Author Archives: Jiri Marousek

About Jiri Marousek

Jiri Marousek is the Director of Interactive / VP at LSB and a contributor to the LSB Jumpstarting Brands blog. Jiri waxes philosophically about motorcycles and digital trends at www.takingfuel.com and can be followed to twitter at @marousek

What Comes After the QR Code?

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Yes. It’s another shiny and pretty toy….

So the next shiny object is here and has been here for a while. At least this time, nobody is pitching you a $100,000 “deal” to sell you on mobile web, apps and SEO. A QR code is quick, cheap and as a designer likely pointed out to you already at some point, it’s an ugly blob of cubes that we can barely modify. (Actually we can modify them up to 30% due to built-in deterioration logic). Yes, they are a useful tool, but yet again we might be focusing on the shiny object a little tool much. There is little we can do about that though. Marketing people simply love their shiny objects, admittedly, including yours truly at times.

So what’s next?

But for once, let’s look further out than then latest post on Mashable or Memeburn to see what’s actually coming, not what everybody else is already doing.

A QR code is a simple directional sign. It can store a little bit of information that points you somewhere. A QR code itself is really nothing else than an arrow for your device to follow. The hard work is up to you. What do we bring the user to keep them engaged?

But a QR code is an ugly beast. And in the end, even the user interface for using QR codes is not the most elegant. You center, hold, hold … hoooold….that’s it. Done. Take me there….

For some reason, we fail to recognize the opportunity to increase the shine on the black and white blocks. If all we need from a print medium to direct users to content and engagement tools, there is a better way…

 

The mothership has the answer again…

Yup. Google is broaching the next big thing with Google Goggles. This technology that today brought us the capability to take a pic of a book and get prices from the web and reviews, or take a pic of an old building in Amsterdam and get everything from its noble architectural history to the name of the person that lives on that flat now.

It’s not ready today. I can’t really take a picture of truly anything just yet and get a result, but the race is on. And it might not be Google that hits it first.  But the end game for marketers is simple. Who will be the first to develop a pattern recognition application that lets me take a picture of a product, advertisement or grab a soundbyte and get a video, application or a secret contest landing page? Who will let users take a picture and go to an actionable next step, regardless if it is a business card, print ad or an audio clip? That is the true endgame.

Recognition of the object itself and the pattern that allows the user to interact with more engaging and richer content is the next progression beyond QR codes. Dare to question it? Bring it on!

Damn. More work for marketers.

The next challenge will be to get consumer to understand that there is a next step and value in truly every piece of media that we possess.  Especially the value part might be a tough one because we may be bringing consumers to a “call to action” overload. Having a great marketing idea that delivers value in this next step and a having great brand to deliver that experience is key.

Social Media Monitoring Might Finally Grow Up

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Here it is. We all knew that they can not last for long on their own. Radian 6 has been sold off to the CRM giant Salesforce. With everyone from OpinionLab on the research side to Omniture on the analytics side trying to grab a piece of the social media monitoring business, it was a matter of time. But this is not just a case of a big company eating up small growing firms for the sake of their current and future profits. There is a much bigger opportunity just below the surface and I am willing to bet Salesforce knows it.

Is social media monitoring just an ugly mess?

Today, even Radian 6, the alleged leader in social media monitoring, is still a baby that can barely roll over so marketers could get something done. And I am not just talking about the ridiculously clunky Flash interface. More importantly, marketers and social media monitoring firms themselves, still have not figured out how to make social media monitoring actionable

It undoubtedly has value if you see a PR fire emerging and can act on it. If your people notice a “complaint frenzy” on a blog, you can reach out and address it. But these are tactical responses at most. The problem is that the qualitative data and analysis that comes out of these tools is either too vague or too narrow. Only in rare occurrence you get an actionable strategic insight from social media monitoring today.

So what should you do about social monitoring?

Don’t shut it down just yet. The acquisition of Radian 6 by Salesforce points toward the future of where social media monitoring tools are heading. Ultimately, the industry is organizing around two completely separate tools, simply built on the concept of social listening.

The two distinct directions of social media monitoring

1. True social CRM

Radian 6 in its new marriage with Salesforce will head the route of tactical monitoring and response capability. Essentially mimicking the social CRM capability of tools such as Shoutlet, busting Radian 6 out of the confines of only monitoring the social and brand conversations.

The holy grail for this side of the social media monitoring industry will be combining three things.
One: Taking the social media listening service at its core and intelligently and automatically flagging and sorting response and analysis needs to customer service, sales, market research, etc.
Two: Taking social media data collection capability of firms such as Locomatrix and overlaying information already available about the conversation and its participants within social media.
Three: Housing this in a direct response and communication platform that allows the brand stewards, PR teams, customer service reps to track, elevate, respond and act on any conversations that are pertinent to those internal or external teams.

The greatest challenge here is the ability to respond and leverage social CRM across all social platforms. Marketers want the ability to respond, track and measure responses to consumers not just on your Facebook page and on twitter, but across all conversations on the web. This becomes easier as social sign-on and single global sign-on becomes more prevalent, but there is still work to be done.

As these social CRM technologies develop we will have very impressive tactical tools to monitor and respond to the conversations that are happening all over the internet only waiting for marketers to listen closer and respond better.

2. Insight and strategic analysis tool

This one will be tougher, but I expect Omniture and other more analysis driven firms will finally make the move and increase their focus on what is happening outside of brand sites. Up to now, there has been an over-emphasis of websites and mobile web, but truly strategic insight will come from combining more exhaustive quantitative and qualitative data from social media.

Their challenge is greater, because for tactical social CRM all the tools generally exist. For insight driven social media monitoring analysis, all that exists is bad or incomplete solutions. So get to work people!

In the end, what we marketing and strategy people on both sides of a brand care about is:

- Emerging market and conversation trends
- Shifting consumer priorities
- Shifts in behavior and use of new technologies / social tools
- Aggregate effect of the brand and its communications
- Perception and purchase intent shifts related to specific campaigns
- Impact on site and mobile performance
- Impact on consumption

And there is more I want

In the end, the strategic insight will have to integrate much more closely into business analysis and analytics overall to be truly helpful. Especially since for now, social media monitoring really doesn’t measure or inform anything and relies on massive man-hours to analyze, review and read influencer reports, discussions and mentions.

The trends are moving in the right direction, but we marketing folks need to keep pushing these social media monitoring players to deliver more. We are waiting for a truly integrated insight. The industry is learning to love the term “integrated marketing” and finally sees the value that it has always had. Which means that measurement and analysis to inform decision making about integrated campaigns and brand building has to catch up. And quickly.

 

Can We Rethink the Title “Social Media Strategist” Yet?

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social media strategistWhat’s behind the shine?

It took a while. A lot of soapbox discussions and rants on the part of many in the digital and integrated marketing community. But finally the industry is seeing the light. As slowly as it frequently does when shiny new objects are blinding our vision. The chrome finish of social media is starting to rub off and as the actual tool itself emerges, it is becoming obvious how ridiculous the obsession with social media as a strategy was becoming.

Does your car have a “Chief Bumper Strategist”?
Just as your neighborhood car shop doesn’t have a “chief wheel mechanic” and a “headlight director”, any brand that sees social media tools as a field in need for its own strategy is missing the point. Social media is a lever (Horrible business school flashback) of marketing and business strategy. It is not THE strategy itself.

It is simple to see the reason for the many obvious failures in social media campaigns in recent years. Isolated campaigns spawned in the bowels of companies. Great ideas executed without any thought of integration or leveraging of the brand and its assets in other channels. How can we even judge a social media campaign with any kind of reasonable ROI and response measure if measurement was never considered from the get go?

Get to know the social media toolkit
The right structure to fix it? Marketing and brand leaders are the ones that need to know digital tools and most importantly social media. It is THE CHANNEL that provides the most amazing way of engagement, observation and participation in conversations with the customer. But the actual task of executing within social media is not a strategic or isolated responsibility. It is a management and tactical task that informs and integrates with what we as brands do. Not as a peppy little tail that tries to wag the dog.

What does it mean to a brand steward and leader? If you have off-loaded the knowledge of social media to the new kid 2 years out of college that is now your “social media strategist”, it’s time to dig in and get a little hands on and actually know the tools of the digital space. And time to know how they integrate with not just your other marketing assets, but with communications, product and sales channels. If your brand is underperforming, these lessons might just be the key to jumpstarting gr0wth.

 

Can We Rethink the Title “Social Media Strategist” Yet?

Who Wins the Battle between Mobile Apps and the Mobile Web?

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After a run on mobile apps since the launch of the iPhone, iPad and Android, everyone seemingly needed an app. Everything from Angry Birds to simple re-use of printed brochures for car companies just had to be added to the App Stores to be on the cutting edge. But a crossroads emerges for brands and content developers with mobile web now allowing all the functions that an app would, without taking consumers backwards 15 years and requiring them to install software on their devices just to see your content.

95 % of apps are functionally dead after 3 weeks
While the decision in not solely on the shoulders of the projected lifespan of the app, consider this: Only less than 5% of apps installed are ever used again after 3 weeks. This means that if your brilliant, cool, groundbreaking app will cost you $100,000+ to develop for the major platforms, and then much more to support, is it really worth it? Are you sure you will gain the engagement with the users that puts you in those 5%?

There are of course many variables that need to be considered before a decision is made between mobile web and an app. For function developers and “software” brands, apps are likely to be a good and wise choice, but I will guarantee that for a decidedly dominant portion of brands and content publishers, mobile web is the obvious winner. Here six major benefits and considerations to keep in your head when deciding between developing an app or the mobile web for your brand:

1. The mobile web can do everything an app can do.

It can deliver the same content and there is no need to convince the user to go to the app store, install the app and then keep it. The experience of the app can be pretty much identical, the cost of entry for the consumer is much lover for mobile web though. They just type in the URL and create an icon on their screen for future use with a single touch.

2. The balance between content and function should drive your decision.

If what you are providing the users is relevant and engaging content (hopefully you got to that point before even considering mobile anything….), then you can likely benefit much more significantly from mobile web. If you have actual functions that are unique (i.e. games, user controller animations, animated product configurators etc.), then an app may be the way to go. For now. Most brands and content providers lean quite heavily to the former.

3. How much are you willing to invest in this experiment?

With mobile web, you still have to maintain, update because it is ultimately just a website. But compared to an app that has to be managed as software and upgraded and edited as bugs are found and as operating systems release updates, mobile web is really inexpensive. Especially considering that your same web team can manage mobile web with little training, whereas for an app, you either need a specialized team or use one of the “free” or “make your own” services that I mentioned in previous posts. That said, mobile web is also a quickly developing space and will require attention to take advantage of all the new and great functions available to improve and build user experience and engagement.

4. HTML5 browsers are app killers.

New HTML5 browsers provide functions and capabilities that bring mobile web much closer to apps than you may think. You can now use GPS, video, on-device stored content etc. with this new technology.

5. Develop once and manage once.

While standards and device capabilities are still in rapid change phase, you are able to develop and release a mobile web with all your content and functions that are immediately available to any of the four major smartphone platforms. (Android, Windows Phone, iOS and Blackberry). You build once and manage one tool with only minor concessions likely for specific platforms.

6. No need to depend on the operating system app store.

This is very key. Any updates you make are immediately available and you are not at the mercy of approval processes or waiting for review or third party approval in the operating system app store. You are able to rapid prototype and change the mobile web platform as you need or as your customers provide feedback. Of course, this also means that any advertising you may place, if you are a content provider running advertising, you don’t share nearly as much revenue with others such as the Apple mother-ship.

In the end, this may seem one sided. But the decision is not as simple. For a brand providing content, mobile web is very likely a better option. But for national integrated campaigns where a more complex function set and controls are needed, apps will still have a place. They should just be heavily scrutinized before we head that way with any brand or campaign.

Think of an app as a product. You better be sure there is a market and need before you build it and maintain it. And think of mobile web as a channel of communication to provide your content and message regularly and without complex installations.

No matter your choice, the usual best practice on business objectives applies. Start with a set of leading and lagging objectives for mobile web and how it integrates with your other communications. You can shoot to be the most downloaded app like Bubbleball (created by a 14 year old kid by the way) or you can shoot to be the most-used mobile website or app by YOUR consumer. First may be good for ego, the second is good for your business.