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MEDIATRENDS

CONSUMERS

#4PUBLISHED BY


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2 MEDIACOM | BLINK#4

What is the best way to reach consumers today? Are brands ready to meet

the demands o digital natives? Will technology be a carriage or a barrier

or messages? And what can we do to prepare or urther changes in

consumer behaviour?

These are just a ew o the many important questions that every advertiser

should be asking themselves.

Empowered by choices, we now live in a world o opportunity where everything

is just a click away. As consumers, we expect to have our needs met imme-

diately and nearly eortlessly, and more than ever, we are not araid to share

inormation to get there. And with every online interaction, we are creating

a ootprint.

For advertisers, this has created huge opportunities and challenges. On one

hand, the doors have been opened to a world o consumers, making it easier

to speak directly and relevantly to audiences. On the other hand, however,

consumers are now in charge o their own media consumption and are enclosed

in interest-specic lter bubbles created by search engine algorithms. It is even

harder or brands to get noticed in the rst place, and brands need to tackle

both the consumers and the technology.

To break through, brands need to look closer at the data that consumers leave

behind and think about what makes them tick. Get it right, and the rewards

will be worth it; consumers will love and trust your brand. Get it wrong, with no

ocus on the consumer, and your brand will be let outside the bubble.

In this issue o BLINK, we recognize that the shit in power rom advertisers to

consumers is a noticeable one and that many questions still need answering.

Inside, we identiy what advertisers are doing right, what they are doing wrong,

and what they will need to do more o in the uture.

I hope you nd it interesting, useul, and ultimately, empowering.

Regards,

Stephen Allan

MediaCom Worldwide Chairman and CEO

INTRO

WELCOME

#4 Winter 2011

Circulation: 8.907

MediaCom Global

124 Theobalds Road

London

WC1X 8RX

UK

Tel.: +44 (0)20 7158 5500

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.mediacom.com

Editor-in-Chie:

Signe Wandler, MediaCom

[email protected]

Design & layout:

Propellant, www.propellant.dk

Art Director, Martin Dahlbeck

Cover art:

Stephan Walter

Printed By:

Vilhelm Jensen & Partnere

ISSN: 1903-5373

The opinions expressed in the

articles are those o the authors.

Minor textual contents may be

republished as long as the original

author and publication are cited.

Find BLINK in the News & Insight

section at www.mediacom.com


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WHAT IS YOURRELATIONSHIP LIKE?

STATUSUPDATES

34

10

Take the quiz to test i your brand

communication is up-to-date.

By Dennis Grzenia and Daniel Bischo,

MediaCom Germany

Consumption is still a way o displaying

social status but digital is changing thegame. What does this mean or brand

communication?

PHOTOGRAPHYGETTYIMAGES


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A CROWDEDPLACE

DIGITALIN RETAIL

36

44

Interview

Why crowdsourcing

is a powerul tool.

By Tricia Nichols, Managing

Partner, MediaCom US

The unstoppable march o digital

marketing is orcing retail brands

to undamentally transorm their

relationship with shoppers.

CONTENT02 Welcome

06 Please Me Now

10 Status Updates

18 Cases: Dell & EA

20 Hacking the Meme Code

26 The Data Wars

28 M:Files: The Power o Empathy

30 Finding New Magic

34 M:Files: What is your Relationship like? (QUIZ)

36 Interview: A Crowded Place

40 Digital Persuasion

44 Digital: Retailers New Path to Purchase

48 Interview: Time to Get Active

#4



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HACKING THEMEME CODE

DIGITALPERSUASION

THE DATAWARS

20

40

26

By Joerg Blumtritt,MediaCom Germany

Social media and sophisticated

algorithms make it increasingly

difcult to get your message

across.

By Mauritz Kaptein

Persuasion proles will help

create more eective messages

and valuable, trade-able data.

By Daniel Nye Grifths

Who controls inormation about

where consumers go online and

what they do there?

THE

CONSUMER

ISSUE

PLEASEME NOW06

By Aimar Niedzwiedzki, MediaCom

Beyond Advertising, Norway

Are you entering the Customer

Satisaction Treadmill?

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Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Laureate and the father

of behaviour economic theory, described a principle he

named The Customer Satisfaction Treadmill. The faster

we get it, the faster we want it. The more convenient

it becomes, the more we real ise just how convenient

it could be. The more our unreasonable demands are

met, the more unreasonable they become.

Every time you go out of your way to pleasea customer you are adding weight to creating

unreasonable demand. But it doesnt have to be this

way: there has never been a need for IKEA to include

a carpenter in its at packs. Because we have been

trained in regards to what we expect from IKEA.

An important force that shapes brand strategy today

is the threat of substitute products or services,

according to Professor Michael E. Porter from Harvard

University. This factor leads business managers to

believe that loyalty should be bought and included

in automated programmes. With the entrance of the

social net where the indiv idual voice suddenly becomesvisible, real-time support has become the latest trend.

But how smart is it to be there, everywhere for the

customer? And what is the purpose?

UNSTRUCTURED DATA

When someone shouts out into thin a ir via Twitter,

that something is wrong with your service or

product, and you reply without thinking through all

the consequences and possible snowball eects, you

are about to embark on a dangerous trail.

Are you really ready to full that demand? Are you

going to be there for the customer, mountain high

and valley wide? If not, youd better not please every

whim that we the customers express via these new

social channels. Because most likely my barking has

no specic aim. It is more often than not, an attempt

to get attention from my surroundings, not you (the

product) specically. I am saying you suck because

I want recognition from my friends. It is a moderngame of forget me not. You just happen to be

the content.

Many brands are now using Facebook as a customer

service platform. Ask yourself what the purpose

and consequence might be. Airline companies that

deliver personal ight services on Facebook are in

fact creating a feeling of a personal assistance that is

massively missing when they get to airport and on the

actual ight.

As a secondary eect is that their Facebook wall ends

up as spam since everything is about 1:1 experience.They have lost a good tool for communication to many

people in their attempt to satisfy their customers

imagined needs. Brands that take this route are

repeatedly solving the same problems over and over

because the answer in not available as a simple query

for the customer. Most questions are repetitive and

basic. Things consumers should be able to nd in a

good database. A good structured database. So the

same message doesnt have to be sent hundred times

to dierent people on the same wall.

CUSTOMERS ARE AN INCREASINGLY HARD AUDIENCE TO PLEASE AND

BRANDS MAY HAVE TO APPLY SOME TOUGH LOVE. HAVE WE FOUND THE

RIGHT BALANCE IN THE RELATIONSHIP?

BY AIMAR NIEDZWIEDZKI, MEDIACOM BEYOND ADVERTISING, NORWAY

PLEASE ME

NOW!


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7BLINK#4 | MEDIACOM

GET SATISFACTION?

Even worse. You train your customers that they

can shout in the woods and be heard. There are

online platforms that actually help customers

without creating increased demands on the brand.

Getsatisfaction.com, a community-based support

platform, gives fans of companies and their sta a

place to share their knowledge of certain products

or services so the pressure on customer supportdecreases. Swedish music service Spotify has done

this with great success. Spotifys customer community

routinely receives more than 100.000 visitors perweek. This trac provides support to Spotifys 10

million registered users, and helps the Spotify team

remain lean despite an exploding customer base.

RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS

Treadmilling isnt only about support. It is rst and

foremost about creating situations where expectations

are adjusted without a specic purpose or strategy.

Business owners tend to spend more time looking

for threats than opportunities. Jumping if the angry

Twitter mob says their new logo is ugly. Considering

the general publics level of knowledge the process of

logo creation I am certain that one should be cautious

about making such decisions based on ephemeral

popular demand.

Here is what a good business leader should do.

Monitor and track conversations on the web with

a suitable social analy tics tool. Acknowledge thefrustration on the subject publicly. Find out if the

99,99% of customers who did not join the mob like

your logo or not. Ask your employees. If the logois liked by the silent majority, then ght for them.

That will earn respect from the mob over time. And

give you something to talk to fans about: The actual

reasons why you run the business the way you do. By

having an open and honest strategy most critique will

most likely become an asset.

This is what happened when JetBlue (not an airline,

but a happy jetting company) left many passengers in

a horrible situation during a blizzard some years ago.PHOTOGRAPHY

GETTY

IMAGES

CONTENT

PLEASE ME NOW!

I AM SAYING YOU SUCK BECAUSE I WANT

RECOGNITION FROM MY FRIENDS. IT IS A

MODERN TIMES GAME OF FORGET ME NOT.

YOU JUST HAPPEN TO BE THE CONTENT


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CONTENT

PLEASE ME NOW!

BUT HOW SMART IS IT TO BE THERE,

EVERYWHERE FOR THE CUSTOMER?WHAT IS THE PURPOSE?

The angry mob went ball istic on Twitter, media picked

it up, and the companys CEO put on the mad hat and

made a YouTube video. He gave a public apology but

most importantly he made a promise on how JetBlue

would deal with similar problems in the future.

The next thing JetBlue did was make sure that all sta

members tried really hard to make every passenger

feel special. Not by replying on customer service mat-

ters on Facebook. They actually state pretty clearly that

they dont respond to specic customer service issues

posted on this platform. Instead they perform random

acts of kindness; like sta members performing as an

a cappella band at their JFK Terminal, or instantly mak-

ing their Caribbean ights freely available for rescue

workers from the US when the terrible earthquake hit

the islands in 2010.

Real human attention gives your employees the

power to become autonomic. This is how you make

true champions of positive customer satisfaction.

Loyalty programmes, and similar schemes, dont

work as well as the human touch because they createexpectancy. When customers start to expect gifts or

bonuses they dont value them as high ly anymore. It

is bought loyalty. We are running on the customer

satisfaction treadmill.

TAKE IT TO THE C LEVEL

Customer service can be immensely powerful for

a brand if used correct ly. Just ask Tony Hsieh of

Zappos.com, the CEO who built the worlds largest

online shoe store by delivering happiness. To really

understand the value of customer service as an asset,

all Zappos.coms employees are obliged to attend

customer service training in two of their rst four

weeks of work, regardless of department and position.

All employees are expected to drive a wow-eect

through service. To make a lasting impression

you must do something above and beyond whatsexpected. Make someone smile. But Zappos sta do

this over the phone. Not via 140 characters or less.

Seeing a problem online does not mean it must be

solved online.

The more I research customer service, the more

important the human factor becomes. This is about

humanising the brand or company. Our power as

customers via the social net will aect the business

strategy of the core business. This needs to be under-

stood by the C-suite, the CEO and his friends up there.

If they dont see any danger in automating satisfaction

in measurable programmes or being present without

understanding why, for us the customers, treadmilling

will continue. That was key to the success of Zappos.

com. Delivering happiness came from the CEO. It was

a core element of the strategy.

It is possible to love data and show some love to the

customer simultaneously. But only when a clear busi-

ness motivated strategy is in place, and not without a

clear understanding of what tools to use. Being service

minded and making sure that you help your customer

is very important. But know when, where and how.

Why and with what isnt such a bad idea either.

So if you want to please me now, I dont mind. But I

didnt expect you to, before you just did so. And now

my expectations just went up a notch. Good luck.

AIMAR NIEDZWIEDZKIAimar Niedzwiedzki, Marketing Entrepreneur,

MediaCom Beyond Advertising.

Author o marketing blog tasteasreal.com.


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PH

OTOGRAPHY

GETTY

IMAGES

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MEDIACOM| BLINK#4

PHOTOGRAPHYGETTY

IMAGES

I CONSUME,

THEREFOREI AM

10


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CONSUMPTION IS STILL A MEANS TO DISPLAY SOCIAL STATUS, BUT DIGITISATION IS

CHANGING THE GAME. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO BRAND COMMUNICATION?

BY DENNIS GRZENIA AND DANIEL BISCHOFF, MEDIACOM GERMANY

Cars are one of the worlds strongest

signiers of social status and give everyone

an opportunity to compare social standing.

Today many of the signiers of our place

in society can be seen in the goods we own

which provide helpful, and often instant,

indications of our place in the social order.

In 1899, Thorstein Veblen, a US economist

and sociologist, who became well-known

for his Theory of the Leisure Class, shaped

the term conspicuous consumption.

That is, spending money on visible goods

for the purpose of displaying income

or wealth or social status. According

to Veblen, the consumption of goods

not only satised basic needs but also

provided a means to build reputation.

This not only promotes and justieslimitless consumption since you can always

climb one step higher on the social ladder

but also makes consumption a way of

communicating our hopefully rising -

status. For instance, we know that owning

a Mercedes Benz indicates high status

based on income, education, and prestige.

Just think how you react when you meet

someone new. You instantly categorise

STATUSUPDATES

them based on their appearance, their

clothes, accessories and cars. We

are all exposed to the consumption

patterns of those in our reference

groups and seek to replicate the

patterns. That is why people consume

to keep up with their peers and toimpress people in lower social classes.

Richard Centers, author of The Psychology

of Social Classes: A Study of Class

Consciousness, denes social class as

follows: A mans class is a par t of his

ego, a feeling on his part of belongingness

to something: an identication with

something larger than himself. This

denition still holds true but, accord-

ing to the report Middle Britain, the

traditional markers of social class like

job, family background and wealth arefading away. Often people even assign

themselves into the wrong social class,

e.g. 36% of builders classify t hemselves

as middle class and 29% of bank

managers say they are working class.

The traditional boundaries of social

classes are fading and they are becoming

less signicant. The reason being that the

traditional ways of dierentiation and

demarcation such as nationality, religion,

or education no longer work as they did

in the past.

Instead people search for new reference

groups, which results in a more fragmented

aliation. You can be a banker at dayand roaming World of Warcraft as an

orc at night. One does not rule out the

other, since the current prole depends

on current reference groups. And in every

situation and every area of life, we can use

dierent symbols to display our status.

FROM PHYSICAL TO VIRTUAL GOODS

As in so many other areas, digital is

providing new ways to consume, display

and build reputation. In the past, you had

to pass my house to see my car. Today, you

just have to Google me! On the internetanyone can nd enough information

to determine the status of others.

And there is a shift from physical

status symbols to digital ones. Of

course, physical status symbols retain

their impact but status is now also

conveyed by my Facebook prole and

the amount of friends I have or by

the magica l sword I own in World of

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CONTENT

STATUS UPDATES


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Warcraft. This is a lso the reason why people

upload photographs of their (posh) meals.

The enabler of these new digital status symbols is the

smartphone (a status symbol in itself). It is the physi-

cal manifestation of my ability to show my consump-

tion to the whole digital society within seconds.

In addition, if you post something on a social network-

ing site, you reach a minimum of several hundred

of people within a second. Digitisation provides the

capability to communicate to an innite audience.

On top of this, virtual goods can also in themselves

be used to display my social status and who I

am. Digitisation has become an accelerator of

consumption. And all goods must now submit to

the mechanisms of this new way of distribution.

Physical goods need to oer a fast, ergonomic

and eective way to distribute themselves via

digital media such as Facebook. This need to

show o my physical goods online means that

the design of products is becoming even more

important, because my possessions have to

look perfect in the pictures that I share.

Tools like Instagram have responded to this need

by providing multiple lters that can be used to

enhance the pictures. Everything I photograph

looks great in no time, whether it is a retro sports

bike or a meal at my favourite restaurant.

NEW CURRENCIES FOR A NEW WORLD

When we talk about virtual currency, we mean

objects in digital environments like game items

(the magical sword from World of Warcraft or

the tractor from Farmvil le etc.), that can be

traded for real that is, the old - money.

Taking this idea one step further, social mediaplatforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube also

provide their own virtual currencies, namely likes,

followers, views and subscribers. Likes and

followers are sold for real money, and an increasing

number of people have already paid with a tweet.

While the digital immigrant may still distinguish

between virtual and real money, digital natives

view this distinction obsolete. In the future,

it will make no dierence, whether I own

1.000 Facebook credits or US$100 because

money is nothing more than an enabler.

The business of virtual goods especially within

(social) browser-based games has exploded in the

last few years. Even if we can play the game for free,

costs occur if the gamers wish to add to the game, be

it with a bigger farm or a superior spacecraf t. Such

virtual items have the potential to become the new

status symbols. In the US, the virtual goods market

already reached US$1,6 bill ion by the end of 2010,

while social gaming contributed US$835 million.

PHOTOGRAPHY

CUBAGALLERY

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ON TOP OF THIS, VIRTUAL GOODSCAN ALSO IN THEMSELVES BE USED

TO DISPLAY MY SOCIAL STATUS AND

WHO I AM

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CONTENT

STATUS UPDATES


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self-produced homemade video content can

nd its way on the TV screen, as seen in

the Deutsche Telekoms Million Moments

campaign. Al l these brand communications

help the user look good to his peer group.

THE FUTURE: FROM ASPIRATION-

AL TO MEANINGFUL BRANDS

In Germany, there is currently an

intense debate about forbidding the

like button. The key argument being

that it stores data about consumers

who are not Facebook members and

have thus not agreed to the storage.

There is very little probability that

the like button will be banned, but

critical voices have been raised and ithas already caused suspicion. This is

one of the reasons why the like button

should not be seen as the holy grail of

advertising. It goes beyond the likes.

Brands that glue people together in

communities go beyond the fullment

of conspicuous consumption. To be part

of a community one has to identify with

others. However classic prestige-driving

or aspirational brands tend to stress

individualism or even ego (look what I

can aord and you cant!) which is not

helpful in the formation of a community.

And let us not kid ourselves: Most people

wouldnt care if 80% of all brands disap-

peared tomorrow. Products and services are

not as attached to brands as we may think.

There are already clear signs of people

liberating themselves from the paradigms

of the previous decades individualism,

consumerism, mass society as shown

in impressive ways in the uprisings in

Spain, UK, and recently with #occupy-

wallstreet in the US. These netizens,

digital natives, pirates - or however theymight be labelled - are highly suspicious

of the old economic structures without

being left, green or any other form

of classic anti-consumer-ideology.

In this new environment, trust is

established through mutual experiences

which take place on social media, no matter

if it is politics, brands or products. The

way that these new consumers tribalise

CONTENT

STATUS UPDATES

A BRAND NEW PERSPECTIVE

This development not only has an impact on

products and goods, but also on com-

munication. The advertising industry needs

to embrace this new need to communicate

status. This happens both on the creative

side that is design and embell ishment

but also on the structural media level.

By integrating portable devices and cloud

services into our everyday life, we have

already entered the next level in the evolu-

tion of media. Media barriers have been

lowered and every piece of information (on

signs, ads, products, buildings, and even

people etc.) is linked to further content via

constructs such as QR codes, augmented

reality, or Shazam, to name but a few.

Facebook has become a diary of status

symbols or a museum of me as seen

in Intels campaign (see QR Code). All

relevant content is easily gathered by

using the omnipresent like button. This

mechanism is already heavily used by

brands, especially in campaigns with a

participatory aspect. People can integrate

themselves into movie sequences and even

Ater studying Theatre, Film and Media as well as Philosophy in Frankurt,

Brussels and Berlin, Daniel started his proessional career in journalism beore

heading to the Berlin ofce o Trend Research Company TrendONE. He joined

MediaCom Germany in 2010 where he ounded and heads up Innovation

Science, a research unit dedicated to applying trends and innovations to media

planning. He and his team work across a broad spectrum o clients

and industries.

DANIEL BISCHOFF (*1981)Research Director at MediaCom Germany


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QR CODE

STATUSUPDATE

into communities over social networks

means brands need to be less pretentious,

and make fewer grand promises, and

instead donate value and meaning.

In the future, brands will still be able

to leverage the phenomenon of conspicu-

ous consumption, yet they will have to

tap into the accelerated opportuni-

ties oered by digital media by

becoming meaningful brands.

So we see a shift towards brands that give

meaning, support consumers who show

their sympathy with others and thus foster

community. As long as a brand focuses on

being aspirational rather than humble, it

is highly vulnerable to negative news thatgets spread fast over social networks.

A brand that instead positions itself in the

community by helping, doing good, being

of real value for the communitys members

is more robust and less likely to be harmed

if someone posts a negative comment.

LITERATURE

Conspicuous consumption by Thorstein Veblen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen

Denition o Social Class by Richard Centers

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1388331

Middle Britain Report by William Nelson

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/7053761/

Were-all-middle-class-now-darling.html

Virtual Goods and Currencies by Vili Lehdonvirta

http://vili.lehdonvirta.com/

Monetizing digital media by Ernst & Young

http://www.ey.com/Publication/

vwLUAssets/Monetizing_digital_media/$File/

Monetizing_digital_media.pd

Rethinking the Idea o the Brand by Umair Haque

http://blip.tv/harvard-business-publishing-video/

rethinking-the-idea-o-the-brand-4826346

Ater graduating in economics, business studies, and social psychology,

Dennis started working or MediaCom as a media planner. Thus he came in

touch with various clients rom categories like telecommunication, FMCG,

and insurance. In early 2010, Dennis became Research Analyst at MediaCom

Science and is now responsible or trend research, social media, and

communication consultancy.

DENNIS GRZENIA (*1979)Research Analyst at MediaCom Germany


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Will

Critchlow

HARDtalk is the agship programme on BBC WorldNews that asks the dicult questions. In this special

series o interviews or Blink, Stephen Sackur, one

o the BBCs most respected journalists, adapts the

same uncompromising style with moguls and

gureheads shaping the worlds o advertising, sales

and media. This issue, Stephen goes head to head

with Will Critchlow, the co-ounder and Director

o Distilled, a London-based SEO and search engine

reputation management (SERM) agency. Well-known

across the industry, Will regularly blogs and speaks

at conerences.

BBC WORLD NEWS is a trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC 1996.

SS: Do you accept that what you do amounts to a manipulation

o the Internet?

WC: It really isnt about taking what is already there on our clients websites

and manipulating things so they appear higher up in search results. Its

actually about helping them change their business, change their website,

change their online marketing so that they end up appearing there.

I would say that theres a misconception that what we do is an external

thing to our clients. In other words, they do their thing and we just tick

away in the background manipulating things. Actually it s much more

integrated than that, or at least it should be, and we push our clients

hard to let us be integrated into what they do. What we do is very

much a mixture o technical consulting, helping them produce an

excellent website; content strategy, in other words helping them decide

what they should be writing about; and promotion strategy which

broadly speaking tends to look a lot like online PR.

SS: Let me ask you about one particular aspect o your business,

that is your work on search engine optimisation (SEO). It is

possible to cheat isnt it, when it comes to this optimisation

process? You can tag links across the web on unrelated content,

or example. Do your clients ever want you to do that?

WC: Firstly, what do we mean by cheating? Theres a whole spectrum o

things ranging rom the completely legitimate with perhaps unintended

consequences. There are some things that you might do completely

naturally and normally that have an unintended inuence on how you

perorm in the search engines. All the way through to things that are

slightly worse than that. There are things that Google, or example,

dont like you to do that actually have a perectly innocent explanation.

Through to things that are very distasteul - alternative methods like

spamming blog comments which just creates work or the owner o

the blog in cleaning those things up. All the way through to the actually

illegal, hacking websites, breaking into computers, that kind o thing.

SS: You mention Google and as you suggested, it has a pretty strict

set o guidelines. It has things it says are acceptable, and many

things it says are unacceptable. Do you think that their

guidelines are sometimes too strict?

WC: I wouldnt say their guidelines are necessarily too strict. I think that they

are occasionally a little bit vague and open to interpretation. They leave

themselves leeway to say that they dont like something ater the act,very oten. I personally would like to see them tightened up and I would

also like to see some kind o appeals process. Theyre very much judge,

jury and executioner at the moment, especially in the markets where

they have such a massive market share.

SS: I just wonder whether this SEO process is as complex and

multiaceted and as dicult as some people inside the industry

seem to say it is, because obviously it serves your interests to

have people believe that, because your business is all about

selling your service?

WC: I would challenge that actually. We put a huge amount o eort into

educating our peers and our clients on what it is we do, why we do it,

how we do it. We run conerences to explain, we dont hold back our

secrets. There defnitely are people in our industry who would ratherit be seen as a dark art and a mystery, but we are not among those.

We believe that the biggest challenge, the biggest thing we need to

overcome as an industry and as a business ourselves is ear o

the unknown.


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Advertising feature sponsored by BBC World Ne

What we need to do is educate businesses that this process is not

rocket science, its not horribly complex, its not horribly risky. There

are defnite rewards, and its usually seen as part o a modern marketing

mix or any business doing business online.

SS: Just how important is it or a business selling itsel today to be

at the top o the search list? To be either number one in any

keyword Google search, or at least, to be on the ront page?

WC: It very much depends on the business. I you are a business to business

organisation selling entirely through personal networks and relationships,

you could maybe get away with not even having a website. But i youre

selling online or you have an e-commerce operation, appearing insearch is absolutely critical. It is literally a question o survival or

many businesses.

One o the key realisations or our business was that it very oten isnt

actually about helping our clients rank or a specifc keyword. That

activity is oten misguided and a low return on investment. Oten its

much more valuable to help them build up a website that ranks or many

new key words, and that can actually bring higher returns to their

business. It is also more valuable, in my opinion, to the consumer than

the activity o fddling around as to whether something ranks at number

three or number one in a highly competitive niche, because youre

actually adding new value to the internet; youre creating new content

and youre allowing search engines to index content that they previously

couldnt get to.

SS: Let me switch ocus now to another important element o your

business, search engine reputation management (SERM). Is it

right to regard this as your clients wanting to bury bad news

and accentuate the positive?

WC: Thats a pretty close description o what they come to us asking or.

The frst thing we say to them is that in the modern, connected,

socially-networked world, its pretty much impossible to bury bad news.

SS: You can bury it pretty deep down the web though cant you?

WC: Depending on what it is and depending on what the alternative news is

out there. The very frst rule o reputation management that Ive always

preached to my clients is step one: stop doing the stupid stu. We hav

taken on clients in the past who have still been doing the stupid stu

and its never worked out well or anyone. When theres a constant

ow o new stories that they dont like, it is pretty much impossible an

a ools errand to try and pretend otherwise. The web is simply too

good at uncovering interesting stories.

SS: Assuming that they stop doing the stupid stuf, it then comes

down to how efectively you can cover up the embarrassing

behaviour that they displayed in the past?

WC: It is defnitely one way o phrasing it. I preer to work with people

who want to do new and interesting things that are more interestingthan their past and promote those. Thinking about what ranks when

somebody searches or your name is, I would argue, a good activity

or pretty much everyone because it is, these days, how you get a job.

When you apply or a job, very oten they want to know who you are,

what youve done beore and they want to know the real you, and the

are going to creep around and see whats out there.

SS: They want to know the real you, not the airbrushed you, but

your job is really to promote the most positive view o you or

any subject and that isnt always the most truthul is it?

WC: So the activity we would be doing is promoting the new stu, whateve

it might be. But that is not an activity that hides anything else. Its simpl

presenting both sides o an argument. There is no way to remove

existing stories rom the internet once theyve fnished.

SS: Are you saying that i a client approaches you saying, my priority

here is to ensure that it is as dicult as possible to access

inormation about x, y or z, that Im rather unhappy about,

are you saying that youve reused to do that or clients because

that wasnt truthul or morally right?

WC: No, what I would say to each o them is that you have to realise thatstu is always going to be able to be ound. We cant remove it,

we cant make it that hard to fnd. To be perectly honest, the search

engines these days are phenomenally good at presenting a variety o

views o someone. When you search or a particularly controversial

subject on Google or example, you will fnd that they actively return

diering views on that frst page the search is on. So, I do counsel my

clients that you can defnitely put a good story orwards but you can

remove the other stu, and that defnitely has resulted in us not worki

with some individuals.

Interview conducted with Will Cr itchlow October 2011.

For urther inormation on advertising and sponsorship on

BBC World News and BBC.com please call +44 208 433 0000

or e-mail [email protected]

In the modern, connected, socially-networke

world, its pretty much impossible to bury

bad news.

There defnitely are people in our industry whowould rather it [SEO] be seen as a dark art

and a mystery...

HARDtalk presenter, Stephen Sackur


18/52

THE CHALLENGE:

Dells website had swarms o visitorsbut too many were leaving without making a purchase.

We needed to nd a way to leverage stored data rom cookieswhich could clearly indicate

which products or type o products each shopper was interested in or maybe even intending to

purchaseto increase engagement and keep their Dell.com experience top-o-mind ater they

let the site.

OUR SOLUTION:

We mixed cutting-edge technology with creative ingenuity to totally cut out inefcient advertising!

We drastically improved the customer experience by increasing the relevancy o the advertising

message seen by individual users, while minimising wastage and increasing engagement.

HOW WE MADE A DIFFERENCE:

In an industry-leading move, we developed a model that merged behavioural targeting technolo-

gies capturing prospects visit history with dynamic creative tools that built customised messaging.

Ads eature products rom each consumers visit history, keeping them resh days ater visiting

Dells website.

We tagged hundreds o pages within Dells sitesomething ew other blue chip advertisers have

doneto pinpoint the reason or each visit, based on the products the visitor viewed, searched

or, placed in their shopping cart or purchased.

Our model recognised these prospects via a cookie, then retargeted them with customised ads on

their next visit to an outside website running Dell advertising. So, i someone placed an Inspiron

laptop in their shopping cart but exited beore purchasing, that consumer would receive an

Inspiron ad later on, or instance, Yahoo.com. Other visitors might see ads or products they were

researching, or be cross-sold on products they had purchased.

RESULTS:

Our targeting produced outstanding improvements across the boardclick through rates, conver-

sion and ROI.

OnlineadswithbehaviouraltargetingconvertednearlyTHREEtimesmore

than those without behavioural targeting!

Behaviouraltargetedadsaccountfor42%ofDellsonlineimpressionsbutthey

driveanamazing83%ofonlineadvertisingrevenues

BehaviouraltargetingimpressionsgeneratealmostSEVENtimesmore

revenue per impression served than non-targeted impressions

Onlineadswithbehaviouraltargetinghada70%higherclick-throughrate

This campaign also won the US 2010 Creative Media Award or the Perormance Media &

Marketing category.

TARGETING GENERATEDMORE REVENUE

MEDIACOM | BLINK#418


19/52

OPPORTUNITY/PROBLEM:

EA had a huge amount o data on people playing EAs FIFA ranchise but werent doing

anything with it.

INSIGHTS:

14 billion minutes o playing data told EA what people are doing within the game but not what would

bring more people into the ranchise. We convinced EA that i we created a YouTube channel or all

their ootball content, the combination o internal telemetry and external YouTube behavioural data

would be powerul enough to change the way they did business or good.

STRATEGY:For the rst time we persuaded EA to launch the FIFA AV ad on YouTube and Facebook rather

than on TV. This gave us data on 380.000 individuals, data that changed the way we approached

planning in uture.

MAKING IT HAPPEN:

Data changed our approach in our ways:

CONTEXT:

Distributing content and lighting media to coincide with engagement cycles, peaking

on Sundays and in August.

CONTENT:

More people engaged with tips and tricks so we developed bespoke coaching advice

videos that delivered 1,5 million views in a week.

COMMERCIAL:

Reworking EAs club agreements to get the most engaging content.

MOBILE:

Prompted exploration rom EA to deliver the mobile game or ree, as the data can prove

more valuable than any loss in income.

RESULTS:

We delivered the best-selling sports video game o all time. And now EA need never use industry

standard planning tools again.

SMART USE OF DATA GAVE

EA THE BEST SELLING

SPORTS VIDEO EVER

BY PUTTING SMART USE OF DATA AT THE HEART OF OUR PLANNING, WE

CHANGED EAS COMMUNICATIONS AND BUSINESS MODEL AND CREATED THEMOST POPULAR SPORTS GAME IN HISTORY.

CONTENT

CASES

1BLINK#4 |MEDIACOM


20/52

CONTENT

HACKING THE MEME CODE

ILLUSTRATIONJ

ACK

HUDSON



21/52

THE SOCIAL NETWORK TIMELINE IS, IN EFFECT, A PERSONAL NEWSPAPER. OUR FRIENDS

POSTS ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER OR GOOGLE+ TELL US WHATS HAPPENING IN THEIR

WORLDS. BUT LIKE EVERY GREAT NEWSPAPER, THE TIMELINE ALSO LINKS US TO OTHER

INFORMATION, NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT THAT WE MIGHT LIKE.

BYJOERG BLUMTRITT, MEDIACOM GERMANY

It is often said that our timeline is, in fact,

a lter. We see only what our community

of selected friends post. If someone posts

things on social networks that we are

not interested in, we will unfollow or

uncircle him or her sooner or later

depending on our mood, on the strength

of our relationship and the netiquette,

the rules of courtesy in social media

that everyone has to obey to remain an

accepted member.

Advertising, in particular, seems to becontent that only very rarely passes

through this lter, if at all. Just as we would

in our meatspace communities, we try to

avoid people pushing unwarranted business

towards us. Thus, the timeline might be the

toughest spam-lter there is.

This phenomenon of a highly sophisti-

cated algorithm combined with a social

prediction engine has been named the

HACKING THE

MEME CODE

lter bubble by author and entrepreneur

Eli Pariser. The word bubble in this case

has a thoroughly ambivalent meaning:

a bubble that surrounds us, in which we

are somehow trapped, because we no

longer see the reality outside clearly; the

second meaning of course is that of a

soap bubble that will burst sooner or later

like any other piece of online hype. There

is concern that this bubble could not

only diminish the quality of serendipity

inherent in networks such as the internet,

but also the ability of advertisers to reachnew audiences.

THE RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND

THE CHANGES FOR MASS MEDIA

The rise of social media has been

accompanied by the decline of mass media.

Although it is undisputed that the 30 TV

spot is still the most eective means of

advertising and is likely to remain that way

for a long time, it is becoming harder and

hearder to reach some audiences through

the classic communication channels.

Advertising is perhaps more sensitive to

this development than any other form of

communication. However, it also becomes

increasingly dicult to reach out to

audiences, be it for advertising, political

announcements or any other kind of

communication. This lter bubble process

will add a new dimension to the rising

complexity of communications planning

that we have to take into consideration.

Social media platforms provide multiple

technological means to make this lter-

process even more seamless, eective and

invisible to their users. By organising our

contacts into groups, lists or circles, users

are encouraged to (re)create hierarchies of

relevance (inner circ le, extended ci rcle,

nuisance circ le, spam). Thus content

posted by someone from the buddies

2BLINK#4 | MEDIACOM


22/52

circle might get a totally dierent amount

of attention compared to content fromsomeone in the business partners or

opinion leaders circle.

MY INTERNET DOES NOT LOOK

THE SAME WAY YOURS DOES

A third layer after the timeline and the

circles between the user and outside

reality is created by Google and other

search engines that use the select ions made

by users in their social media proles (time-

line, circles) as input for their algorithms

to provide the most relevant results for our

queries. These technologies take contentposted by our friends to predict what would

be relevant for us.

We can no longer expect to be shown any

kind of objective search ranking, instead

we will get our very own list of results

that might be completely dierent from

that of our colleagues or neighbours.

Google translates this into what it thinks

we would nd relevant. This will heavily

impact Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

How will searchmarketing specialistsin the future be able to guarantee that

youll get a top-10 search ranking? For

SEO purposes it will thus also become

important to see the URLs of websites we

want to promote recommended as often as

possible by being posted or tweeted.

The targeting of display ads can be

improved in the same way. This is, of

course, a good thing at rst, since cam-

paigns will perform more eciently and

the user will experience more relevant

advertising. But, at the same time, theinventory that addresses a broad audi-

ence, maximising reach - a prerequis ite in

building brand awareness - becomes

more fragmented.

Thus social media works as a lter,

induced by the user, but also selects what

the user gets recommended by search

engines and display advertising. Very

few platforms allow users to access and

edit the predicted preferences of these

algorithms in the way that Google, forexample, does on http://www.google.

com/ads/preferences. This might become

more common following the EU Privacy

Directive that became eective in May

this year and will be implemented in

national legislation soon.

Finally, the media consumption of the

classic channels is also aected by the lter

bubble. Studies have shown that nothing

inuences a consumers choice more

heavily than the recommendation they

get through their timeline, which therebybecomes a screen that might preselect what

someone would watch or read. Its not only

media consumption our brand prefer-

ences also start to be aected by the posts

from our community to our circles, friends

and our timeline.

MEANINGFUL BRANDS

One side eect is that the meaning of

brands in peoples lives changes. With

ILLUSTRATIONJ

ACK

HUDSON



23/52

mass media advertising, the most

valuable brands would have been thosethat gave their buyers a sense of prestige.

Conspicuous consumption is based on

mass communication. It requires that

others easily recognise what brands

we buy.

When the process of building brand

preferences gets somehow atomised, as

we experience when enclosed within our

lter bubbles, others may no longer notice

the signicance of our brand-choices. At

the same time, it becomes increasingly

important to show aliation to your

community, to get acceptance and to be

welcomed as a member.

Brands that contribute something of

value to a community, something that notonly the buyer but the whole community

can benet from, will be the brands that

succeed. They will be more likely to show

up in their buyers posts, telling their

friends, look, I care about all of you.

THE MEME

So far we have been mostly looking at

what gets ltered out. But what about the

content that does make it inside our lter?

Since most users follow more people

than they know in person, there must be

something that gets through.

Umair Haque, a writer for the Harvard

Business Review, has coined the term

meaningful brands in opposition to themore conventional aspirational brands that

we previously bought into.

With the meaningful brands we have a

rst hint of how advertising within the

lter-bubble might still work. Apart from

that, and in addition to the obvious - the

personal statements, the thoughts, and

emotions that people share with their

followers - there is a specic type of

content that gets propagated from one

personal circle to the next, that is repeat-

edly shared, retweeted, liked or whatever

4form of handling a certain platform

might provide.

THE FILTER BUBBLE WILL ADD A NEW DIMENSION TO THE

RISING COMPLEXITY OF COMMUNICATIONS PLANNING

THAT WE HAVE TO TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION

2BLINK#4 | MEDIACOM


24/52

Joerg Blumtritt (*1970) is managing

director at MediaCom Germany.

Ater his graduation in statistics and

political sciences he started work-

ing as a researcher in behavioural

sciences, ocused on nonverbal

communication. Projects were

unded by EU Commission, German

ederal government and the Max-

Planck-Society. Subsequently he ran

marketing and research teams or

TV-channels ProSiebenSat.1, RTL

II and magazine publisher Hubert

Burda Media, introducing new quali-

tative methods like Netnography (

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