Web

The non-blogging, non-podcasting, non-wiki part of the World Wide Web.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Ragan spotlights Britannica WebShare

Share This!

Ragan Communications—one of my clients—has produced a video of an interview with Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica, another one of my clients. I love it when synergies like this happen. How often can you hype two clients in one post?

Ragan also has a write-up on WebShare, Britannica’s initiative to provide bloggers with access to Britannica content. Staff writer Melissa Underwood wonders about the ethics of offering free accounts to bloggers, an issue I haven’t seen surfaced anywhere else. No comments so far, but it’ll be interesting to see what people have to say.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Is a corporate website/social network mashup inevitable?

Share This!

What is the evolutionary path of social networks? Blogs might hold the answer. In the early days of blogging, blogs were independent units, unafilliated with other web content. Sure, you could link to your blog from elsewhere, but they didn’t integrate into websites. Today, it’s not uncommon to see “blog” listed as a core element of a website (like this) or even serving as the home page of a site.

Social networks are like early blogs in that respect: isolated sites that don’t integrate with other web properties. When Toyota started a social network for hybrid car owners, it was given its own URL and its own distinct look and feel. Down the road, I think social networks will be integrated into other, broader websites.

The newly relaunched FastCompany website offers a glimpse of how this might work. FastCompany has always been on top of social networking, introducing its Company of Friends concept back in 1997, when MySpace only referred to that personal boundary you didn’t want anybody to invade. So it’s a natural step for the magazine to transform its online presence into a mashup of a website and a social network. I won’t be surprised to see other publications follow suit.

But what about businesses? For those companies with a large customer base made up partly of enthusiastic fans, why not extend the social network concept to the website at large? Unlike dedicated networks like Facebook, nobody would feel compelled to visit regularly. Because these networks would not be (in fact, could not be) walled gardens, RSS could be used to let members say up to date without visiting the site. The company’s most important customers would be in direct contact with the company, and vice versa, in a way that commenting on blogs could never achieve. Dell could do away with its IdeaStorm because customers would be generating ideas, commenting on them, engaging in conversations with employees about them, and ranking them directly on the site.

Clearly this wouldn’t work for every company. I don’t see the idea being a big success for Halliburton, for instance.

But take the auto industry as an example. Given General Motors’ commitment to social media, Toyota’s experiment with a social network, the moderate success of Edmunds’ CarSpace network, it’s obvious there are enough people passionate about cars—and passionate about the cars they own—to become members of a website where they can network with each other, car designers, product managers and other employees. The direct contact would create a tighter bond between company and customer. Groups could form around special interests. The intelligence generated for the company would be matched only by the sense of belonging that accrues to the members.

So, could GM’s website ever become part website, part social network, with the boundaries as blurred as they are between the network and the magazine content at FastCompany?

Why not?

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Will Firebrand Monday breathe new life into 30-second spots?

Share This!

The 30-second spot isn’t dead, just our patience with being interrupted by them. Those “America’s Favorite Commercials” specials in prime-time television draw strong enough ratings to prove that people—at least, some people—are willing to sit and watch half-minute tales used by advertisers to pitch their wares.

Nothing symbolizes the vibrancy of the 30-second spot more than the Super Bowl, even though many of the big-budget commercials produced just for the spectacle fall far short of expectations. (I look forward to the annual dissecting of the annual ad orgy by John January and Tug McTighe on the podcast, American Copywriter.)

Firebrand is another symbol of our affinity for commercials. The beta site is nothing bit 30-second spots, which you can select by brand, category (I particularly like the “banned” section). I wrote about Firebrand back in November, praising its procrastination qualities.

So it makes perfect sense that Firebrand would find a way to tap into the excitement about the upcoming display of advertising excess. Of course, there’s no official tie-in, but Firebrand has managed to ink a deal with obscure cable station Ion TV (get it? Eye On TV?) to offer a presentation of commercials each night leading up to the big event—which is Firebrand Monday, not Super Bowl Sunday. It almost hurts to think about a website dedicated to advertising doing a deal with a TV station to show commercials.

How obscure, by the way, is Ion TV? I had to do a Web search to find out that it was, in fact, available on my cable lineup, showing reruns of “Drew Carey.” It would be a hoot if the Firebrand campaign built awareness of Ion’s existence.

In any case, everything kicks off tonight with a look at “Big Budget Productions.” Tomorrow, it’s “Chicks in Charge,” a label that might rankle some, but I expect to see at least one of the GoDaddy ads here. “Big Time Celebrities” take over Thursday night and on Friday it’s “Big Time Brands.” Finally, on Monday, it’s the main event, with (as noted in the press release) “Reebok Office Linebacker, Terry Tate, heartbreaker Carmen Elektra and classic Super Bowl commercials!”

There’s more from the press release, where Firebrand CMO Shari F. Leventhal is quoted:

Most people watch the Super Bowl with hopes of seeing the best, most creative commercials the ad industry can serve up. The greatest commercials get to play every day at Firebrand. So the Firebrand Monday campaign is our way of saluting the best of these commercials, past and present, as well as the famous icons that make commercials so memorable, and in many cases, a part of pop culture.

The Firebrand specials air at 11 p.m., 10 central. And Firebrand has even produced a series of ads to promote the effort, like this one:

Still think 30-second spots are dead? Or just the old means of delivering them?

Oh, by the way, I think there’s also a football game on Sunday. Maybe my sports-fan friends in Boston can set me straight.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Rogers experiment is bad for business

Share This!

Companies should worry about the experiment Rogers is undertaking in Canada.

Rogers—one of the largest Internet Service Providers in Canada—has begun inserting ads at the top of screens, above the website to which customers have navigated. (A screen shot of Google’s spartan home page defaced by a Rogers ad was oroginally posted to Lauren Weinstein’s blog. Google, of course, authorized nothing of the sort.)

The messages in the experiment relate to customers’ accounts: The screen shot shows a message alerting the customer that he is about to reach his data limit and provides information on how he could upgrade his account to allow more surfing. It’s a small step, though, to using the technology to deliver targeted ads based on the kinds of sites a user has visited.

Most of the commentary on the Rogers experiment have pointed to the need to legislate Net neutrality, noting that this program puts the issues into sharp focus. Weinstein—co-founder of People for Internet Neutrality—said in an interview with Wired:

This is what Net Neutrality is about—it’s not just making sure that data is handled in a competitive and non-discriminatory manner, but it’s also that the data that’s sent is the data that you get—that the content is unmodified, not with messages that are woven into your data stream [from third parties].

Indeed, the separation of content from the pipes that deliver it is a founding principle of the Internet. Or, as ”Good Morning, Silicon Valley” put it, “Bits should be bits, and pipes should be pipes, and the latter should know or care nothing about the former, merely deliver them as instructed.”

From a business standpoint, though, there is more to worry about than the general creepiness of your ISP inserting content on the pages you visit. Consider, first of all, the amount of time and money organizations invest in site design. A lot of effort goes into ensuring key content appears on the home page. A look at the Rogers customer’s screen shows the account status notice occupies a good 25% of the screen, pushing the Google home page down. What vanishes below the fold on your website could be content you assumed people would see without having to scroll to get to it.

ISPs interfering with what people see when they visit your site will throw site design into chaos and render most current designs ineffective.

But wait. There’s more.

How would Mattel feel if the ad appearing over its home page was from Hasbro? The system analyzes past surfing habits but, as far as I can tell, doesn’t account for the actual site being viewed. Chervron ads could appear over Exxon’s website, Republican ads over Democratic content, Nordstrom ads over a Macy’s page.

I fear that a lot of businesses will simply look at the Rogers experiment as a new channel for deploying their own ads. Instead, companies should unite in opposition to the practice and people who didn’t agree with the desirability of Net neutrality should think again. This may be one more way for Rogers (and their ISP brethren) to eek a few more bucks out of the Net, but I would hope that the unified opposition to the program will spell its quick demise.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Firebrand: TV commercials as entertainment

Share This!

The whole Web 2.0 thing has produced a number of assumptions that a lot of people have started taking for granted. Among these is the assumption that there is no creativity in traditional advertising; all the creativity has transitioned to individuals who express it in the form of consumer-generated content.

It’s not hard to buy into this notion. After all, we use our DVRs to fast-forward through commercials we just don’t want to see, yet we readily watch the efforts of individuals who post them to YouTube. Blogs and books are dedicated to CGM. Joe Jaffe has built a reputation around the idea that marketers can no longer expect results through wanton upfront spends.

It’s silly, though, to presume there is no creative talent in the advertising business. It’s just that watching television in its linear format makes it hard to spot the creative gems among all the detritus. Which makes Firebrand, now in Firebrand such an intriguing concept.

I must admit that initially I scoffed at the idea of a website that aggregates mainstream television commercials for people to watch. But I have found the site strangely compelling, a first-class time-waster. The spots on display at Firebrand are inventive, creative, irreverent and just plain fun to watch.

The folks at Firebrand have ammassed an impressive collection of advertisers, including Coca-Cola, Geico, Trojan (with a standout commercial featuring pigs in a bar), Sony, XBox, Adidas, Apple, FedEx, Gatorate, Kellogs, Motorola, McDonald’s, Smirnoff, and dozens more. You find commercials by selecting the brand or choosing a genre (action, sports, animation, etc.). A few playlists are also available, like “Premieres” and “Firebrand Selects”. You can also select spots as your favorites.

As for interactivity, each video features a rating system and the ability to email it to a friend and to download it. There’s also a “Blog this Spot” link that provides you with the embed code and link to the video. A couple of links are disabled, including a shopping cart.

Firebrand is just entering into this public beta, so I’m not concerned about aspects that seem to be missing or some of the opportunities that haven’t yet been introduced. For example, commenting on commercials is a must-add. And just like I can compile a list of music in a Facebook application, a Facebook app that lists my favorite commercials on Firebrand would be cool, too. (Apparently, you can share your favorites on iTunes and a few other places, but I haven’t figured out how just yet.) Finally, there isn’t a way to engage directly with the advertiser (short of whatever the shopping cart will be used for); turning these ads into a two-way conversation with advertisers would take Firebrand to another level altogether.

It also sometimes locks up in Internet Explorer, although I haven’t had a problem in Firefox. These are the types of issues betas are designed to iron out.

But in its early beta, Firebrand is a lot more interesting than I expected it to be and reinforces that there’s still plenty of energy and creativity in those old advertising agencies we’ve all had so much fun bashing of late.

Friday, November 02, 2007

Print vs. online: Don’t compare apples to apples

Share This!

I’m a big fan of print and a believer that old channels like print can adapt nicely when new channels come along. It follows that I’m usually pleased to see studies that reinforce the value of print. The new study from the Poynter Institute, however, doesn’t do much for me.

Touted over at the newly content-intensive Ragan.com site, the study is the latest in Poynter’s ”Eyetrack” research series. (The study isn’t new—results were reported back in March.) The study—which used eye-tracking lenses to see where the eye went on various kinds of print and online pages—found that people learned better when reading the print version of an article than the online version. These results were the same—print winning—regardless of the print format. Reading print also was more likely to drive readers to action.

My problem is with the online approach to the content, which appears to be a simple republishing of the article as written for print onto a web page. The study would have had more validity if the story had been repurposed to accommodate the Web’s strengths, such as interactivity and multimedia. In other words, Poynter compared apples to apples, when oranges would have been a more apt point of comparison. If anything, the study shows that articles need to be treated differently online than they are on paper.

Given that 75% of people read methodically when reading print (according to the study) but fully half scan online text, producing an article that took advantage of the ability to scan items you can click and activate short videos would have most likely produced a different result. I mean, anybody would have deduced that it’s easier to read a print article in print than it is online.

Also absent from the study was the social element of the online world, the ability to interact with others who have read the same article (through comments, rankings, and the like).

The Ragan write-up failed to note that more of the text was read online than in print—77% online, 62% in broadsheet format, and 57% in tabloid format. What’s more, nearly two-thirds of online readers read the entire story after they had selected a particular story to read.

Even more interesting is that study participants answered more questions correctly about the test article—regardless of whether it was read in print or online—when the article was presented in an “alternative manner”—that is, with no traditional narrative. It seems to me that online presentation offers more flexibility for this kind of presentation than print does.

I’ll keep promoting the benefits of print and I agree with Bill Sweeetland, the author of the Ragan piece, that companies are too quick to ditch their print communication vehicles, particularly as part of their internal communication efforts. But honestly, this study doesn’t help me make that case.

Here’s the Eyetrack 2007 video:

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The reinvention of Ragan’s home page

Share This!

Ragan Communications is at it again.

Before I go on, I need to disclose that I have a financial relationship with Ragan. I speak at their conferences, I write for their publications, and they handle the financial side of my online workshop business. Ragan is also one of the sponsors of For Immediate Release, the podcast I cohost with Neville Hobson.

That said, I’m still pretty damned impressed with the new home page Ragan launched on Monday. I’ve been reviewing the site for a couple weeks at Mark Ragan’s invitation. And while some tweaking here and there would improve it (what site couldn’t be improved with some tweaks?), it transforms the page from a traditional home page into a comprehensive information resource for anybody working in the communications profession.

If anything, it’s gotten harder to find anywhere to spend money on Ragan products or services, a curious thing given that unlike IABC and PRSA—the dominant professional associations in the business—Ragan is a for-profit venture.

The content-rich page includes a video (yanked directly from the recently-launched ”My Ragan TV”), feature articles, and opinion. A “toolkit” section offers a series of how-tos. More to the point, though, there are links to Ragan articles covering every aspect of organizational communications, including internal communication, government communication, speech writing, social media, strategic communication, PR, media relations, writing and editing, management skills—the list goes on.

And you can subscribe to RSS feeds for all of these categories:

With the relaunch of the Ragan home page, you can also pay a fee to gain access to “Ragan Select,” which includes training materials and content not available to unregistered visitors. The fee for a year’s membership in “Ragan Select” is on par with membership in a professional association and, essentially, gives you online access to everything published in every Ragan newsletter, and then some. There’s a daily headline service associated with the offering, too.

The new site acknowledges the rise of online content, the appeal of the “pull” mechanism, the value of customization and the benefits of integrating content—the page serves as the hub for access to “My Ragan TV” and the communications social network, ”My Ragan, which has attracted nearly 10,000 participants.

Yeah, I know, I have a relationship with Ragan, but I’d praise the company’s efforts even if I didn’t. Well done!