase: “There's No Place Like HSN."

- Check out the video.

Eliminated $100 billion in product.

- I’d like to know how she selected which product to eliminate. Rationalizing a product line is a valuable and tricky endeavor. You want to upgrade your brand, but you don’t want to alienate your core audience.

- Did she use the BCG matrix – identifying stars, cash cows, problem children and dogs based on market share and growth? Was there qualitative and quantitative research involved? Did she, like Showtime, define the unique look, feel and personality of HSN and then pick products that supported it and simply felt right? Did she segment her target market? I certainly hope and imagine she did. I think that market segmentation is perhaps the most important element of marketing strategy.

- I’d also like to know what led to the transformation. How, as I alluded above, did she evaluate where she was and where she wanted to go? Was it an upfront strategy or more of an incremental evolution?

The end goal and end result was a transition to a lifestyle network.

- That is big. I sounds like she identified the core of her brand and her audience and expanded from a retail channel to an entertainment/transaction vehicle. Very interesting.

HSN added culinary programming noting that the appetite for this kind of programming has not been sated.
Cute choice of words: appetite for culinary things has not been sated… Also quite a statement. Even with a 24/7 Food Network and Food Network spinoff (Scripps re-purposing of “Fine Living).

- In fact, even with food content on Bravo, TLC, the Travel Network, A&E, ABC Family Channel, BBC America, Discovery, Fox Reality, MTV, Style Network, AMC, FX Network, MSNBC, TV Land, Hallmark Channel, Lifetime and Lifetime Movie, Oxygen, SoapNet, WEtv, Comedy Central and Spike TV (phew!), there is still an unsated appetite. (This , by the way, is why I would like to invite Brooke Johnson, President of Food Network, to speak at the Harvard Club, but that is a story for another day.)

In any case, HSN feels that this appetite has not been sated – perhaps, like chocolate, having food content just makes us all want even more – so, "she is going after that."

Mindy started her talk with some key Internet data points:

- Oh, how I love data…

Here they are:

Peer reviews are the #2 source of content/activity after search

30 billion videos viewed each month, ___% on YouTube [darn, missed the # and will have to look it up]

When a person has a DVR, 40-60% of viewing is time shifted

- By the way, I spoke with a physicist working on the Hadron Collider, and he broke the news to me that time shifting is not the fourth dimension. It has to do with the Speed x Time = Distance equation. Oh well.

The web is becoming more sociable than searchable

- Nice alliteration

Facebook had 400 MM users in February of 2010

- Yup, it’s more than that now.

4 of 5 Internet users visited social networking site

11% of time online is on social networks

eBay is experimenting with outlets

- I didn’t know that. I’ll need to search on it when I get a sec.

Online gaming is growing in popularity – 65% of households game! More than 40% of those who game are women. A lot [missed the number] are over the age of 50. 57% are earning or spending virtual currency daily.

- Wow and whoah. 57%! On virtual currency! Take in for a moment that companies like Zynga have figured out a way to turn online value into money! This is worth taking a pause to digest. I’m glad that I’m working on a social gaming speaking event. It’s hot, hot, hot!

The leaders in social mobile networking activity are 35-46 years old.

- Kids, by the way, are pretty much satisfied with Facebook when it comes to social networking.

- Oops – speaking of food content, it’s time for lunch. Gotta run.

- Good news is that Mindy’s people have invited me to do an audio interview, so if you have any questions you’d like me to ask, send ‘em on over!

When You Think "Add;" Also Think "Reduce"

Something dramatic happened in 2009. Something that might not surprise you today but would have been unthinkable back when I walked the carpeted hallways of Hachette, Hearst or Conde Nast Magazines just a few years ago. Internet advertising revenue surpassed magazine advertising revenue.

Based on ZenithOptimedia estimates, magazine revenues fell from $24 billion in 2008 to $19 billion in 2009, and Internet revenues grew from $18 billion to $20 billion - despite a decrease in total ad revenue across all categories. The line in the sand has officially been crossed, and I can not imagine that it will be reversed. (In fact, Zenith estimates an increased gap in 2010.) While magazines may experience a partial rebirth with the birth of the iPad, their role as a top 3 medium is no longer.

Now, while TV and Newspapers seem to be holding their own, this stability does beg a question for me as follows: Are the interactive ad revenues associated with newspaper websites and tv websites included in the newspaper/tv bucket or the interactive bucket? My most recent perusal of a Veronis Suhler report revealed that these calculations are far more complicated than they may seem. As integrated advertising and media offerings have become more real, bookkeeping has become more surreal. In fact, the strength of TV and newspaper revenues reflects, in part, the strength of their digital offerings, particularly in comparison to the somewhat late-to-the-table magazine industry.

Last night, I sponsored a talk by Bob Seelert, Worldwide Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, author of the book "Start with the Answer" and creator of a short article featuring a list of the "10 Things To Do When Leading In Tough Times." #9 on the list reads as follows: "When you think 'add;' also think 'reduce.' When you think 'create;' also think 'eliminate.'"

Unfortunately, as advertising agencies seek to enhance their digital capabilities, they find a reduced need for those with print expertise. A smart organization will see the need to make this tradeoff, and a long-time print professional had better see the need to stay a step ahead - or at least catch up!

On July 10, 2007, I wrote my very third blog entry. It was entitled, "Don't Do It" and strongly counseled a colleague to diversify out of print and into digital. I hope she heeded my advice:

"Don't do it," I told her. A colleague from my magazine days took me to breakfast to ask for career advice. She has 11 years of magazine experience and is reentering the work force after a maternity leave and a quick detour into non-profit. "Don't go back into pure play print," I told her. If you do return to magazines, make sure you have digital responsibility and interaction."

My colleague didn't think she had enough online knowledge to enter that world. "I don't know about search and all that," she said. But my feeling is that she needs to get up to speed on the lingo, the players and the trends. I suggested that she attend some industry breakfasts such as iBreakfast and NY:MIEG and directed her to paidcontent.org and eMarketer. She has more digital experience than she thinks as she oversees the redesign of her non-profit's website. I like to think that I earned my pancakes.

Why Go Digital - to the Count of Three

Yesterday, I shared with you some thoughts about measuring payback on ad spending. Thoughts that I am collecting as part of a specific inquiry. Today, I jumped to a later chapter in my analysis for a little diversity and thought therefore, that I would go ahead and begin a fresh post:

Let’s jump ahead for a moment to the big picture. What is it my inquirer wants to know? In sum, she wants to get a handle on the dynamics of the ad market as it transitions from print to digital. She would like to understand why people are moving, why people are staying and how the different users of advertising as well as their intermediaries think about print vs. digital from both the intangible, e.g., business need/presence, and the tangible, e.g., better bang for the buck for banner ad, ability to market to a certain demographic.

The question presents itself to me therefore, which came first the tangible or the intangible? Personally, I think it was the intangible with the tangible playing a part in terms of low risk from a cost point of view. When a client asks me whether marketing dollars should be moved online or to specific new platforms, my reasoning is seldom led by efficiencies. True, the efficiencies are there, and I touted them heartily when writing a business plan for Campfire. (Remind me to share some.) But the reasons advertisers should, have and are going digital include the following:

#1 Your consumers, your customers, your audience is going online. You need to be where they are. As Rishad Tobaccowala once said, “I don’t know whether you are behind your competitors, but I know you are behind your consumers.”

Even if your audience is not quite there yet, I’d rather be there when they arrive than try to find them once I get there. It’s kind of like a party. Fashionably late is not as fashionable when you’re trying to make a good impression and get a jump start. Few marketers and brands are on foursquare. In fact, foursquare has only 750,000 people on it (albeit a 4-fold increase in the last few weeks). But those who were there first – Bravo, Intel, Zagat -- have already made an impression, gotten the press and gotten an advantage.

So, number one, you need to be where your peeps are.

Moreover, you need to be where the puck is going, not where it is now. You may still have a critical mass of your core market watching tv, but what about tomorrow’s market? What about the young mothers who are going online for advice and community, spending more time consuming media on their laptops or mobile devices with less time to spend watching daytime soap operas – to the extent that they still exist? You need to get to know these women in their formative, digital years.

#2 Digital media allows for all kinds of targeting. Not just demographic but behavioral, social, key word, contextual and, eventually (once I understand it), semantic. Moreover, let’s think about the word demographic. With geo-location technology, it’s possible to target at the GPS-level. I mean, I mean, in the not too distant future – if not today – a marketer will actually be able to, finally, really, know that I am leaving my yoga studio and walking by the bakery. Good time for a shout out, no?

So digital targeting is not just specific and flexible, but it’s dynamic. With current prevalent print technology, an advertiser knows that I read “Elle” magazine, but does he know whether I, personally, also read “Wired?” Does he know what I do before and after I read my magazine? At what point do I go ahead and purchase the item advertised in the magazine? Not easily.

With the current geo-location analytics technology, a marketer will be able to know what my literal path to purchase is. He’ll know that I go from my house to work, to lunch to the subway to the gym to the grocery store. Now, how he uses that is a new question, but the fact that this kind of information is available is fantastic.

So, to review, the reasons to spend on digital media include:

(1) that’s where you’re consumers are
(2) there are incredible opportunities with respect to targeting and intelligence

#3 Why Not? Why waste the opportunity? If you are advertising offline, why not continue the conversation digitally. The incremental cost is probably not too big in the scheme of the campaign. It extends the impression – both in time and depth – and it offers an opportunity to capture information. It’s a move from one-to-many to one-to-one. “Thanks for coming to my party, now tell me more about yourself.”

Now that I have brought up this third reason, I’d like to go back to part of the original question, i.e., why are some people staying and some people going, and what is the dynamic of the market as it transitions from print to digital. Well, at the risk of getting touchy-feely, this third reason suggests that an advertiser extend his or her buy by adding a digital element. These platforms can and should work together. Is digital cannibalizing analog, or is it possible that the whole will be bigger than the pieces, yielding a bigger payout and thus additional dollars to fund the whole campaign. Well, that’s high math (and cost accounting) but certainly something to think about.

Dream Cover

A colleague of mine asked me to provide some bullet points that she could incorporate into a note she is writing on my behalf. I wrote something quite mature and professional and then let loose with the following. I think it's actually quite appropriate and simply need someone to post it on my behalf on LinkedIn. Or maybe not... In any case, here's what I've written this exceedingly warm afternoon:

Karen is the most impressive, coolest, prettiest, nicest, most generous, incredible person I know. Her mind works in ways that others can't fathom. She is selfless and makes those around her feel like they are walking on sunshine. Any client she works with experiences immediate dramatic revenue growth. I have considered moving my practice to NYC just so that we could work together more often. She is also a proposal writing machine.

In addition, Karen is the best house guest you could imagine. I have thought about getting a second home on the East Coast just so that she could visit me more often.

And most important, dogs love her. When she looks at them, their fur immediately becomes soft and smooth and straight as if it had been brushed for hours, and their teeth become minty clean and bright.

Measuring Advertising Returns

This blog is about advertising returns, in particular gauging the efficacy of different types of advertising campaigns. It was inspired by the questions asked me by a client seeking to understand how retailers and advertising agencies view payback on ad investment through different advertising vehicles.

We began with catalogs. Now catalogs are typically considered to be a “lower funnel” or direct advertising tool. While a well-done catalog can positively impact brand perception and equity and can stimulate upper funnel results such as awareness, interest and desire, most catalogs are judged on tangible results.

What then are the tangible results we are looking for? A smart marketer will begin his or her campaign with that question, rather than measuring them after the fact. In direct marketing, these are referred to as Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. In the case of a retail catalog, these KPIs will reflect specific desirable consumer actions such as: making a purchase, visiting a website, returning a business reply mailer, signing up for a mailing list. Most enticing, of course, is sales volume.

How then, do we link consumer activity to a particular catalog mailing? There are a number of tactics that can be used. Here are some examples:

1. Create and include a dedicated telesales phone number for each catalog.

2. Send catalogs to different geographic areas on different dates. Then keep an eye on traffic and spending, in store and online, during those periods in those geographies. The geography of an online shopper can be estimated based on the user’s IP address. (An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a numerical label that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes.)

3. More to come…

I welcome your thoughts!

If You Don't Know Where You're Going, Any Road Will Take You There

Later this month, I am hosting a talk by Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide Chairman Bob Seelert. In preparation for this talk, I am reading his book, "Start with the Answer." This afternoon, as I basked in the peaceful exhaustion of a Vinyasa class listening to a mellow arrangement of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" in the "pink" area of the Pure Yoga studio, and reading through Mr. Seelert's two-page chapters punctuated and summated by a chapter-specific "Bob's Wisdom," I sat up suddenly with a compelling need to tweet one of these takeaways: "If You Do Not Know Where You Are Going, Any Road Will Take You There." Like Porter's, "You Can't Manage What You Can't Measure," this struck me as a key leadership tenet worth sharing with the tweetosphere.

But as I continued to read the chapter, I realized that it was much more. It was the holy grail. As a strategy consultant, and particularly in situations where I am the sole strategist leading the way on the development of a digital strategy roadmap or an overall marketing strategy, I find myself mired in the following question: What is a strategy, and what is a tactic. On a recent such project, I recall harkening back to my days as a pasta sauce brand manager when I was given the clear, organizationally-approved framework of objective, strategy, plan. Or... was it strategy, objective, plan? No, surely the first.

But in these new situations, what I saw as a strategy, others might see as a tactic, and vice-versa; and no one was really sure what the objective was. In fact, was the starting point an objective or a vision? Hmmmm... In one such situation, I found myself reaching out to Wharton classmates, Booz & Co. colleagues and other strategic gurus - only to find myself once again mired in the discussion of what the client viscerally responded to as a strategy vs. a plan.

Now, this is admittedly, not as clear cut as my three tiered delineation above. There is sometimes a cascading effect such that a high level "plan" might turn into a lower level "strategy" as the organization gets closer to implementation. I recall having this discussion with Charlie McKittrick at Ogilvy & Mather who nicely summed up his definition of strategy as: "a plan for the allocation of limited resources over time to reach an objective." And in a note to him, I reiterated my comments above that "what may be a tactical element of a high level business strategy can also be the starting point for a marketing strategy (which in turn informs a creative plan and execution)."

All of that said - and serving as a sufficient preamble to allow me to shamelessly reprint what Mr. Seelert outlines in his book, here is a supremely clear cut, General Foods trained, overview of objective vs. strategy vs. plan:

"As a chief executive, it is your job to set a direction for the enterprise. Working with your team, you need to establish a clear vision or better yet, an inspirational dream that is specific to your situation and communicate it to everyone in the organization as often and as thoroughly as possible.

This also sets the stage for mapping objectives, strategies and plans that bring your directions to life and focus the efforts of your people. The first questions to clarify are: What is an objective? What is a strategy? What is a plan? Organizations can become tied in knots if they do not get this simple structure right."

Hallelujah!!! I have been to those knots, and I have seen how tangled, turned around, and derailed a team can become.

"An objective can be described as a goal, an outcome, or an 'end.' It must be measurable."

Hallelujah! B School 101: "specific, measurable results." Anything can be measured - with enough creativity, "can-do" determination and cooperation.

"A strategy describes the boundaries you operate within to achieve the objectives. As such, they represent the 'means to an end.' A plan then is a set of action-oriented steps, taken in conformance with the strategies to achieve the objective."

QED. Quite simple really.

"If the objective is to 'build share of market,' the supporting strategy might be, 'utilize promotional incentives to generate trial among non-users.' A plan flowing from this could be, 'circulate a direct mail coupon of 'x' value on 'y' date.'"

The key here is the simplicity of the objective: "build share of market." Simple but defining. Something that will keep you on track. An overarching framework by which all strategies and plans can be reviewed.

"Setting strategies is particularly important. By establishing boundaries, strategies help channel the organization's efforts in the right direction and minimize the unfettered thinking and actions. They provide the mechanism for evaluating the strength or sensibility of plans as they come forth. The simple question to ask is, 'Is the plan on strategy?'"

Hallelujah! So long, that is, as a company is willing to take a stand on its objective. That requires decision-making and consensus. "A well-defined problem is 90% solved." - Einstein

The New Semester Begins Now

For a number of months, I have been sharing with you courses, panels, seminars, workshops, etc. that I have found to be worth my attending. Perhaps you do too. Well, the list was getting quite long, so I think it's time to unwrap a new notebook, as it were:

[I have moved the upcoming events to a more recent posting.]

Recently Attended:

"The 10 Laws of Enduring Success.” An exclusive one-on-one interview with Maria Bartiromo. Sobel Media, Wednesday, March 31, 7pm. Samsung Experience, NYC.

Everyone wants to attain success. But what is success? How do you get it, and how do you keep it? The events of recent years have prompted many of us to rethink our definition of success. In “The 10 Laws of Enduring Success,” Maria Bartiromo shares personal insights developed on the front-lines of the financial crisis, as well as ideas from in-depth interviews with notable Americans, including Condoleezza Rice, Joe Torre, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, and Goldie Hawn. "The 10 Laws of Enduring Success," will be released on March 30th. Catch her on The Today Show with Matt Lauer on March 31st, then join her in person with us at The Samsung Experience for an exclusive one-on-one conversation with Frank Radice.


Wharton, University Pennsylvania Interactive Retailing 2010 Conference. Tuesday, March 23, 8am-3pm. Macy's Herald Square.

Keynote Speaker: Mindy Grossman

The internet opened up a new channel of distribution for retailers. Now, social networking, online communities and mobile commerce have the ability to transform the industry yet again. To be effective and impactful these new tools must have the flexibility required by retailers: interactivity, ease of use and the ability to influence buying behaviors.

What are the potential opportunities and challenges for retailers who embrace these new technologies?
When should you embrace them?

Can the industry effectively utilize new e-commerce tools to improve their business models and drive sales?
What are the most promising technologies on the horizon?

These are just some of the topics that will be discussed as retail industry executives and academics meet as the Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative and Wharton Interactive Media Initiative present INTERACTIVE RETAILING 2010. This conference will focus on existing technologies that work and how to synergize emerging technologies to position your firm for the future

Professor Nouriel Roubini: THE WORLD ECONOMY – WHAT’S NEXT? Monday, March 15th, 2010. Harvard Club of New York

The New York Times has described him as “the seer who saw it coming” – “it” being of the housing bubble and the ensuing economic meltdown. Professor Nouriel Roubini, who earned his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard and now teaches at New York University, is pre-eminently the economist who made his predictions in public and was right on the money. Now, after earning the right to say, “I told you so,” he is coming to the Harvard Club to talk about the economic future.


The Changing Economics of News and Print Media. Thursday, March 4th, 2010.

An intimate dinner and interactive conversation with media thought leaders to discuss the future of internet and social technologies and their impact on the changing economics of news and print media. How internet and social technologies have irreversibly changed the economics of news and print, and the implications for traditional and emerging media businesses: (a) Consumer consumption habits and trends across multiple platforms, (b) Crowd-sourcing, citizen journalists, and the cost of content creation, and (c) Aggregated vs. reported, free vs. pay.

(Excellent discussion.)

Social is the Next Search: Is Your Site Ready? Thursday, March 4th, 2010. 2-3pm ECT. Free webinar by Gigya

(Excellent presentation, materials, best practice examples)

Shorty Awards. Wednesday, March 3, 2010. NYC - via Livestream from The New York Times Center.

The Shorty Awards are unique awards for the Twitter community, by the Twitter community. Online voting is public and democratic, culminating in an awards ceremony that recognizes the winners in 26 official categories as well as those in crowd-sourced ones.

(Of course TweetDeck won.)

OMMA (Online Media, Marketing and Advertising) Behavioral conference. February 25, 2010. NYC

OMMA (Online Media, Marketing and Advertising) Metrics and Measurement conference. February 24, 2010. NYC

Multichannel News Advanced Advertising: The Future Is Now. Monday, February 22, 2010. NYC

Uncorking Gary Vaynerchuk: an in-depth interview with Ellis Henican of Newsday and Fox News. Sobel Media. Wednesday, February 17, 2010. NYC

Eventcamp 2010. Saturday, February 6th, 2010. NYC

EventCamp 2010 was the first industry gathering of its kind, offering an intimate and low cost alternative to the large annual conference and allowing attendees the option to generate their own content, encouraging participation and allowing for a more interactive environment. Approximately half the session topics were be pre-determined, and aimed to assist planners in utilizing social media and technology in event and meeting planning, execution, business development and networking. All levels of Social Media, Technology, and Event enthusiasts are welcome and encouraged! There were Social Media and Technology rockstars on hand to help participants get started or answer questions.

Whole Foods Market Presents: Afternoon Snack. A New York New Food Media Panel as part of Social Media Week. Friday, February 5th, 2010. NYC

Unleashing Social Media on the Sports World, hosted by the New York Times as part of Social Media Week. Friday, February 5th, 2010. NYC

Crowdsourcing, hosted by the New York Times as part of Social Media Week. Friday, February 5th, 2010. NYC

Is The Future F#cked? - a part of Social Media Week. Thursday, February 4, 2010. NYC.

The Prince of Silicon Valley: Frank Quattrone and the Dot-Com Bubble. Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010. NYC

Before subprime housing melted down in 2008, there was the dot-com bubble and meltdown a decade earlier. The Pied Piper of the Internet bubble was Frank Quattrone, the era’s most successful banker. From Cisco to Netscape to Amazon, he took some of the biggest names in technology public. In 1999 and 2000, his group at Credit Suisse led the most hot initial public offerings, which lifted the entire stock market to record heights. Take a walk down Wall Street with Randall Smith, an award-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, whose articles chronicled the investigations of Quattrone’s firm by
regulators and federal prosecutors. Quattrone’s 2004 conviction for obstruction of justice was overturned in 2006, and the banker recently returned to the securities business. Smith will share the tale of a Wall Street Icarus who flew too close to the sun, an absorbing noir detective story of those investigations and trials. His book, The Prince of Silicon Valley, traces Quattrone’s rise from the back streets of South Philadelphia to the peak of finance as the highest paid banker on Wall Street. (This was my event.)

Pass the Matzoh, Please! The Timeless Tradition of Live Storytelling.

With Passover around the corner, I thought I would dust this posting off from April 14, 2009.

The other night I attended a marathon seder... hmmmm, that's actually a redundant phrase as anyone who has perused a 95 page Hagaddah that tells the history of a 6,000 year old people may have observed. In any case, this seder, which was sponsored by a group called Romemu and attended by 150 people, ran from 6:30-10:30pm - followed by an additional hour of chatting with the people at my table whom I had not met before that day but with whom I had bonded through bitter herbs, plagues, songs, poems, questions, meditation and gefilte fish.

Well, a little over three hours into the seder - after I had accidentally drenched our tablecloth with matzoh ball soup and inadvertently set on fire two plastic bowls by placing them too close to the tea lights on the table - I started to get a little distracted. Reflecting on the many seders I have attended, I began to jot down thoughts for a blog post about the cultural, developmental and educational aspects of the holiday's practices.

A seder - which means order - not only tells the story of Moses and the escape of the Jews from Egypt, but teaches all kinds of values and skills that are inherent elements of the Jewish culture. One of these is discipline and patience, as it can take many hours of deprivation and light symbolic snacking before you get to the meal. Until then, you must subsist on horseradish, wine, a little bit of matzoh and other allegorical items.

The seder also shines a light on the youngest members of the family, requiring them to read aloud and, in the case of the youngest child, to ask the famous four questions. With respect to this, I observed that I felt a commonality with the other "youngest children" at my table. All of us adults, all of us having experienced that unique responsibility. (They hated it; I loved it.) This, in fact, led me to observe that the seder reinforces the birth order.

In addition to learning to speak in public, young people at the seder learn to ask questions. To challenge, question, discuss and analyze. (Does the combination of public speaking and questioning shed a light on the prevalence of Jewish comedians?)

Through the search for the Afikomen, the children learn about work and reward and, in some cases, they learn about the art of negotiation as they determine the payment they are willing to accept in return for the matzoh they now hold hostage.

As I jotted down thoughts in and among the poems and prayers of my seder booklet, one of my table-mates took out a small notebook and began to write. Intrigued, I asked to see what he had written. It was not a blog but a poem. This is what he wrote:

Between God and soul lies a plan that is vast
Deserts seem small
Oceans like ponds
This space vast, it must be passed

With prayer given to the all that is
Joyous singing
Quiet thought
Actions speak loud, to do good is bliss

Smiles and laughs and breathing in deep
Ears that are open
Eyes that can see
Running and jumping, faith calls for blind leaps

The gap isn’t true
There’s no space between
We are all connected
By smiles and by seams.

(Written by Douglas Karson, April 9, 2009)

Early Check In - with foursquare

In July 2009, I wrote an entry called "Who's Tweeting Now" that chronicled various observations about a new rage called "Twitter." Yes, that was less than a year ago. Twitter was hitting public awareness with a bang, and I was being asked by social media skeptics how this new obsession could possibly be useful. So, I decided to string together short Twitter observations into "macro" blog entry.

Now, eight months later, and one year after its launch, foursquare is beginning to penetrate public consciousness. The first week in February, I was asked by a client to pull together some social media elements to be incorporated into a proposal for a B2B financial services client seeking to improve the impact, effectiveness and engagement of its trade show marketing. I did some research into whether this marketer's clients have smart phones and use digital media and whether other major B2B players use Twitter (and Facebook). My initial finding was that this audience was not the iPhone carrying Gowalla using audience that those in NYC might think are the American norm. Some trade show organizers were experimenting with hash tags, and a number of B2B companies had huge numbers of Twitter followers - and even Facebook fans, but my sense was that the social media aspects of this campaign needed to be relatively simple.

I recommended therefore, a number of ways for the marketer to use Twitter - before, during and after each show. And I gave them overall guidance as to how to develop, maintain and optimize their Twitter presence. That done, my client and I decided to go for it, to be crazy, and to incorporate location-based social media into the equation. I looked into developing a mobile application either independently or in conjunction with the trade shows, themselves. But this was really too aggressive. It meant developing an application and then getting trade show participants to adopt it. In other words, it required creating a market. Not easy.

So, why not foursquare? An existing application, with a growing adoption rate and functionality that allowed us to incorporate our promotions and marketing into the existing framework. See, for example, what Intel did at the Consumer Electronics Show. See also what your local retailers are doing. And look at the pop up recommendations that Bill Sobel has left for those who use foursquare in and around New York's upper west side.

I developed the plan and incorporated it into the deck. After finalizing the deck, I called my client to discuss next steps. One of the things he asked for was a more in depth conversation about foursquare so that he could better understand and represent the concept to his customer. Joe, I said (I call all my clients Joe...), keep your eye on this thing - this foursquare. Your client may think it's niche or obscure now, but six months from now, they'll note how ahead of the curve we were. The bigger foursquare gets, the more appropriate our recommendations will be, and since the customer's program is ongoing, they can incorporate it at any time.

There is something about it that is very reminiscent of Facebook back in 2006. Friends and relatives thought I was crazy, or at least, eccentric, when I joined Facebook. (One even said that it was "sad" that I had to go online for friendship...) When I joined there were 6 million people on Facebook. Today, there are close to 400 million - including all those friends and relatives I mentioned. (As of this week, Facebook consistently attracts more daily visitors than Google - CNET.) In 2006 - and even today - there are those who can't imagine why you would want to share private or personal information about what you are doing online. Today, they are scared of the risks of posting information about where you are into a public mobile ethersphere. There are even spoof sites that beckon thieves to "rob me now" when your foursquare status (geotag) shows you are away from home. The number of foursquare participants is low, but the passion of those using it is high. (In actuality, foursquare reached 500,000 participants this week - March 19th, up from 400,000 last week due to intensive guerilla marketing efforts at South by Southwest last weekend.)

Yesterday, I called my client to check in (not in a foursquare sort of way, just a phone call). The first thing he said was that since we had spoken, he had seen and heard about foursquare over and over in the press. It wasn't gradual, and it didn't take six months. It was immediate.

My heart began to beat as I observed the amount of hype this new trend is getting - fast. And so, the question arises again, "how can this new obsession be used - and why?"

Now, I wear a number of hats. I am a "user" - of media, that is. I am a consultant to media and entertainment clients. And I am a consultant to marketers. So, my introduction to foursquare posed at least three sets of questions.

First, how and why should I use it? How can I improve my life by joining foursquare?

Second, what's the plan for Dennis Crowley, founder of foursquare, and his partners? How are they going to monetize this? And, wow, these guys have something hot with a lot of potential. Oh and how might Apple limit or enhance this potential - specifically, Apple recently announced that they would not allow hyper-local advertising on their platform. Uh oh, that seems limiting.

Third, how can marketers exploit this great new technology, growing social trend and incredible treasure trove of consumer behavior information? And in using the word "marketer," I reference a huge range of players, from your local ice cream shop to the Bravo network ("America's Top Chef" program) to major global marketing brands.

And fourth, how can other constituents partner with and leverage foursquare. For example, the University of North Carolina and Harvard College announced foursquare programs this December and January, respectively; and Zagat announced a content partnership shortly thereafter.

And so it goes that I must take up the mouse again - to create a repository of foursquare marketing uses that I observe, identify and generate...

Be sure to check in to see what I uncover.

Is Watching TV a "Yesterday" Thing To Do?

When I consume my video media, I like to be sitting in my livingroom, with my MacBook Air in front of me, my iPhone within easy reach, a bottle of water nearby and some kind of food at the ready. Yesterday I watched the Shorty awards on my laptop, and it was tiring. The day before I watched “Up” on my 15” LCD screen, and it was suboptimal. When I watch TV, I want to lean back. I want to unwind. I want to give my eyes, maybe not a rest, but a change of scenery.

So when people say that livingroom TV watching is going away, that “Gen Y” does not watch television, and that their behavior will take over our world in the not too distant future – 3D TV be damned, I don’t fully buy it.

As someone who considers myself to be a “young [insert age here].” I do feel somewhat embarrassed saying this out loud. Is it because I straddle two generations – as a Gen Xer tucked between young Boomers and the seemingly endless millennial generation? Well, tonight I had an epiphany! It didn’t actually come to me organically but was vaulted at me by a very self-confident HBS I-Banker, who by the way, had no idea what FourSquare was and was irate to find that it did not come up in his Droid app store when he typed in “4.” But I digress.

This erudite MBA pointed out to me that, as someone who often works at home, I am in a unique sub-segment of the population. So the rule that “people watch tv on the best screen option available to them” is not completely false. It’s just that I typically have a better screen available to me than my office- and classroom-tethered brethren. Hmmmm… Duh.

Calling a Spade a Spade at the OMMA Behavioral Conference

Thursday of last week was a messy, mushy wet day here in New York City, but the ballroom at the Marriott Marquis, home of the OMMA Behavioral conference, was warm and comfortable. That is, until Rishad Tobaccowala of Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi gave us all a tough talking to.

His theme: collaboration – and our lack thereof.

“We believe we’re in a share game when we’re in a growth industry,” he said. We fight tooth and nail for $1.2 billion while overlooking $240 billion that is “lying there.” We need to focus, he said, on the customer, not on each other.

So what is it the customer wants? Six things:

Clients want:

(1) Continuous Improvement
(2) Service
(3) Collaboration

How do we score?

(1) Continuous improvement: We pass!

(2) Service: Well, that’s a 50% score

(3) Collaboration…. “We do this horribly.”

Leave it to Rishad to say out loud what we all know to be true, particularly from the client’s perspective. Clients are faced, he said, with a choice between best of breed agencies, that don’t play well together or a mediocre but collaborative combination of vendors.

Most sobering, Rishad wrapped it up by saying that these are the requirements that determine whether an agency stays or goes: “You get fired for these things,” he said.

The spade that Rishad called a spade is something that has surprised and perplexed me – particularly when looking at the situation from the client’s point of view. The client wants an overarching look at how its marketing dollars are working. But an increasingly common refrain is: “We can’t get access to that data because it belongs to an agency that is not part of our group.” Craziness… but hard to fix.

How are clients fixing it? They’re taking it in house. “Clients are much smarter today than they were 5 years ago,” he said. “They are taking a lot of things in house to avoid the drama.”

Rishad brought this up in response to my question about how we can address this problem in the short term. And I’ve had it corroborated by recruiters looking for agency people to work directly for advertisers. Uh oh, if we don’t play well together, we’re going to have our very expensive toys taken away from us.

So that’s why agencies get fired. Why do they get hired? What can we do to catch the eye of a prospective client? As is often the case today, the answer came in “I's” – three “I’s.” They are: (4) Insights, (5) Inspiration and (6) Ideas. Sounds sexy.

So… how are we doing? The story starts well:

(4) Insights: What industry is better suited to provide insights, Rishad exclaimed. Good point (if we do it right, of course...).

(5) Inspiration: Maybe not so good. Eloquent as always, Rishad explained, “We give perspiration, desperation, hallucination…” but not inspiration. Well, that’s a bummer

(6) Ideas: [hmmm.. I’ll have to go back to the recording to see what he said on this topic].

As I said, at the end of Rishad’s uplifting talk, I asked what we could do in the short term. His response:

Treat people like people. “If you are answering a question with PowerPoint slides,” he said, “you have already lost. Take your clients out to a drink and recognize that they are actually people.”

And with that, I’m tempted to put my keyboard down and get a drink but…. the last bit of what Rishad said was intriguing. “All of TV,” he said,” is going to get like digital.” Hmmm, that may be coming but not in the immediate future. Though… I must say that the satellite providers are offering some very cool interactivity with respect to remote DVR programming. This is how they differentiate themselves, and they are ahead of the curve. They are not tethered by a patchwork of acquired cable providers and corresponding remote controls.

And, he said, if the iPad succeeds, it will be the same for magazines.

Food – and drink for thought.

Tick Tock, Tick Tock. The Digital Clock.

Tick tock, tick tock. I'm back on the clock.

What does it mean when a man includes this in his dating profile:

"I'm tired of playing games."

What does it mean? I'm going to ask...


I can't help it, this blog writes itself:

Headline: "your best friend and lover"

Opening line: "My name is M___. I’m a vivid camper and hiker."

Our educational system has failed us.

Finding My Digital Identity

This blog posting came up in a recent discussion of Four Square and whether I am an influencer of some kind, so I thought I'd bring it back up into the light of day. It was originally posted April 21st, 2009.

I was born into the television generation. I cannot deny it. Much of my childhood was spent watching reruns of "MASH" and "Gilligan's Island." And I once asked Carol Burnett to air her show earlier in the evening because my mother wouldn't let me stay up to watch it. (Ms. Burnett did write back to me, but did not reschedule her show.) These were the days of purely linear television. Do you remember? Even before VCRs with their flashing clocks that were so annoying to program.

And thus, I will never be a digital native. I cannot run for president of our digital nation. But yet, my identity is in flux. In 1985, while I was still watching shows like "LA Law," I was also using instant messaging and e-mail via a proprietary system used within IBM, where I worked during summer vacations. At the end of that summer, I bought my first personal computer, an IBM PC with floppy drives and an amber (or green?) screen.

In 1993, I discovered e-mail, and my friends soon learned that to communicate with me effectively, they needed to follow suit. In 1994, I purchased a Motorola cell phone after running out of gas on the Merritt Parkway, hiking up a snowy hill and knocking on people's doors asking to use their phone to call AAA. Can you even imagine that today! Cell phones would have ruined "Rocky Horror Picture Show."

In 1994, I also worked with a stroke victim, helping him use a software program that enabled him to turn mouse movements into spoken words. I also wrote e-mails for him that traveled through an extremely clunky internet client. In 1995, my employer had to add an additional server to handle the e-mail volume produced by me and one of the firm's partners.

In 2003, I joined "Friendster!" (Ugh) and sometime thereafter "MySpace," where my niece let me become her friend - something that will not be repeated on Facebook now that she is a teenager.

At the beginning of 2006, I signed on to FaceBook as one of two people in my college class. The social network had 7.5 million users at the time. (Yes, you read that correctly; that is in contrast to today's number - February 2010 - of 400 million users.) I urged my client - a leading business magazine - to utilize FaceBook, which was just starting to experiment with sponsored programs. In fact, I recommended that they seize what turned out to be a "do it or lose it" opportunity to create a branded FaceBook for MBA students.

To sum things up, I have deemed myself an "early settler and highly assimilated digital immigrant." Perhaps I can become governor of Motorati Island.

Advanced Television: The Future Is... Coming

My client base, let alone my collection of personal interests, is, well, diverse. I work on the media/entertainment/publisher side, the agency side, and the marketer side. To keep up with all of this - and because I love them - I attend a lot of conferences, panels, programs, webinars, etc. And it is quite fascinating to note the differences - not so much in the content of the talks but the culture of the organizations and communities.

Three weeks ago, I attended six days of non-stop social media events. The attendees at each stop on this massive media crawl uniformly carried Apple laptops and at least one Smart Phone - typically iPhone or Droid. They all had blogs and Twitter accounts, and most - it seemed - had Foursquare and/or Gowalla personas.

Fast forward to an event on February 22nd sponsored by Multichannel News and Broadcasting & Cable. The topic, Advanced Television: The Future is Now. Well, when, after checking my coat, I circled back to find out whether I needed a wifi password and whether there was a Twitter hashtag, I realized I wasn't in Silicon Alley anymore. The answers: no wifi and what is a hash tag? Ok...

I took my seat and booted up my nifty MacBook Air. Around me... a few PC laptops. Gosh they looked heavy - even the portable ones. I checked into Foursquare. One other person within the Roosevelt Hotel was there. I suspect he was not at this event. Ok...

And finally, the attire of those around me - not jeans and sneakers - which I would not wear anyway - but... suits and ties. Well, after all, there were a lot of ad salespeople, business development folks and senior executives, so that's no surprise.

So, putting aside all these cultural observations, what did I learn in school today. Well, to start, as you would expect, different cable/satellite operators are at different phases in their adoption of advanced technology. The leaders - as far as panelists - Cablevision and DirecTV - though Time Warner Cable's sizzle reel was far and away the best, highlighting some very nice consumer offerings and interfaces including its highly touted "start over" function and an expansive VOD library. A point of commonality. Digital. 94% of Cablevision's subscription base has digital cable, and all of DirecTV's base (by definition of it's being satellite) is digital. A digital footprint allows you to do cool things.

So, what is Cablevision doing? A number of cool things. Some of it with Seth Haberman's company Visible World. You may have read about their foray into addressable television over a year ago. It sounds like that, or at least part of that, was for Cablevision itself. Not a bad idea - test it out on yourself. And, also, a good test subject because they knew so much about their subscription base and were able to segment them by product line, e.g., TV only, Triple Play, TV and broadband, etc. Well, it sounds like the testing went well because they are rolling it out to other clients. The key statistic, if I understood it correctly was that consumers who were served targeted ads were 32% (i.e., one-third) less likely to turn away from the ad. Well, that makes sense and is quite a nice stat. Of course, I'm all in favor of relevant advertising. Even magazines get that concept. But, I wander.

So, consumers like this stuff. In a recent Forrester/ANA study, 78% of advertisers said they want to target better. However... only 59% said they were willing to pay a premium for it. Sound familiar? Think behavioral advertising. One explanation came from Seth Haberman. First, he was curious to know who the 22% were who did not want to target better! Secondly, he pointed out that media buyers are trained to say, "I want to spend less." It's like a reflexive response. They have no control.

So, Cablevision's next foray is with Pillsbury (my client!) and Zenith (a wonderful agency to work with - particularly my key points of contact Neil and Colleen). They are creating a dedicated Pillsbury VOD (video-on-demand) channel in the Cablevision footprint. It will be paired with "Power 30s" (I believe Barry Frey said he had copyrighted that phrase), 30 second ads that are tagged to bring people to the VOD channel. But, now we're getting technical.

So (big fan of the word "so' today), what were some of the key takeaways:

(1) It's not their fault. Television is a large, capital intensive, fragmented (albeit a number of big cable & satellite provider fragmented) industry. To accomplish any advanced television initiative, you need a cable, satellite or telco operator; an advertiser and a technology partner at a minimum. There are a lot of different platforms and technologies and ideas and tests and legacy systems out there. It's not easy to move that ship.

Contrast this with Dennis Crowley's simple little iPhone app. An iPhone app can be created for as little as a few thousand dollars. Even a $100,000 app is nothing compared to the television industry. Even $1 billion in online video advertising is less than 1.5% of TV ad dollars.

(Forrester estimates $40 billion in broadcast and $30 billion in cable TV ad sales in 2010 - January 15, 2010. Mediabrands' Magna division estimated that online video advertising will reach $1 billion by 2011 - MediaPost, April 27, 2009)

(2) As a point of comparison - according to Seth Haberman - only 3% of video is consumed online. So, while these numbers are growing astronomically, and while new generations are simply not watching traditional television, it's still a HUGE market.


(3) "Sight, Sound and Motion." These are the watchwords of the television community. This is what differentiates them from all other media. The POWER of the sight, sound and motion they can deliver. The web, said Rich Forester, VP of Ad Sales for DirecTV, is our closer, but it's big video that gets them there.

(4) For some, Advanced TV is more "now" than for others, but all-in-all, it won't be here for 5 years. Advertisers - and media buyers - are simply overwhelmed. The biggest need, from what I heard, is for EDUCATION. There are too many new technologies, new technology companies and options.

Moreover, advertisers want to know what they will get for their investment in this new, premium, advanced type of advertising. But that's the problem with being part of the vanguard, we just don't know. Hence, many brands are waiting it out. There are tests, successful tests. But nothing scalable.

Ultimately, advertisers need something at a national level, and MSOs need to sell the rest of their inventory as well as these special programs. As DirecTV's Forester said, we're happy to create these targeted programs, but we have thousands of thirty-second spots that need to be supported. The inference is that you don't get to do an advanced campaign unless you do a large traditional media buy.

Is that a good place to stop? Does it cover the 3 hours of panels and schmoozing of the afternoon? Well, I think it hits on the highlights. Moreover, it's time for my regularly scheduled program.

Until next time, good night and good luck.

Measured Behavior (& Social Graphs) - OMMA Metrics & Measurement Conference

On Friday night I ate corn bread, a popover, Caesar salad, lamb and heavily buttered spinach. On Saturday, I followed up my yoga class with Pad Thai at Penang. Sunday morning I had an all you can eat brunch that started with a preparatory spin class, fruit and couscous but progressed to French Toast, a cheese and vegetable omelet and a little chocolate cupcake. Sunday night, I buried my exhaustion in a never-ending progression of Chinese food in belated celebration of the new year. On Monday, I warmed up leftover Chinese food on my way to my Advanced Television seminar. And Monday night, I finished the binge with Ethnic Cuisine organic yet spicy Pad Thai.

Early Tuesday morning, I regretted and repented.

On Tuesday I ate only an English muffin, rice pudding and an apple. But by Wednesday morning, I was still not recuperated enough for a full day of OMMA Metrics and Measurement beginning at 9am. Hence, I did not make it there until Vipin Mayer’s keynote at 1:45.

Since I had an abbreviated day, I am going to start out with a cheat sheet of buzz words noted over the course of the afternoon that will give you a kick start at sounding like a digital metrics enthusiast!

(1) Social Graphs (also a key word during Social Media Week):

As it turns out, this concept is one that has been written about extensively and from many different angles over time and gained prominence in the last few years when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg used it in his May 2007 announcement that he was opening Facebook to third party application developers.

According to Zuckerberg, a social graph is “the network of connections and relationships between people.” The existence of this network, or graph, is what underlies the success of Facebook and the power that Facebook offers to third party developers. By appealing to a single person on the Facebook platform, an application can be introduced to an entire lifelong collection of that person’s connections.

A more technical – and visual description – of a social graph is as follows: If one were to render the various ways different people in a particular community were connected into a data structure, it would be a graph. In a social graph, each person is a “vertex,” i.e., node or point, and each relationship connecting two people is an “edge,” i.e., line. There can be multiple edges connecting people, e.g., Sue and I worked at Booz Allen, Sue and I are Facebook friends, Sue and I live in Manhattan). Edges in the social graph have a label that describes the relationship.

Bringing these two descriptions together into a helpful explanation is the “WhatIs” definition as follows:

“A social graph is a diagram that illustrates interconnections among people, groups and organizations in a social network. The term refers to both the social network itself and a diagram representing the network.

Individuals and organizations, called actors, are nodes on the graph. Interdependencies, called ties, can be multiple and diverse, including such characteristics or concepts as age, gender, race, genealogy, chain of command, ideas, financial transactions, trade relationships, political affiliations, club memberships, occupation, education and economic status.

Services such as Facebook facilitate the exchange of information, news, photographs, literary works, music, art, software, opinions or even money among users. In this environment, the social graph or for a particular user consists of the set of nodes and ties connected, directly or indirectly, to that actor.

When portrayed as a diagram, a social graph appears as a set of points or dots connected by lines. The points represent the actors and the lines represent the ties. A small-scale social graph can be drawn with a pencil on a sheet of paper. However, because of the complexity of interconnections between individuals, a social graph is typically too massive to fit on a single page and can be rendered only on a computer equipped with specialized application software."

In 2007, Zuckerberg said that the social graph is "changing the way the world works... As Facebook adds more and more people with more and more connections it continues growing and becomes more useful at a faster rate. We are going to use it spread information through the social graph."

There are those who criticize the current system of recreating one’s social graph across multiple social platforms as inefficient and open to error. Starting at around the same time as Zuckerberg’s declaration, Plaxo began to offer a service that automatically merges your online networks.

Personally, I prefer to maintain my networks manually. In fact, I – like many I know – have slightly different, although sometimes overlapping, graphs depending upon the online platform. For example, friends & family on Facebook, professional contacts on LinkedIn, digital media enthusiasts and experts on Twitter, and a random assortment of people on my IM buddy list.

However, Facebook Connect allows you to carry your social network with you. (I believe this is what Google was talking about doing two years ago; I believe I heard about this on Cynthia Turner’s Daily Digital Podcast – now sadly defunct; and, I guess this is what Google is belatedly seeking to do with Google Buzz.)

Well, it seems that “social graphs” is, not surprisingly, a topic in and of itself. Hence, I will have to leave it to you to investigate and ponder the meanings of some of these other buzzwords:

(2) Earned media platforms

(3) Engagement mapping

(4) Attribution

(5) Beaconing

Time to get ready for bed to rest up for tomorrow’s OMMA behavioral conference.

All I Want for Christmas Is a Foursquare Merit Badge - that I can pin on my coat!

I woke up this morning to the following news report from Mashable:

"Remember those real-world merit badges based on the virtual achievements you get for checking in to places using Foursquare that we told you about? They’re approved and on sale now.

The 1.5-inch embroidered badges have Velcro on the back for attaching them to your jacket, backpack, or whatever other fabric you want to decorate. Options include Mari Sheibley-designed badges 'Local,' 'Superstar,' 'Crunked,' and 'Super Mayor' for $5.99 each.

Seller Nerd Merit Badges is also offering a 17-inch laptop sash with several badges so you can show off your location-aware cred at your next meeting or social media conference."

It’s unclear whether Foursquare is deriving any revenue from this recent development, but it does demonstrate that there is an opportunity for digital media companies to garner revenue from, don’t say it, consumers.

Generally speaking, there are three sources of revenue for media and entertainment providers: (1) advertising & sponsorship (b) consumer and (c) strategic partnerships, revenue share, etc.

In the past ten years, nearly all digital media companies abandoned the subscription model and with it consumer revenue as a viable and substantial source of income. (Not so their cable programmer brethren who, for now at least, have two sources of revenue - advertising and carriage/license fees.) But for digital publishers – and, particularly offline publishers going online, it seemed that Internet users would not pay for content, and advertising could carry the load for high quality and/or highly popular content.

But Foursquare seems to be learning from the missteps of those before it. Albeit, it is also benefiting from the change in mindset created by iTunes and mobile gaming companies who have conditioned mobile (and iTunes) users to make micro-payments – little payments of 99 cents and up that add up to BIG dollars.

Not only is Foursquare inspiring a (non-subscription) consumer-based line of revenue – 3rd party for now, i.e., the physical patches, but they are also developing high profile, high level strategic partnerships and custom programs with big name brands like Bravo, Intel and Zagat – giving it credibility, buzz, and access to the huge consumer bases of these mega-brands.

Foursquare is an especially exciting platform because it takes social media back and forth between the physical and virtual world and directly touches the retail world. The potential value of the information collected by Foursquare about your day to day activities and the ability of retailers and other businesses to influence consumer behavior immediately and at a relevant, targeted level is immense.

A few days ago, I heard Gary Vaynerchuk lambaste Facebook for letting virtual, social gaming organizations like Zynga make billions of dollars on Facebook's platform. They should have ensured themselves a piece of that, he said. But Facebook, like Google and YouTube had an idea without a business plan - although it certainly (fortuitously?) worked out well for Google in the end. Dennis Crowley and his colleagues at Foursquare seem to be a little more aware of creative monetization options from the start.

Chris Anderson famously talks about the Fremium model - a cute word for an age-old concept that seemed to have been forgotten or abandoned or not viable for the last 10 years – in the digital world. Is that what these badges are? Well, sure. You can earn a virtual badge for free. But for $6, you can get a real one from Nerd Merit Badges. But, you might say, don’t you remember the Twitter and Facebook pillows? Well, no, I don’t – but I just read about them… anyway, what differentiates Foursquare is the gaming element. That’s what makes a physical merit badge more desirable than a Friend Feed Pillow.

Adam Penenberg, the author of “Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves” – and the Forbes.com guy who broke the “Shattered Glass” story, said recently that instead of consumers spending billions of dollars on virtual items in online games, advertisers should be giving us real items for our online accomplishments. (Hmmm… sounds kind of like loyalty clubs, but now we have the platform to make it truly scalable – you didn’t think I could go a whole entry on this topic without saying scalable, did you? – but I digress) Well, he’s on to something, but Nerd Merit Badges has turned Adam’s idea and currently practices on their heads. What is happening is that a virtual game is crossing over the real world. Real dollars are being spent on real goods that are the physical manifestations of virtual items.

It's all pretty exciting. I hope that traditional media companies are watching and learning.


p.s. Last night I unlocked the "Gym Rat" merit badge for visiting the Harvard Club 10x in the last 30 days. Unfortunately, the club is not a place I go to work out but rather to eat... so I'm probably not getting the physical fitness benefits Foursquare thinks I am.

Content Is the Salt and Pepper. Social Media is the Steak.

I've just walked home in my doctor-disapproved pointy toed boots from a Bill Sobel event at the Samsung Experience featuring Gary Vaynerchuk, aka Gary V.

I didn't start taking notes until 15 minutes into the talk because I was recording it and attempting to single-process by giving him my full attention. But after a bevvy of great tweetable takeaways, I broke down and pulled out my Moleskine notebook.

As with other such entries, I apologize from the start for not having digested and synthesized this, but such is the world of the blog.

All that said, here are some witty, gritty takeaways from Gary V.... Oh, but I forgot to tell you who Gary is. Now the super-digital among you will know who he is, but since I personally did not appreciate his fame (aka know who he was) until last week, I will give you a little background (from wikipedia):

Gary Vaynerchuk was born in Belarus in 1975 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1978. From a platform as co-owner and Director of Operations of Wine Library, a wine retail shop in Springfield, New Jersey, Vaynerchuk gained fame as the host of Wine Library TV, a daily internet webcast on the subject of wine.

Vaynerchuk's informal style, described as "unpretentious, gonzo approach to wine appreciation" is in contrast to conservative wine industry norms. Vaynerchuk refers to his followers as "Vayniacs" and "Vayner Nation." Conversely, his hyperactive on-screen delivery has caused criticism from some of the wine purist audience.

He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, GQ and Time, and has been a guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Ellen. Vaynerchuk has been described as "the first wine guru of the YouTube era," "the wine world's new superstar," and "outside of Rob Parker, probably the most influential wine critic in the United States."

He is scheduled to be a (or the?) keynote speaker at South by Southwest.

Ok, so all that said, here are some undigested Vaynerchuk nuggets:

We live in a day and age when you can care first.

This comment really made me pause and think. It's something we've observed but that has not been communicated so authentically. What does he mean? Well, we are all familiar with the Twitter marketing practice of reaching out to a Tweeter who mentions your brand or yourself via a Twitter reply. Comcast set the standard, turning its reputation around from the YouTube image of a repairman napping on a customer's sofa to the now-famous Comcast Cares program. I personally have experienced it when Zappos responded to a tweet about my positive experience with them by tweeting back that they hope I enjoy my new sneakers, and when American Express replied to a tweet about a payment mistake I had made (directing my payment to an inactive AMEX card and therefore becoming delinquent on a current one) by offering to sort out what they said was a pretty straightforward situation.

Well, this is all good business, but the way that Gary described it was much more personal. He spends, what he casually quantifies as "15 hours a day" on social media. He built his personal brand by responding to twitter inquiries about wine. "Trying to figure out what wine to serve with..." someone might write. And he would respond with a recommendation. So, good business, good marketing, yes, but what really turned my head was his description of this action, as I said: "We live in a day and age when you can care first."

Internet people don't buy stuff.

You know, I don't remember the context of this, but it stands on its own with all kinds of implications and "a has."

We live in a thank you economy.

People bought his book as a thank you for all the free stuff he had been giving them - videocasts, advice, blogging, etc. He had built a powerful loyalty and following.

If you don't like people, you can never be a brand in social media.

He attributes much of his success to the fact that he simply loves people, which he sought to demonstrate by saying "hi" back to each person during Q&A - by name.

I am East Coast for East Coast.

I'm hoping this stands on its own - it resonated with the upper west side audience.

The Internet is only 15 years old.

Pause and digest.

Advertising campaigns should always include an interactive element to extend the story and capture the data.

Why couldn't I have been as eloquent when asked that question, i.e., should ad campaigns include a digital element, by an advertising agency executive today?

I am obsessed with geolocation. Sound familiar? If you can make people show up at your store if you give them something, that's worth a lot. McDonalds knows this.

Gary has invested in Gowalla.

Pownce could have won out with Twitter if its founders had not put all their attention into Digg.

This was in response to my question about FourSquare vs. Gowalla. His response to that question was that there may be room for both players, that FourSquare has embraced the strategy of associating itself with high profile brands (Bravo, NYT, Zagat), and Gowalla has some things in the works...

And this comment about FourSquare also followed a discussion of a partnership between Starbucks and Burger King. These brands, he said, are smart enough to see the value of leveraging each other's audience.

Smart TVs are coming.

So, summing up the trends to watch: Smart TVs, 3D TV, geolocation, augmented reality, the semantic web.

Companies need to have patience [an attribute that has served him well]. It's about dating not hooking up. These companies are acting like teenage boys. They want to buy a company and then cash in. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Look at the difference in brand recognition between Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Mashable vis a vis Fast Company, Inc. and... [I can't remember the third.] The distance is shrinking quickly.

Regarding Google Buzz: Let's check out the neighborhood.

This in response to clients who frantically want to know what they should be doing with Google Buzz.

Regarding the iPad: Consumers are trying to figure out how to use it - that's real brand equity.

So true. As Galbraith said so many years ago, supply creates demand. People know there must be something special about it if Apple created it, and they want it, they're just not sure why.


Ok, the comments below are brilliant.

When asked by a client, the NHL, how they would be able to measure the success of a social initiative, Gary said, "We're gonna feel it." Evidently, the client was not convinced.

This led Gary to point out that we still haven't figured out how to measure the value or success of traditional media. Now we all know the now hackneyed expression about knowing that half your ad dollars are wasted, etc. but Gary got more specific. How do we measure out of home/billboards? By calculating the average number of cars that drive by. But today everyone is on their hand held devices when they are driving.

A valid point. I think equally valid for pedestrian traffic. The people on the streets of New York can hardly navigate the sidewalks while talking on the phone let alone looking at a hand held device and also noticing the billboards in Times Square.


Ok, there's more to say, but I'm exhausted so... hopefully... more later.