blogwebinar.com

Thursday Report - Intelliseek in Wall Street Journal

This morning, the Wall Street Journal's Carl Bialik - aka "The Numbers Guy" - wrote a superb piece entitled "Measuring the Impact of Blogs Requires More than Counting."    Intelliseek's BlogPulse engineer Natalie Glance is quoted extensively. Meanwhile, our Tuesday webinar was a huge success with over 80 sign-ups. Big thanks to Sue MacDonald, author of BlogPulse Highlights, for partnering with me on this one.   Next up: Blogs and Employees on June 9th.

eMarketer Speakers - HP

Great line-up of speakers today.  Ted McConnell of P&G talks later today, which should be excellent.  Also just heard Mary Bermel of Hewlett-Packard's Global Brand Advertising.  Excellent preso.  (Full disclosure: we work with some groups at HP.)  She hit the "consumer's in control" theme dead-on,  and shares some excellent thinking re: search based marketing.  Quote of the day (so far at least): "Search is the users 'declaration of intent.'"  I love this type of thinking because it looks at search through the lens of 'demand-sensing,' which is an opportunity zone marketers have barely begun to explore.

Conference Diarist - eMarketer Orlando

I’m listening right now to uber emarketer Geoff Ramsey right now at eMarketing 2005, a conference in Orlando where I will be later speaking about word-of-mouth measurements and analytics. Geoff's a highly engaging, energetic, and well-informed speaker (a fellow Ad-Tech board member) who’s introducing the key conference themes and marketing trends. As I watch him rattle through a plethora of packed power-point slides, I’m getting goosebumps. Why? Because this is at the heart and soul of everything we have been advocating at Intelliseek, especially in our webinars. So let's recap Ramsey's "5 Mega Media and Marketing Trends" and spice it up with a bit of commentary. 

• Consumer skepticism and resistant to advertising: Yes indeed! And the data substantiating this everywhere. More consumers have downloaded pop-up filters than the total number of consumers have signed up for do-not-call list. Last year’s Forrester/Intelliseek research suggested that consumer simply don’t “trust” advertisers anymore. Geoff Ramsey quotes Yankelovich: “65% of consumers feel constantly bombarded with too much marketing and advertising.”

• Increasingly the Consumer is Control: Amen! The core underlying assumption behind consumer-generated media is that the most effective and trusted advertising today is not created or controlled by advertisers, but by consumers. This is a fundamentally new landscape. Consumer behavior on message boards, blogs, forums, communities, or even around the water-cooler are all evidence of this. More perspective via our white paper on this topic.

• Media fragmentation is out of control. Ramsey quotes P&G’s Jim Stengel: “In 1965, 80% of the 18-49 year-olds in the US could be reached with 3 60-second TV spots. In 2002, it required 117 prime-time commercials to do the same.” Yes, this is the new reality, and the advent of consumer-generated media is intensifying the fragmentation. What’s your plan to manage in this environment?

• “Mass reach” efforts are being complemented by improved targeting – to maximize efficiency and drive relevance: Yes again. Why do we focus on so-called ‘influencers?’ Because they are a higher-return target audience. Win with the consumers with megaphones and you get a higher yield. Lose with them and you may never be able to crawl out of the negative media hole. But the point is this: the web is introducing a fundamentally new way of identifying, measuring, and reaching targeted niches of consumers. Most of the discussion to date has been centered on "buying" those targets, but targeting is also about how to manage the unique, organic, unprompted influence and reach of these segments. 

• Marketers are held to new levels of accountability: No disagreement here, but I’ve long maintained that one of the most critical ‘accountability’ tools available at our disposal (or currently untapped) is measurable consumer expression. If there’s a CGM trail of over 1.5 billion tangible, archived, consumer comments on the internet, why not use what the “boss” says as tool to hold marketers more accountable. I write about this in one of my recent Jupiter columns. 

What I’m sensing in listening to this presentation is that we truly are in a second “wave” of new marketing. I experienced this first hand while helping shape interactive marketing at P&G from 1996-1999, but we’re now in a fundamentally new period. Geoff’s numbers have resonance.

Where the internet is really peaking, says Ramsey, is as a “pre-purchase” information vehicle. This is a critical point, and I could not agree more. If this is even marginally true, then CGM is having a massive impact of consumer awareness, trial and loyalty of products. Why? Because real consumer experiences with brands and services are making themselves readily available in front of other consumers, especially through search engines. 

More on De-Hyping the Blogophere

Hmm...not sure if this is compliment to my forecasting ability or not, but the discussion here from Steve Rubel's site today is a good one. 

• Pete Blackshaw predicted this would happen and he was right. A blog bashing movement is underway. In a new report, eMarketer is questioning whether businesses will ever blog. They're following the effervescent Nick Denton. He got the ball rolling with his "Up with People-like" quotes in Sunday's New York Times.

I attempted to offer some clarity on my position in a follow-up post to Steve's blog.  See comment at bottom of the permalink.

Launch of Intelliblog

Just to ensure we're fully "walking our talk," we launched a new blog on the Intelliseek home page, entitled, appropriately, Intelliblog.  What's great about the blog publishing format is that is makes content management incredibly easy.  Fresh, relevant, frequently updated content helps drive both first-time and repeat visits, which obviously is very important from a business building perspective.  This is a theme I hit in a recent Jupiter/ClickZ column entitled "Add Water and Blog."     On the BlogPulse front, we have yet another exciting round of new news early next week.  Yes, certain features are about to "notch up" bigtime, but I won't tell you which ones...at least not yet.  :-)

The Star Wars Blog "Pulse"

And now for an irresistable dispatch from BlogPulse, our 10.5 million-strong blog analytics tool. Next Thursday's release of the last Star Wars movie, "Revenge of the Sith," inspired the Organic Trade Organization to piggyback on the movie's popularity. The group's Grocery Store Wars site (ranked No. 10 among BlogPulse's top daily links) promotes the group's message with an invitation to "join the organic rebellion." Among the "stars" of the campaign are Lord Tader, Chew Broccoli, Cuke Skywalker, Obi Wan Cannoli, Ham Solo and Princess Lettuce (no vegetables were harmed in the filming). The site also has a wealth of viral marketing links....a "tell a friend" function, a poster download, movie download and an invitation to learn the ways of the farm." It's catching quite a bit of buzz.

Blog Media Coverage - The March Continues

This morning, my Jupiter/ClickZ column, entitled "Irrational Blogguberance", attempts to take a step back and ask some harder, more self-critical questions about the blogging space.  As marketers, we need to do this constantly.  I write this against a backdrop of almost unstoppable media attention about blogs.  Two weeks, ago Business Week featured a cover story on the topic.  Even this morning, the WSJ featured a piece entitled "Corporate Marketers Try Out Blogs."  Today, Steve Rubel's blog this morning highlights an innovative new program with Vespa Scooters.  Meanwhile, Sue MacDonald, editor of BlogPulse Highlights, focuses recent attention on blogger reaction to First Lady Laura Bush's recent foray into edgy humor.