Video Ad Messages Now Playing on Your PDA--Duh!!

If you've been following this blog for more than the last 5 updates, you'll know that I've always been a big proponent of video-centric marketing and communication applications for corporate, B2B and small businesses.

We're not newbies when it comes to digital communication, as this writer was arguably among the first wave of pioneers that advocated internal corporate instant-messaging applications when most Fortune companies were still busy trying to figure out how to leverage enterprise email.

Then came blogs, next came Twitter, and while "Marcomm Guru's" imbedded in corporate cubicles are still trying to get their arms around what works and what doesn't work, the Rich Media train keeps on rolling over those that haven't figured out which "best practices" are best vs. those that make the bean counters barf when attempting to monitor how the EVP of Sales and/or EVP of Marketing are working to connect the tag line to the bottom line.

Click on the link to the title of this posting--and then read in between the lines. If you can't understand how this story underscores how to leverage existing technology with your "social media strategy", give us a call and we'll paint a connect-the-dots picture so that even your CEO will "get it".

Post script reminder: "Cutting Edge" initiatives often result in a little bit of bleeding at first.

Why KISS Makes So Much Sense

We don't typically re-print other people's work, but this makes for a good read if you're taking a long sit, or especially if you've got one of those new e-reader/tablets that look like Etch-O-Sketch devices and find yourself reading more on the porcelain porch..

Courtesy of Boston.com's Drake Bennet  (click on the title link for the full article):

This would probably not strike you as a great idea. But, if recent research is to be believed, it might just be brilliant.

One of the hottest topics in psychology today is something called “cognitive fluency.” Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard. On the face of it, it’s a rather intuitive idea. But psychologists are only beginning to uncover the surprising extent to which fluency guides our thinking, and in situations where we have no idea it is at work.

Psychologists have determined, for example, that shares in companies with easy-to-pronounce names do indeed significantly outperform those with hard-to-pronounce names. Other studies have shown that when presenting people with a factual statement, manipulations that make the statement easier to mentally process - even totally nonsubstantive changes like writing it in a cleaner font or making it rhyme or simply repeating it - can alter people’s judgment of the truth of the statement, along with their evaluation of the intelligence of the statement’s author and their confidence in their own judgments and abilities. Similar manipulations can get subjects to be more forgiving, more adventurous, and more open about their personal shortcomings.

Because it shapes our thinking in so many ways, fluency is implicated in decisions about everything from the products we buy to the people we find attractive to the candidates we vote for - in short, in any situation where we weigh information. It’s a key part of the puzzle of how feelings like attraction and belief and suspicion work, and what researchers are learning about fluency has ramifications for anyone interested in eliciting those emotions.

“Every purchase you make, every interaction you have, every judgment you make can be put along a continuum from fluent to disfluent,” says Adam Alter, a psychologist at the New York University Stern School who co-wrote the paper on fluency and stock prices. “If you can understand how fluency influences judgment, you can understand many, many, many different kinds of judgments better than we do at the moment.”

A handful of scholars have already started to explore the ways that advertisers, educators, political campaigners, or anyone else in the business of persuasion can use these findings. And some of the implications are surprising. For example, to get people to think through a question, it may be best to present it less clearly. And to boost your self-confidence, you may want to set out to write a dauntingly long list of all the reasons why you’re a failure.

Online Consultations: Get on the train or get run over by it!

Its only been 30 days since we last pounded the table about "now-generation" technology that delivers HDMI quality, live video consultations via the Internet.

In point of fact, we've been pounding the tables and screaming from the rafters on this very topic for more than three years.

Its only within the last year that the technology has finally evolved to the point where its top quality, low maintenance and efficiently priced for any small business, no less large business than never wanted to spend mid six figures for "enterprise video teleconferencing" solutions.

Lo and behold,  the NY Times must be following this blog, because today, contributor Catherine Saint Louis is credited with a column that focuses on the rapidly growing use of this exact technology within the health care arena.

The article is objective, insightful. The article title  "Should Surgeons Meet Patients Online?" is almost irrelevant; the debate about whether plastic surgeons should be consulting on line is tantamount to asking whether barn doors should be sealed like a crypt. 
The fact is, the genie is out of the bottle. 

And the technology that powers the technology that was once only imagined by The Jetsons is easily procured. We've promoted our friends at Montreal-based LCN Technologies on several occasions, as we think they've got the best for less..We've also tripped over a few other vendors...

Now all you need to do is research the questions that need to be asked of those vendors, and compare their answers and offerings.  

Opining About Twitter:

The NY Times' David Carr opines today that he's convinced Twitter will not only endure, but expand into every tiny intellectual crevice known to modern man.

We've talked, and even "tweeted" about this topic in the past. We've pointed out that a continuously growing universe of Branders, Marketers, and a slew of corporate communication gurus believe that Twitter is as important today as having a website was ten years ago.

Fifteen years ago, this pundit insisted to his clients and prospective clients, that if you were a business, and you didn't have a website, even a rudimentary single page that merely displayed who you were, then you really weren't in business. And you probably wouldn't stay in business for very long.

OK, a bit severe of a message perhaps, but pretty prescient nonetheless. 
In the course of celebrating this past Thankgiving, we opined about the benefits and usefulness of Twitting.  

And, in today's NYT, David Carr takes his own stab at it. Don't be shy--this is a topic that anybody should chime in about--so we invite you to post your own opinion!

Live Video Conferencing Comes to Healthcare Industry

Two years ago, we began profiling technologies that provided low cost, high-quality live video broadcasting that could be utilized by small and large businesses.

After all, combining real-time sight and sound has always proven to be exponentially more compelling when compared to static "WebEx" presentations.

Well, once again we're being proven prescient: according to a story in today's NY Times, the health care industry is beginning to embrace pay-per-chat with experts broadcasting live via the Internet. Live, private consultations for less than $50/hr-and allows partients to see the doctor, and ideally, for the doctor to see you (now). 

All the patient needs is a video-cam connected to his/her PC--and good devices can cost less than $75..

The cost to broadcast? It's come down to peanuts when compared to the legacy teleconferencing systems that companies such as Cisco have promoted for the past several years. For less than a few thousand dollars (see LCN Technologies offerings),  lawyers, accountants, "training gurus", or anyone else can have their own live broadcast studio, and communicate in HD-quality live conferencing.

Duh. 

Vlogging: Why this is the next "killer app"

Two weeks ago, I profiled LCN Technologies, a company that's on the 'cutting edge' by providing low-cost, high quality ("HD quality") technology for those that "get it" and recognize that live, internet broadcasting will prove to be what sets competitors apart.

For pundits, "pontificators", or simply corporate-arena presenters,  these tools are a must have. Its that simple.

For those that "vlog"--(which incorporates either canned or live video within a blog), the content becomes that much stickier, and real time, is well, real time.

Aside from LCN, there are actually few credible vendors within the space. Another is Silicon Valley-based Dyyno, which is sponsored by two leading Venture Capital firms--and my bet is that they'll be gobbled up by Google before they even bother to do a second round of venture funding.

Although Dynno's technology is somewhat different that LCN (Dynno requires broadcasters download an executable file while LCN does not), and its cost to implement and administer (licensing fees) is higher than LCN's, its presentation strikes at the heart of what we're talking about.

The real bet however is predicting the actual number of "celebrity" bloggers, corporations and media outlets that will leverage the technology in 2010. My conservative guess is that it should be in the tens of hundreds, if not thousands.

Cashing in on Twitter? Or Opting Out...One Man's Tweet is Another's Twit

Twitter, now almost as ubiquitous a name as Google, is apparently coming into its own (for those who own a slice of the private company), and has struck open source deals that will allow for advertising messages to be imbedded within all of those tweets that so many people are (purportedly) subscribing to.

I'll admit that I did sign up to follow the tweets of a few of my pundit friends, and I'm only glad that I turned off the "alert via txt msg" button, otherwise I'd have to cancel my cell phone service entirely.

Of course I believe in the concept of leveraging social networks to promote consumer products. And of course, I'm influenced by what my friends are buying in the course of making my own purchase decisions. Well, sort of.

But now that Ad.fly and others are making it easy for my 'friends' to insert advertising messages within their tweets, do I really buy into it? Do I really want to be cluttered with messages, knowing that my 'friends' are exploiting ther friendship in order to make money from me?  What does this say about the social contract, that we, as 'friends' have made with each other?

OK, I'm jealous;  unlike Ashton K., or Larry K., I don't have 1 million+ "followers". I only have a few hundred or so. Most of them prefer to go to this blog, or one of the others that I've become famous for.  How many of them are going to appreciate knowing that I'm getting paid to pitch my favorite toothpaste, or my favorite burger joint?

And what happens when the FTC decides to enforce their stupid new rules about blogger disclosures, and single me out for promoting a product on my tweets without including a disclaimer? I won't be happy. But its safe to bet that big time bloggers that have friends in Washington won't have to worry about this. Does Eliot Spitzer tweet?   

Live Web Broacasting: The Marketers Magic Elixir

We try not to harp incessantly on ideas that we think make sense—and even if I’ve always been a strong proponent of the power of live Web broadcasting for pundits, experts, consultants etc., whose respective audiences are bored to tears with "WebEx" presentations, canned videos, or other communication apps that can best be described as "Old Media" in the age of New Media application, I had to jump back into the blog to pound the table yet again.


In the past two days alone, the NY Times has profiled four unrelated stories that profile the rapid emergence of web-based video-conferencing/broadcasting, and in the past week, there have been two major acquisitions of makers of web-based video conferencing tools.


Below links provide 2 of those stories.


Given the fact that these ‘tools’ are coming into their own insofar as broadcast quality, pricing and flexibility, I’d respectfully suggest that Mark Prince at LCN Technologies (http://lcntechnologies.com) has been well ahead of the curve—and the most recent version of LCN’s “broadcast platform” is exactly the type of technology that should be leveraged by a wide variety of pundits, experts, media wizards, etc.



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/business/media/11adco.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=tv%20news&st=cse



http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/logitech-breaks-into-videoconferencing/?scp=3&sq=logitech&st=cse

Big Brother Attacks Bloggers

At risk of subjecting this blog to an enforcement action by either the NY Times, or perhaps a government regulatory authority, below is a reprint from today's article in the NYT that points to yet another new layer of Big Brother's oversight over us all. and strikes at the heart of marketing messages.

This writer is far from being a Libertarian, and otherwise leans towards pragmatic forms of governmental regulation, regardless of the industry or the issue.

That said, the NYT points to yet another new government initiative to regulate freedom of speech that is potentially alarming. This new initiative targets of all people, bloggers.

The upshot, as interpreted by a select group of jailhouse lawyers, suggests that the FTC is aiming its cross hairs on all blogs that endorse or recommend products. According to this article, the FTC proposes to go after any blogger that fails to disclose whether they've received any type of compensation, even if limited to free samples, in exchange for mentioning any product.

Wow.

The ramifications of this new initiative would cause some to take out a calculator and try to analyze the actual cost to small and large businesses of conforming to yet another wave of government regulation in a business environment that has everyone struggling to make ends meet. The cost of complying with the proposed initiative is guestimmated to be in the tens of billions of dollars.

No doubt this is time to re-direct our children to pursuing careers in the legal industry, as this is a harbinger for that group.

Notice Those Ads on Blogs? Regulators Do, Too

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

BLOGGERS, be warned. Advertisers, you too.

Two of the National Advertising Review Council’s investigative units plan to announce Tuesday their first decisions involving blogs. Their recommendations call for clear disclosure when a company is sponsoring a site or paying for product reviews.

That’s nothing shocking, but it’s part of a sharper focus on the relationships between bloggers and advertisers. Attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission, which is about to expand its endorsement guidelines to include blogs, are investigating the area, along with the self-regulatory groups.

“It’s something everyone in the consumer protection area is newly focused on,” said C. Lee Peeler, the chief executive of the National Advertising Review Council, which sets policies for the advertising industries’ self-regulatory programs. “One of the issues of advertising in new media is, is it clear that it’s paid-for advertising, or does it look like something else?”

Paid-for advertising includes paid blogging, the programs’ recommendations make clear. One of the cases concerns Urban Nutrition , a company that sells supplements like MiracleBurn, an appetite suppressant. The Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program, an investigative unit of the National Advertising Review Council for the e-commerce industry, examined some of that company’s marketing after a competitor filed a complaint.

Urban Nutrition was running Web sites like WeKnowDiets.com, and GoogleDiets.com, which were “formatted as independent product-review blogs,” according to the investigative unit’s statement. The investigation found problems with the sites, including that Urban Nutrition didn’t disclose it was paying bloggers for the reviews, that it portrayed the sites as independent, and that the blogs featured accolades like “Customer Choice Awards” when “the marketer’s product appears to be permanently featured as the selected product,” the organization’s statement said.

“For paid-for statements about products, the traditional principles apply,” Mr. Peeler said, and here, the principle was that advertising needs to be marked as such. “That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone,” he said.

•

The investigative unit asked Urban Nutrition to prominently disclose that it owned the Web sites and that it was sponsoring reviewers, along with adding contact information to the sites and changing some other claims. “The company is currently in the process of making all the changes recommended by E.R.S.P., as well as additional changes Urban Nutrition volunteered to make,” said Thomas Cohn, a lawyer at Venable, which represents Urban Nutrition.

The other decision concerns the marketer Herbal Groups, which makes the prostate supplement Prostalex Plus. The National Advertising Division, another unit of the review council, handled this case.

Herbal Groups had been running a “Prostate Health Blog,” which published items about prostate function with promotions for the Prostalex product. The entire blog constituted an advertisement, the N.A.D. said, and Herbal Groups took down the blog at the beginning of the N.A.D.’s inquiry.

“We came to a mutually agreeable solution,” said Scott Schalin, president of Herbal Groups, in an interview. The N.A.D. also recommended that the company stop making certain claims about the supplement in its ads, which Herbal Groups said it would do.

These self-regulatory programs are voluntary, but if companies refuse to participate or comply, the programs can refer complaints to the F.T.C. And the F.T.C. can sue those it sees as violating guidelines.

The F.T.C. is close to updating its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials for the first time since 1980. Its proposed guidelines go further than the self-regulatory bodies have, saying that bloggers must disclose not only when they are paid by a company, but also when they receive a free product.

As an example, the F.T.C. cited the fictional case of a video blogger who receives a free copy of a new video game system from its manufacturer for review. “The readers of his blog are unlikely to expect that he has received the video game system free of charge in exchange for his review of the product,” the commission wrote. As this fact would likely affect how credible consumers find the review, the blogger should disclose that he received the game free.

That’s something advertising and retailing groups have bristled at, arguing that this sort of promotion occurs all the time offline. Major industry associations including the Electronic Retailing Association, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers, and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, among others, all filed comments with the commission taking issue with the proposed guidelines.

“It’s an example of the F.T.C.’s failure to understand the medium and appreciate the nuances,” said Linda A. Goldstein, a partner at the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, which represents several industry groups. “It’s not uncommon for marketers to provide the blogging community with samples of their product or service, but the company has no control over what the blogger writes.”

Besides, she said, companies regularly host free events or send samples to journalists in the hopes of attracting coverage.

“It’s analogous to a studio inviting critics to a free premiere. Taken to its logical conclusion, those critics would have to disclose in their review that they were allowed to see the movie for free,” she said.

The commission’s comment period is now closed, and it is expected to issue final guidelines soon.

Meanwhile, bloggers and advertisers are under pressure from state attorneys general. In June, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York noted in a settlement with seven electronics retailers that in addition to illegal practices, “all of these companies obtained fake ‘consumer testimonials’ through Web sites that claim to be impartial consumer-based ‘rating’ Web sites” but were not.

In July, in what Mr. Cuomo’s office said it believed was the first such case in the nation, it settled with a cosmetic-surgery company called Lifestyle Lift, charging that company employees were posting fake positive reviews about its services on various message boards and sites, a practice known as “astroturfing.” Lifestyle Lift stopped the postings and paid $300,000 to the state.

“My office has and will continue to be on the forefront in protecting consumers against emerging fraud and deception, including ‘astroturfing,’ on the Internet,” he said in the statement

Man's Best Friend....

Maxx
August 1994-
August 2009

In a world in which crafty and creative people work to create messages and images to influence decisions, we can only pause to reflect on the age-old wisdom that a dog is really man's best friend.

In honor of Maxx.

Always reliable, always there to provide comfort and solace, and infallible in providing unrequited love and warmth to those around him.