Hi, as CEO of Definition 6, I will be sharing our organizations readings and thoughts on Interactive Marketing, Web Site Design, Social Media, eCommerce and all things Internet related. I hope you enjoy our posts.
Hi, as CEO of Definition 6, I will be sharing our organizations readings and thoughts on Interactive Marketing, Web Site Design, Social Media, eCommerce and all things Internet related. I hope you enjoy our posts.
1 - Year of Mobile – easy way to say it, but what I really mean by that is, how mobile influences the way we shop, the way we interface with retail, and the way we connect with one another.
2 - Second would be Social Networks. Not just the mere fact that social networks are here to stay, and that Facebook consumes everybody’s time and life, if you are a meaningful brand you have a meaningful relationship with your consumers enabled by Facebook and others, but the notion that social connections are really informing the way brands and marketers have to work together.
3 – Third would be Video. Just as we are producing video here, we’re seeing hundreds and millions of hours of videos produced, consumed and sent along all forms of devices and airwaves, as 3G turns into 4G, and we end up with very enabled users throughout the country and the planet, I think video is going to be the way we all choose to communicate and connect with our consumers.
4- The fourth way would be the movement of more money into Display Advertising. I think Search is going to continue to be a big deal, obviously we’re going to see a lot of our digital dollars go there, but I think more and more of our money is going to be allocated towards display. Again it’s a little bit of the video, it’s a lot of the social, but more importantly, it’s now brands have figured out how to use display to communicate a deeper, richer message that they can rarely do with direct response search.
5- Fifth would be Turbulent Consumers. I think consumers are going to shop on deal, I think deal sites are still a very good way to stimulate purchase trial. But I think the other thing is that a lot of us are going to feel wealthy, a lot of us are going to feel less than wealthy, at any given moment within the year. I think that kind of turbulence is going to really have an impact on what we have to do as marketers and time our message with behavior we observe our consumers exhibiting.
6- And the last is the Unknown. The prediction of #6 is I’m not really sure what is going to happen in the sense that one thing is going to be an inflection point on the year. Hopefully it’s a positive thing, but it could be a negative thing, like a natural disaster or market correction, but it could be a good thing like the Euro zone corrects itself, the Presidential election shapes up to where the country has optimism. I’m looking forward to this year with you. Please come back and see what our customers, our partners, and what the other people here at Definition 6 have to say. Good luck in 2012.
Has something like this ever happened to you?
"Imagine waking up and hearing an ad on TV for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal, then checking your iPhone on the way to grab some coffee and seeing an e-mail for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal. Then, when you fire up Pandora for your workout, you hear ads for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal, while on your Yahoo! mail, you are served a banner ad for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal, and then on the subway, signage for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal, and on the billboard outside your office, and in online video ads, and then, as you check-in into the Shake Shack – Bam! You get a Foursquare Deal Near-By with - you guessed it - a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal."
For years this integrated marketing approach of delivering the same message across multiple platforms was considered a best practice, however in the "always on" device-driven world we live in today, consumers tend to respond better to advertising that is tailored to the platform and recipient - in essence, delivering a unified experience versus a consistent message.
To learn more about my thoughts on unified marketing, visit my recent post on MediaBizBloggers.
Most of the conversation has sounded like "who moved my cheese?" especially to an outsider who never had cheese in the first place (cheese is consolidated broadcast advertising dollars and limited distribution channels such as movie theaters and DVD's). Ultimately, I've come to believe the issue isn't that TV is dead or dying, in fact it is growing and thriving, or that VOD is going to destroy Hollywood. The issue is that ad buys are more complex, dynamic, fragmented and content distributors are having to work harder to maintain margin and that content producers are having to become more sales savvy because they need to have more customers than the limited number of broadcasters and theater distributors from days long ago. Everyone blames the internet, the Millennial’ s, the mobile revolution and cord cutters for fragmented the audience and making it harder and harder to find a digital dollar vs. digital penny. As a response, we are seeing a slew of "Smart TV's" internet enabled televisions with app stores, over the top content, deals with VOD organizations and social integration. Awesome! Fantastic! we will bring the distractions from traditional living room TV into the living room and then we will get all the dollars in one place again and things will just be beautifully profitable for us again. Except…..
Who asked you to make the idiot box Smart? I want to watch TV, not necessarily watch a specific show, just watch TV. According to a #CES panel where either Nielsen or TV guide said "70%+ of the people who sit down to watch TV don't know what they are going to watch until they sit on the couch" - ok, I buy that, and to me that means I still want it to be easy, passive, yes I want to do discover, but not necessarily search and explore like I do with Google, Twitter and Pandora. Stations and networks are good, they have themes, they have repeats, they have marathons in case I've fallen behind or want to get immersed on a weekend afternoon in a new series. So stop touching my TV, I want to sit back, relax and watch the "History of Steel" or "Golf" or "The Guy from the 70's painting and talking in that soothing voice" - I don't want to grab content, make my own playlist, find my favorite actor that cross references with Kevin Bacon to kill 20%-50% of the time I have to WATCH TV. Leave my few times a week I have no plan, and only want to enjoy. Now if you can make it work with my iPad and come with me on my phone when I'm in line at the supermarket, then I'm all yours and I look forward to the new adventures of "TV and Me".
Follow Michael on Twitter @mkogon
I've traditionally never said anything about a trip to Las Vegas, but in the spirit of shared experiences, I wanted to highlight a few things from CES 2011 that I found worth noting #CES (hangover habit from the conference). I think out of everything that I saw and heard, the following really stuck out to me: 1) Build a platform 2) Exports are key 3) Droid Tablets 4) Multi Screen TV watching 5) Mashable throws a hell of a party 6) Facilitate Networking to add value
1. Build a Platform - In our unified marketing agency, we talk with customers about paid, earned, and owned media all the time. We firmly
believethat a company should strive to have a robust owned media asset platform upon which to leverage and create additional earned media by adding value and asking others to contribute to their ecosystem. In effect we want companies and brands to think about developing a platform for future development. # CES brought out many examples (App Stores by TV and Cable operators and Telco), but the one that I found very intriguing was the Ford Sync Developer Community. The idea that a car company would be embedding within its vehicles a platform for third party developers to provide solutions inside the vehicle is just amazing. We in America spend so much time in our cars, it is very exciting to see what tools and capabilities we will be handed over the next 24 months. Personally, I would like the sound cancelation application for long family road trips as well as the "clean and closest bathroom app" – Note: I have two daughters. In a company and brand sense, if you can build a platform for others to add value to, then your customers, suppliers and you benefit and will enjoy a higher value than if you merely communicate with each other. A platform mentality will encourage you to think about connecting with each other and that is what is required for the always on and always in motion society we live in today.
2. Exports are key - the Innovations Power Panel was fantastic - I encourage you to take an hour and watch it.
The panel was fantastic and talked about many things: education, tax policy, infrastructure, but the comments regarding Germany's economic strength and focus on Exports really caught my attention. Applying the thoughts to business and brands; aligning ones company exclusively and daily around producing something those outside your business want and value is a very powerful idea. I know that is what we should all think about because we are supposed to be customer centric, focused on adding value to others, etc. etc. But much of the time I hear folks talking about their challenges, it has a lot to do about internal stuff and not enough about the export we are making that others value. If we think in terms of being a country, do we want to be an import or export company? It seems to me that focusing on being a trade surplus organization is better and creates more value for everyone over time.
3. Droid Tablets - the year of the Tablet #CES 2011, that was probably the most tweeted phrase day one and in almost every release about the
show. And it certainly was in many ways. There must have been 1500 different tablet manufacturers and by end of 2012 everyone who wants a tablet in any country will be able to find one that fits their needs, budgets, and networks. But to me the thing that will have the biggest impact will be the Droid Tablet, the free OS and readily available app developers from the Droid phone will make the tablets richer and more robust than any first generation platform ever. Apple will still be "King of the World" and RIM's efforts should be rewarded by corporate users and Samsung has a wonderful new place in the market headed there way. But I predict the Droid Tablet will be much like the AK-47 - the world's workhorse in its category for years to come.
4. Multi-Screen TV watching - I think that people like to lean back and watch TV and not lean forward point a device at a screen and try to navigate a
computer type experience from their couch. And I think people like to have a tablet or laptop on the couch so they can do more than one thing at a time. So to me the smartest "Smart TV" was the Viera Connect from Panasonic - It took the remote, turned into a tablet and allows you to control the smart internet enabled TV from a computer interface 6 inches form your face and then watch the results on the big screen. It allows you to view content that is in parallel with each other on both screens (it should make Bad Girls Club and Fantasy Football fans more glued than every before); It opens up a whole new world to advertisers, marketers and programmers to be able to have access to both screens in the living room and to add value in new ways not yet "Seen on TV". I'm very excited about what we can do for brands, broadcasters, content creators and consumers with this new multi-screen interaction capability.
5. Mashable throws on hell of a party - The Mashable Awards started with a great VIP event serving 21 year old McCallan and various meats on a stick, rolled right into a 1000+ person theater with a great DJ team, well produced videos and a great overview of all things social, digital and hip; Followed by an after party in the club and then, and then and then…..Thanks guys, looking forward to Orlando.
6. Facilitate Networking to add value - every sentence for about 72 hours had a #CES when I typed and I found it interesting that on Friday I spent about 10 minutes just watching my TweetDeck column with #CES. It barely could keep up and was moving about 3 tweets a second and in at least 5-7 different languages. There was a good amount of PR content from manufactures, but mostly it was comments caught by participants during panels, keynotes, demo's and conversations that were being documented, shared, RT and discussed. I guess we had long format blogging a few times a day three years ago, and press releases and video before that. The energy that a full community dialoguing continuously and in real time was amazing and empowering. I sent a lot from @mkogon and my recommendation is that if you have a supplier show, customer event, user conference, sales rally or other major gathering, you incorporate a #hashtag, a social media DJ, large screens, readily available Wi-Fi and encourage your audience to participate via social media. It will make your networking event more valuable and your participants more connected to you and to each other.
So there you have it, I've got another post coming about "Who asked you to make my idiot box smart?" and a few others that came from the show.


The conference was fairly well attended with a high mix of publishers, DSP's, measurement tool providers and agencies. There were about 20% in-house folks from brands, with most being B2C and ranging from small to very, very large. For the most part, like most Advertising Weeks and events I have attended in the past.
Thanks to the New York office for all the great work this week. Mashlanta 2.0 (Mashable's 2nd Atlanta event we're sponsoring tonight) here I come.
I don’t know why this ad ticked me off so much. Maybe it seems to embrace the notion of bad money management practices? Maybe it's the fact that there is no amount of personal responsibility or accountability?
I was at an event a few weeks ago hosted by Blue Hornet and the speaker was talking about growing your e-mail list through multi-channel techniques.
I took this picture earlier this month in a small cafeteria in an office building. Six months into the year and the sign still has a Happy New Year message on it.
What do you want? Those of you that are CMOs, Brand Managers, VPs of Advertising or Marketing, what do you really want? 
I just got a call from a strategic business partner, and as an Interactive Advertising Agency we stay up to speed on most things in the marketplace, and he was calling me from a break at a conference for his company. As he said hello, I congratulated him on their company raising another round of VC dollars. He said "Wow, how did you know that?!" I told him simple; Twitter! I was a follower of his company's partner account and at the same time they told the company they tweeted about it. Interactive communications is so fast, that in less than 5 minutes the word was out! Now this is a great story because they are an eMail marketing partner of ours, he is a long time friend and the news was good. We talked about what the investment meant to his company and our partnership, we discussed how online ad agency business was continuing to see good growth this year and that 2010 was going to be a great year, and hung up smiling.
Now what if the news had been bad? What if they had a meeting that was altering the relationship with partners and it was negative? And someone had tweeted about it? I suspect our call wouldn't have been the same.
Let's talk about your online interactive marketing and message management. Do you have a twitter monitoring policy? Do you have an account? Do you follow your partners, customers, employees, competitors? I do, you should too. Website Development is a very small part of being digital, search engine optimization is only a part as is eMail or even PPC. The big parts are listening, monitoring, and watching the ecosystem and being informed as quickly as possible to make decisions as rapidly as possible. So next time you are with your Interactive Ad Agency, ask them what they know and when they learned it. You will be amazed at how fast Digital has become.
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