The Greatest Billboard Of All Time!

 

It’s difficult to describe all the ways in which this sandwich board is brilliant.  Let’s try three:

1) It’s brutally honest.  We expect marketers to mostly hide from the truth but here’s someone being quite frank.

2) It’s funny.  We like things and people that are funny.  Putting this message on the sandwich board makes us want to hang around with the people who run this shop.  Regardless of the quality of the food.

3) The guy who wrote the review must be a bit of a douche and it probably wasn’t the sandwich that drove the review.  Somehow their willingness to put this message on the board makes us think that they must actually think their food is pretty good and that actually the jag-off who wrote it just had another issue that ticked him off.  

Since these people are so funny and we’re all so clever and appreciative of their humor we’re sure we wouldn’t be like the jerk and would actually have a great time here.  Can’t imagine there are any brands out there that wouldn’t learn a lesson in customer communication from these guys.  

The Web is Dead (Zuck told me so)

Great post from Dan Lyons on The Daily Beast / Newsweek about the Facebook Instagram purchase.

In the piece Lyons makes the rather obvious point that these mobile devices are turning out to be pretty popular.  So much so that Zuckerberg realized his Desktop Internet system will die if it doesn’t get mobile tout de suite.

We may not like Facebook as a company as much anymore but  this was a smart acquisition in the Andy Grove, “Only The Paranoid Survive” kind of way.  He may turn out to be more Jobs-like than the rest of the desktop-CEOs.

John Stewart, Obama and Your Social Voice

John Stewart recently skewered the Obama team for overly friendly, overly “social-media”-voice emails.  Not only do we agree with the sentiment expressed here about these emails but want to echo that point about voice and content for all kinds of other brands in the social space.

In the first phase of social it was ok to treat all your communication with that same community-manager “up with people” voice.  Asking people their opinions on every single thing you post because you believe it will jack up the engagement numbers, or talking to communities in overly personal language and tone.  Why not.  Heck, people were downright thrilled to hear from a company so you could get away with just about anything.  But come on enough, please.

Let’s get those social voices aligned a bit more with the brand.  That community manager voice is as grating as the Obama “Hey” subject line or our personal favorite (or least favorite):  ”Let’s have dinner”

YouTube Ceiling Tile Videos Will Set You Free!

Great write-up by Baljeet Singh, the Group Product Manager at YouTube, about how people use the network.

Interesting Stat number 1: three times more people search for “How-To” videos than “Music Videos”.

Of course most people just search for the artist or song over the generic “music video” expression but the same is true for a search for what you’re trying to do over the generic expression “How-To” so the point holds.

Interesting Stat number 2: Cellume, a company that produces ceiling tile videos, has seen over a million views.  Over a million views of ceiling tile videos.

Note to client and agency looking for a viral video concept.  Are all the basic, instructional, relevant videos produced and in place on YouTube?  If they aren’t then do not bring up the V word until they are.  Now go and do likewise.

College Kids and the TV Set

Some pretty compelling, and not surprising data, about college-age consumption of video content shows that 91% is consumed on Laptops.  Plenty still gets watched on TV sets but if you were a betting man/woman you’ve got to figure this trend just marches relentlessly forward.  

Wonder how cheap flat screens will have to get for Millenials to fill their apt’s/condos/houses with them in the future when they watch most of their content on laptops?  At some point they would seem to be like landline phones.  You might need one to cover off the basic social movie watching need but beyond that they’re overkill.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1008735&R=1008735

Marketing for the 99%

Bob Lefsetz, an influential music industry blogger, wrote a great post recently about music marketing for the rest of us.  He notes that while the Simon Cowell world of X Factor and Idol can power a a few artists down our throats, they don’t stick, and for real staying power you have to get your hands dirty a thousand different ways.   He calls it the DIY world.

http://bit.ly/uajzlG

This notion of the DIY world feels right for the rest of us marketers.  What we refer to as the Conspiracy of the Masses is just too strong to simply spend your way to success.  Not stunning news for all who’ve been slugging it out in the digital and social world for several years now but worth hearing again.

Abandon Men All Yee Bookstores

Riding the J Church line to work today.  Noticed five people reading real live books and three people reading on tablets.  Not bad, not bad. Books had a good showing.  Gender division among the readers was distinct however.  The only readers of printed books were women.  Tablets were all guys.  

Not shocking for sure.  Women took over book buying years ago but holy crap.  Dump any marketing dollars for men if you’re a bookstore focusing on print.  None of the printed books were library books though. That’s a big shift from 18 months ago when the local libraries were doing gangbusters due to recession.  At least on this train line some optimism and buying happening.

More telling though were the numbers doing email on phones.  It was probably 45 people doing email versus 8 reading books.  Every single phone was an iphone.  It was only 8:00 and historically that kind of email frenzy doesn’t happen until closer to 9:00.

Only one outlier amidst all of this.  A lone guy pretending to read some kind of poetry-slam journal.  Seriously, you might as well pull out a guitar and start playing some Donovan.  That rap is not going to work and probably never did.  Don’t think the modern day equivalent, the tablet, is going to get much play either.