The Basement

I have a friend and coworker named Penny. She's a little off, but then again, I like folks who are a little off. She made up a holiday called "Pennukkah" which is celebrated on January 31. The tradition is to wear bright colored clothing in order to celebrate summer in winter. She brought a Pennukkah cake to work so I figured the least I can do is spread the word.

So there it is. Happy Pennukkah!

While watching coBRANDiT's coverage of WOMMA WOMBAT, an irony jumped out at me. This is one of the things I love about watching the WOMM world - all of these industry experts (and me) are straining their brains trying to get them wrapped around the WOMM tornado but all of the real epiphanies seem to be so commonsensical that you end up being a little embarrassed when they do hit you.

Case in point - one of the take aways from WOMBAT - WOM makes traditional advertising more effective.

Now, when you read that your response (in the vernacular of my 12 year old) is "duh" but as strange as it sounds, this simple idea seems to be a new epiphany in the WOMM landscape. To understand why, we need to take a look back. A year to six months ago, most mainstream marketers weren't yet talking WOMM and those that were spoke as if it were an alternative to traditional marketing. This was the idea behind the WOM vs. Advertising theme of the WOMMA event in New York last September. In the month leading up to that event though, the WOMM community evolved this concept and seemed to collectively decide that WOMM and traditional advertising could and perhaps should co-exist in a well designed marketing plan. As a results, lots of the content of that event was dedicated to co-mingling WOMM and traditional advertising in parallel efforts.

Fast forward to today. The most recent WOMMA event made the New York Times, had over 450 attendees from all over the world, including dozens of Fortune 1000 companies from nearly every industry. Any serious marketer interested in continuing their career path is at least aware of the WOMM movement and most are trying to get up to speed and figure out how to put together the pieces in their own projects. Not to mention the fact that BzzAgent just got $14M of venture capital and VNU bought BuzzMetrics and Intelliseek. In other words, folks are really beginning to take WOMM seriously.

So how's our thinking changed in the last year?

Well, a year ago, marketers idea of WOMM seemed limited to "viral" campaigns and the like. The idea was that you create some gimmick or stunt so bizzaro that people would talk about it and tell their friends. The problem was that virals and the firms that create them tend to be one trick ponies. The stunts and gimmicks (think Paris Hilton and chickens) had very, very little to do with the products they were intended to promote. This phenomenon is compounded by the fact that each stunt has to out-bizzaro the last one in order to get some attention since the last idea was "so last week". Sure Paris was "hot" and the chicken was funny and lots of awards were won for ad firms but at the end of the day McDonalds still sold more burgers.

Then, P&G came out and announced that TV advertising is broken, ads no longer work - at least not anywhere near as well as they used to. NOP World and others came out with studies that said that people listen to family and friends more than ads for purchase decisions. Marketers started to think about including WOMM campaigns in marketing plans. However, the idea was still that the ads create or at least stimulate the WOM. While I'll admit that this might be possible - it's increasingly unlikely in most cases if you think about it. If consumers don't trust ads for information about products and subsequently tune them out then why would you think they would share the information with others? They wouldn't.

If people aren't watching ads, better ads won't fix the problem.

The reality is that ads are just as effective for people that are open to them as they have always been. It's the number of people that are mentally (or technologically) tuning out ads that has changed. We increasingly screen out advertising... unless there is a reason to be open. It doesn't matter how cute, cleaver or - dare I say - creative an ad is if people are unwilling to be open to the the product or services the ads is pimping.

Now there is nothing really that new here. Ad agencies have been working hard over the last decade or so to make ads look like something else in hopes that we will lower our guard. This is that idea behind the latest (horrible) Burger King NFL ads and things like product placement. The problem is that consumers learn and adapt, rendering the latest gimmick useless and driving advertisers to increasingly smarmy and obscure tactics. This is an arms race and advertisers are losing.

Okay, so ads suck as a tool to get the attention of a close minded audience. So is the answer to quit advertising? Of course not. The practical reality is that traditional advertising is still a necessary evil for marketers - especially big ones.

So what then?

The answer lies in the people that are open minded to ads. Who are these people? Well, people that already have a interest in a product are generally more interested in ads for that product. For example, I stop my TiVo for every Apple/Intel ad. This, of course, is also common sense.

This is the point in the presentation that Marketing Guy jumps up and says "But we need to reach the people that are screening out our ads - not the ones that are already watching!!"

As usual, Marketing Guy is a freaking genius - but not in any way that he will ever understand.

The key point here is that ads - no matter how creative - don't reach those that are closed to them.

So the secret is to find people that are closed to you ads and get them to open their minds. Simple, right? Furthermore, marketers need to understand that if people aren't open to their ads to begin with then more ads or better ads is not the solution. Minds opening requires something else, something different. Mind opening requires a trusted advocate to personally engage the closed minded consumer and pique interest and weighted awareness. That's right, WOM.

A Word of Mouth Marketing campaign can be used to stimulate WOM among people that are already fond of a product. These folks tell other people - closed minded people - about the product. If the closed minded folks trust the open minded folks, then their mind might be opened enough to get them to notice the next ad they see - an ad that will otherwise be summarily ignored.

Think about it. If someone you trust tells you about a cool new car, movie or gizmo - don't you tend to become more aware of ads for that thing? You know... "Hey, isn't that the new Yahoo!-Nokia phone my wife mentioned the other day?"

And there's the irony - folks at ad agencies seem to think that "viral" ads that cause WOM are effective when the reality is that WOMM campaigns the lead traditional advertising would be a much more effective approach. Open as many minds as possible BEFORE you spend the money on that Superbowl ad.

So why should ad agencies care? Well, based on the attendance at WOMBAT, most ad agencies don't. But smart agencies, like Arnold (who was at WOMBAT) do care. Why? Because they know that if they can figure out the WOMM puzzle then they can increase the effectiveness of their campaigns. I think that in the next few year this will be essential to maintain big accounts.

The new reality for ad agencies is that effectiveness of ads will rely less on the ads themselves, and more on the openness of the consumer. This is some more common sense - a marginal ad presented to an open consumer will always be more effective than a super creative ad present to a consumer that tunes it out.

In summary, you don't need better or more creative ads - you just need more people to pay attention (and trust) to the ones you have. Think WOMM.

I've said it before and I'll say it again... Owen Mack is a super genius. Per his blog, he's moved all of his video blog posts from the recent WOMMA WOMBAT Conference to its own special page on the coBRANDiT site. He's posted the last of his footage so everything is now posted. Seriously, if you haven't check it out, do so now.

In related news, both Owen and I will be speaking at the upcoming New Communications Forum Conference in Palo Alto, March 1-3 - along with Pete Blackshaw, Max Kalehoff, Robert Scoble, Dan Gillmor, Shel Israel, Neville Hobson, Shel Holtz, Dana VanDen Heuvel, Elizabeth Albrycht, Jen McClure, John Cass and lots, lots more. Be there or be square.

Hazel's 3D ultrasound from late October and again at 24 hours old.

It has been pointed out to me that in my earlier post about the new WOM MR firm, The Keller Fay Group, that I missed a critical member of the now defunct Influentials dream team. Apparently, the team also included former NOP World Managing Director Tom Miller. Tom's now with IPSOS.

My appologies Mr. Harris Miller.

The first day of the WOMMA WOMBAT Conference has finished up and the second day is just beginning. I've heard that there are something like 450+ attendees there - almost double the size of the last conference in September. Not bad for a 1 year old trade association in an industry that was conceived on a cocktail napkin about 12 minutes befor the association formed. I'm sure the success of the conference and the association is due to the Paris Hilton Super Bowl ad that WOMMA ran... nothing to do with a remarkable product that people want to talk about. It just goes to show you that a multi-million dollar media-blitzing ad campaign can sell almost anything these days.

In yet another example of WOMMA eating it's own blog food, Andy and Michael put together a crack team of bloggers to cover the event. After all, it's not what the speakers say that's important - it's what the attendees say the speakers said. Official conference blogger coverage is here.

Back channel interviews are also being video blogged by Owen Mack of Cobrandit. This is indeed the coolest coverage of the conference - or of any conference, for that matter. So far, Owen has got George Silverman doing magic tricks, Andy Senovitz giddy with anticipation, Pete Blackshaw, well, being Pete Blackshaw, Steve Rubel dodging the "but have you sold any Vespas" question, John Moore putting on his barista hat and David Fletcher being very excited about being at the front of some queues. Now, if I only knew what a queue was...

If you look at nothing else, be sure to watch the video coverage at Cobrandit.

My personal thanks to Owen and company - the video blog has taken a bit of the sting out of not being able to be there in person.

Oh, BTW, if all goes well, we should have a baby this weekend.

Tony Obregon over at MediaResearcher has some thoughts on Nielsen BuzzMetrics. He also points to an interesting post by naysayer Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0. Basically, Scott points to the recent "Nielsen TV Ratings Suck" article from the WSJ and then asserts that Nielsen will ruin the entrepreneurial magic created by Carson, Nazzaro, Blackshaw, et al. I say hogwash.

Scott makes some interesting points but I simply don't agree. His assertions are based on the idea that the relationship of Nielsen and Television will be analogous to that of Nielsen BuzzMetrics and Blogs (and other CGM content like forums, etc. which everyone seems to be forgetting.) I think this idea is fundamentally flawed.

Nielsen BuzzMetrics is not measuring the popularity or success of individual blogs or assigning them ratings (although they might work to determine the sphere of influence of blogs, but this is all together different). Instead Nielsen BuzzMetrics will be using all of CGM in aggregate to gain consumer insight. Nielsen is not looking to trade in old media for new media, they are looking to trade old market research data collection methodologies for new ones - or at least to supplement the old with the new.

To make this a little more clear, think of it this way... can you figure out what consumers are thinking by watching every second of every television channel available in the US? Of course not. This is intuitively ludicrous. BUT... can you figure out what consumers are thinking by monitoring every blog, forum, newsgroup, and discussion board on the web? Hmmmm. MAYBE. And this is the difference.

The thing about CGM is the C. CONSUMERS produce this new "media". There is no need to measure what consumers think of CGM because they created it. Duh! This is about listening to consumers.

Say what you will about Nielsen and VNU but I think they get this. I think they understand that the way they are measuring MGISWOTBC (Media Generated In Some Way Other Than By Consumers) is failing. But they also know that television, radio and movies aren't going away... but how we select, subscribe and watch is changing. Nielsen BuzzMetrics is a strategic move to stay ahead and on top. VNU is not interested in measuring new media because old media is dying; they are interested in measuring new media because old media isn't dying and measuring new media is a better way to measure old media than their aging old media measuring measurements. Dig? In other words, if your ruler sucks, get a better ruler.

Scott's argument, I think, is that Nielsen will destroy the value of BuzzMetrics and Intelliseek because their system for measuring old media is aging and failing. Ironically, I think it's precisely this reason that Nielsen has invested so heavily in CGM analytics, and why this strategy will win. I suspect that somebody at Nielsen also gets the Wall Street Journal and perhaps they read the same article.

In summary of my views vs. Scott's... either VNU is very, very smart or very, very dumb.

Why do I think it's the first one? Because if VNU wanted to look cool by bloggifying its portfolio, they could have stopped at just one acquisition. Or they could have bought a younger, smaller, cheaper, CGM analytics firm. Of course, they didn't. They bought 3... and not just any 3... they bought something like 65-85% of the market. They left nothing but breadcrumbs for whoever is stupid enough to try to be #2. This is akin to someone breaking into the soft-drink industry by buying Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co... you know, just to be sure. Maybe it's just me, but I get the impression that these kids are serious.

But enough of the armchair quarterbacking,let's hide and watch.

If you were wandering about the WOMM space a year ago there is no doubt you would bump into "The Influentials" - the ground breaking book the fueled the rise of WOMM by then NOP World employee's Ed Keller and Jon Berry. The book is based on 30 years of serious consumer survey research that shows that certain types of people tend to be leading indicators for certain types of trends like consumer technology adoption, and social and political views.

NOP World was very aggressive about marketing The Influentials brand, building a crack team of experts composed of Keller, Berry and Brad Fay to spread the gospel of The Influentials. These kids were in on the ground floor at WOMMA capturing a coveted Governing Member position for their employer. They were regulars on the circuit as experts in influence, measurement and consumer insights.

Then GFK bought NOP World from UBM and re-branded the new organizations as GFK-NOP. Well, I say re-branded, but they failed to secure the domain name GFKNOP.com, losing it to former NOP World employee Jim Keesling. In the wake that follows all acquisitions, changes were made for better or for worse including splitting up The Influential dream team. Keller and Fay left GFK NOP and only Berry remained.

Since Keller and Fay's departure, GFK NOP has all but vanished from WOMMA. At the New York event in September there were no GFK NOP speakers and only a single GFK NOP attendee and she left early. This is ironic because it seemed nearly every presenter tipped the hat to The Influentials. It's really sad when great WOM happens at a WOMMA conference without an amplification strategy. GFK NOP, by the way, is no longer a governing member of WOMMA.

While GFK was nearly absent from that event, both Ed Keller and Brad Fay were there in force, networking with all the top dogs. At that time, Brad Fay shared with me that the duo was working on a super secret project…details forthcoming.

And now, the wait is over.

Ed Keller and Brad Fay have announced the formation of the Keller Fay Group. According to their website

The Keller Fay Group is the first full-service market research and consulting firm that is 100% dedicated to word of mouth marketing.

More announcements are here and here. They're selling a product called TalkTrack designed to track offline WOM. There's not a lot of information about it but it looks to be a daily tracking survey. Interesting idea. I, of course, think they should call it the Edfluentials.

The acronym for the group is KFG. Hmmmmm. Isn't that GFK backwards? Probably just a coincidence. Perhaps they thought F&KG might be misunderstood.

Well, the WOMMA WOMBAT Conference kicks off tomorrow. Ed Keller is speaking and so is his co-author Jon Berry. Brad Fay will be working the crowd. Interestingly, the WOMMA speakers list mentions Mr. Keller's position as former NOP World CEO but fails to mention Jon Berry's employer all together. GFK doesn't appear anywhere on the list.

Goodluck Mr. Keller and Mr. Fay. We'll be watching.

[Via Martin Oetting at Connected Marketing : English translation from Google here.]

Wow. It cost me my lunch hour but I just got off the press/blogger webinar/teleconference announcing the new Nielsen BuzzMetrics organization. This merger could truly change everything - it's going to be really fun and exciting to watch. Jonathan Caron, Pete Blackshaw, Mike Nazzaro and Max Kalehoff were all on the call talking about the new organization. An audio achieve should be posted shortly.

By my count, there were around 40 attendees on the web conference. Interesting attendees were Umbria's Willow Baum and Dave Howlett and Cymfony's Jim Nail. It's too early to tell if Nielsen BuzzMetrics will elevate the entire space or simply monopolize it. One thing is certain, 2006 is going to be a very interesting year. Definitely worth missing lunch.

BuzzMetrics and Intelliseek have just announced that they are merging to form a new company called Nielsen BuzzMetrics. The majority share holder of the new company is VNU - the global market research holding company that owns AC Nielsen and Nielsen Media Research.

And in case you didn't notice, the earth just shifted its axis.

This is huge. By combining the resources of BuzzMetrics, Intelliseek and Israeli based Trendum, VNU has created the single most comprehensive, sophisticated and experienced online word-of-mouth research firm on the planet. At it's inception, Nielsen BuzzMetrics will have 100 of the Fortune 1000 as clients. The press release says

The combined firm will have a client roster spanning nearly every key industry, with deep focus in media and entertainment, automotive, consumer technology, healthcare and consumer-packaged goods. Key clients include: Canon, Comcast, Ford, General Motors, HBO, Kraft, Microsoft, Nokia, P&G, Showtime, Sony, Target and Toyota. Others include 14 of the top 15 pharmaceutical companies and over eight television networks.

The big news here is not really the new company itself, but the validation of the online CGM monitoring and analysis space. This is huge coup for VNU. It will be interesting to see how long it will take for VNU competitors to try to catch up. (Notice I didn't say "if".) What is certain is that the competition is now for second place.

Also of note, Nielsen BuzzMetrics is committed to maintaining the consumer facing BlogPulse blog search portal.

Congratulations to Jonathan Carson, CEO of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Pete Blackshaw, CMO/CSO of Nielsen BuzzMetrics and Max Kalehoff, VP of Marketing of Nielsen BuzzMetrics - all online friends of mine.

Mr. Blackshaw and Mr. Carson are, of course, two of the original three founding members of WOMMA. They will both be speaking at the WOMMA WOM Basic Training Conference later this week in Orlando. There will also be a press/blogger webinar/teleconference today at 1:00PM Eastern time to discuss the new company. See the Nielsen BuzzMetrics site for call-in details.

Bob P. has been a loyal reader of and commenter on this blog from the beginning. Bob also happens to be an offline friend and an all around great guy. Over the last couple of months, Bob's been asking for a comment spell checker. The thing about writing about listen, engaging and responding to customers is that you're kind of obligated to put your money where your mouth is.

Here's to you Bob. Enjoy your new comment spell checker. Sorry it took so long.

For the geeks in the audience, I used the open source project Speller Pages for the spell checker. It uses aspell on the server. It's easy to implement and seems to work pretty well.

I've been getting and increasing amount of comment spam. Typically I get 30 to 40 per week, but in the last few days it's gotten much worse - nearly 200 in less than 24 hours. So I've added a math question to comments. This would be pretty easy to defeat but the spammers would at least have to try harded. I tried to set up one of those number image things (SCode was the name of the plug-in) but I couldn't get it to work. Oh well.

If you leave comments, double check your math because if you're wrong, your comments floats off into the ether, never to be seen again. Sorry for the trouble. Comment spammers suck!

Those of you that have been following along know that my wife and I have been expecting our fouth (collective) child. I say collective because she has two from her previous marriage and I have one from mine, but we both consider them all our kids. We've very excited to add a fourth - we're the modern version of the nuclear family. Since my son is adopted, I like to say that I have three kids by two different men. It makes me feel all Springer. So the interesting thing is that while I've got three kids, I've never experienced the whole birth process - or the pregnancy or first year for that matter. Needless to say, I'm a little nervous.

Today was the "official" due date for Hazel, but we were expecting her to be late. We're hoping for the 13th. A few months ago - in late October - we had a 3-D ultra-sound done. I've been meaning to post the image and realized tonight that I'm running out of time. It just won't seem as cool once we have a regular picture. So anyway, here it goes...

For Christmas this year, Santa brought my wife a Tivo. Of course, she actually wanted it to time shift shows but I'm more interested in the geek factor. Tonight, we got out first episode of Rocketboom. Yulp. If you've Tivo's hooked-up to broadband, you can now get some very limited, very experimental programming from the Internet. In fact, Rocketboom is all you can get at the moment, but this is definitely shades of things to come.

Imagine one day soon... Tivo and NetFlix unite except instead of DVD mailers, your movies are downloaded to your Tivo during the day while you are at work. Hmmmm. Or imagine if Apple bought Tivo so that you could access iTunes through your TV. Tivo already has a couple of USB ports so it's even conceivable that it could serve as an iPod dock. Goodbye Pay-Per-View. Goodbye HBO.

2006 is going to be an interesting year.