Commentary

Change: It's Hell On A Manicure

by Derek Gordon , September 1, 2009

I remember once reading that of all the challenges humans encounter throughout a lifetime, change of any sort is among the most anxiety-producing.

Last week, two events in San Francisco, one by the SEMPO Bay Area Working Group and the other by the local chapter of the American Marketing Association, highlighted the degree to which those of us working in the field confront change each and every day. From the sound of things, it isn't always pretty.

At SEMPO's panel discussion, "The Evolving Search Landscape: Charting Seismic Shifts," which I had the privilege to moderate, panelists from Cuil, Google, Technorati and Collecta discussed the many changes underway in search. Though they touched on the current state of the art, mobile search, and Bing's "decision engine," the majority of the discussion centered on real-time search.

While the concept of real-time search has been around for a while (Technorati was talking about it six years ago), the sheer volume of social media since the rise of Facebook and Twitter has changed the landscape considerably.

Because real-time search is a river of the most current stuff, it's always updating -- always changing. Which means you can never find exactly the same information twice. While this can be a very positive thing for folks paying close attention to a rising meme (for instance), it can be frustrating for those wanting to find that essential bit they might've seen at one moment in time, but which has flowed far down-river and seems lost forever.

Combined with the difficulty of effectively marketing to audiences paying attention to or involved in any given meme, real-time search remains as problematic today as when Technorati first introduced blog search. While "sponsoring a conversation" is possible -- Technorati offers display advertising adjacent to constantly updating conversations within topical areas -- effectively targeting relevant conversations in a "just-in-time / just-enough" way on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Collecta remains elusive.

And yet, these constantly rushing rivers are where Americans are investing more and more of their time and attention. In these conversations, people declare interests, intentions, passions and beliefs. There's got to be a way to appropriately match commercial offers with such declarations, right?

At the SFAMA event, featuring Loic Le Meur (of Seesmic and Le Web fame), Guy Kawasaki, Renee Blodgett, Louis Gray, and Steve Patrizi of LinkedIn, the panel focused on the event's title: "PR, Advertising and Marketing Suck: Now What?" It was Le Meur who inspired the title, based on his earlier assertions that the state of the art no longer works. (For some reason, when a guy with an elegant French accent says something sucks, it seems to suck more.) He cited his own and other companies such as Google as examples of meteoric growth without any traditional marketing. All they needed? Strong word-of-mouth. (Ironically, Google never needed a PPC campaign in order to grow.)

While there was little agreement among his fellow panelists with Le Meur's primary assertion (Gray referred to Seesmic, Google and others like them as "edge cases"), each did concede the rising importance of the "global conversation" and its twin, social networks. But even in this agreement, there was also an acknowledgment of this reality: managing relationships (which, as Blodgett pointed out, is the original meaning of public relations), when they number in the hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands, is no mean feat.

And while effective technologies exist today to manage a well-executed PPC campaign, which may result in volumes of qualified traffic that only a few short years ago would have been impossible at current CPAs, tools for developing and targeting things like "global conversations" seem inadequate to the task (though Le Meur is hard at work addressing this.) Managing an SEO effort, for instance, that includes link strategies involving social networks, blogs, microblogging, Web sites and more means cultivating and nurturing relationships between actual humans -- potentially thousands of them around the world.

As has always been the case with Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs are rushing to address the inefficiencies that have developed with effective new technologies. Meanwhile, the old ways are fast falling by the wayside (even as they might continue to produce very valuable results).

So: we both witness and participate in the death of one set of practices even as we struggle to define those that will replace the old ways. We both bear witness to and are the means of change.

What a nail-biter.

4 comments about "Change: It's Hell On A Manicure".

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Robert Zager from iconix, inc., September 1, 2009 at 12:11 p.m.
"In these conversations, people declare interests, intentions, passions and beliefs. There's got to be a way to appropriately match commercial offers with such declarations, right?"
The underlying assumption is that people want commercial intrusion into these conversations. Maybe there is no appropriate match because commercial speech isn't appropriate in this forum.
Reply

Derek Gordon from Re:Imagine Group, September 1, 2009 at 12:32 p.m.

Thanks, Robert. I guess I'm not assuming folks want commercial intrusion in their online conversations (ask anyone if they welcome advertising of any kind in any venue, and I'd venture most would say they don't) , but I don't want to assume that it's impossible or culturally impermissible. If a family is planning a camping trip, and they're discussing the gear they want to bring, would a coupon for discounted tents be completely unwelcome, for instance?

Paula Storti from Worldwalk Media, September 1, 2009 at 1:28 p.m.

Hi Derek,

It was good to see you at the SEMPO event last week : )

I agree on the topic of the need for change.

At the same, it is a fact that Google brand did and does marketing online, offline (traditional) and did PPC (internal and external to the Google engine) in order to grow.

Google did and still does occasionally use traditional marketing to jumpstart its growth. My company developed and placed those campaigns (except internal work of course). They use it less so now but were very active in the early years.

Worldwalk Media acted ad their strategic partner and media agency from the launch of the Google brand in 2002 globally for over 5 years. We also consulted on product development.

We marketed Google's products to the innovators in marketing in over 14 countries to launch and support dozens of products. We did their product launch campaigns, B2B, B2C, B2E and recruitment campaigns.

Of course Worldwalk Media's campaigns for Google weren't at the levels that the other search companies committed funds or as generally traditional in terms of the media mix. The campaigns were carefully strategized tightly focused campaigns. Google's campaigns ran as poster campaigns in India targeted to the engineering elite (the same in China and 14 countries), RSS feed campaigns, online campaigns, webcasts, the "often dreaded" network banner campaigns, print campaigns focused on various vertical trade groups, OOH, and even radio.

The multi-channel campaigns we did for Google actually beat paid search metrics when compared to in-house metrics. Our client told us this often. This is how we got more business from Google as an agency. ROI was the key and ROI helped determine the size of the campaign budgets.

We all know there is a recession in place. I have an ongoing concern that clients are overly focused on PPC and social media these days. The focus is often too myopic. PPC and social media have way been over-sold and over-covered by the media press.

In order to gain mass you need to do a well planned campaign. Brands need to balance new technologies like search, PPC and mobile but those aren't always the best approach to a well targeted strategic scalable campaign. (One that keeps you ahead of your competition.) Other mediums need to be balanced and added.

Sometimes the intellectuals in the Valley can over-think the obvious. They try to be overly clever. A careful balance of the new and old is key until the new technique truly proves itself to be scalable with an efficient ROI.

The majority of companies aren't in the position to lean on Viral, PPC and social alone today. The ROI and growth won't pan out long term in order to sustain the company.

We have to focus on what we have now while constantly embracing and testing new formats for managing the conversation. The percentage of emerging technology use should stay in check until proven.

Companies need to get high level and focus on both growth and ROI in order to stay ahead so they can keep their employees and continue growing.

Cheers,
Paula Storti
Managing Director
Worldwalk Media
brand@worldwalk.net

p.s. Back to addressing the point that Seesmic and Google have good products hence they grew virally to some extent. This happened a great deal in Google's case and a little in Seesmic's 'edge' case.

It that can happen in a few rare cases with great management and vision in place but it can't be that way for every company.

Viral is a temporary strategy no matter how good you are.
Viral can't be the only strategy for scaling even if you have your act together.

After you benefit from viral you are going to experience market forces & will again need to evaluate the entire strategic marketing playing field quickly.

Derek Gordon from Re:Imagine Group, September 1, 2009 at 5:34 p.m.

I love inside information, Paula! It's interesting: almost everywhere I go, I hear "Google doesn't do (traditional) marketing. And I find I almost always nod my head in agreement.

And yet, I drove by Google billboards on the Bayshore Freeway every day in August. You provide far more detailed evidence that they did, in fact, use many forms of marketing to advance their business objectives, at least while you worked with them. But the bottom line is: you're right. Google does a lot of many forms of marketing (including advertising and PR!)

I guess some urban myths are far too easy to believe?