LinkedIn is the go-to place to find and learn about people professionally. That is true for you and me, and it is even more true for recruiters and hiring managers. Not only is the professional network your always-on online resume, but it is also a place to demonstrate the depth of your engagement in your career and industry, your commitment to staying abreast of professional news and your thought leadership.

Conduct a 60-second audit of your recent activity to ensure your LinkedIn interactions tell others what you wish them to know about you. Are you hungry for news and information to drive results in your job and your career? Do you engage in thoughtful dialog about the trends in your industry? Do you demonstrate your mastery of today's social communications tools and strategies?

Much can be told from your LinkedIn activities. Are you professional or not? Assertive or passive? Positive or negative? Self-interested or oriented to others? A leader or a follower? Focused on a set of key topics or scattered across many? Present and active or absent and disinterested?

As brands craft their social media presence, they fret over every post, comment and like, making sure each interaction reflects their brand and commitment to customers. But as you engage on LinkedIn, you may give little thought to the story you are creating with each click of the "like" button.

Your profile is important--it contains the keyword and meta information that recruiters and others use to search for and find professionals--but your activity history is important, too. Your profile may look impeccable, conveying a capable, smart and successful professional history, but do your likes, comments, and shares tell the same story?

Here's how to know in just one minute: Do what recruiters and hiring managers do and review your LinkedIn activities. Go to your Profile menu on LinkedIn and select "Your Updates." You will also find link to "Your recent activity" near your profile picture on the top of the home page. Your recent activity page will display all of your likes, shares, and comments.

Viewed in this manner, what do your LinkedIn activities say about you? Do they tell the story you would want to convey to bosses, peers, clients, employees and others? Do your activities match your profile and accurately communicate your professional interests? Do people engage with your content and comments or are you ignored?

Also, put yourself in the shoes of a recruiter or hiring manager. Think of the next best job in your career and ask if you would hire the person you see reflected in your recent activity. Look at the ratio of topics in the last ten or fifteen posts (which is as much as a recruiter is likely to review in the few seconds they will have to evaluate you); are a majority of your posts related to professional news, trends, white papers, studies and events, or are most of your recent likes for selfies, puzzles, jokes, and inspirational quotes?

Another exercise is to think of a couple of people you admire on LinkedIn--professionals who seem to post the most interesting and pertinent thought leadership in your industry or discipline--and look at their recent activity. To do so, visit their profile, click the down arrow next to "Send a Message," and select "View Recent Activity."  What does their activity say about them? How is it different than yours? What is it they do that helps them to encourage the admiration you feel for them?

Your sterling professional history may get you noticed, but is your LinkedIn activity sealing the deal or scaring people away?  If your recent activity doesn't promote the personal brand you want, how will your LinkedIn habits change?

Actions speak louder than words; what do your LinkedIn actions say about you? (Hint: Sharing this article will definitely tell people you care about your brand and want others to better succeed at managing theirs.)

 

photo credit: The Crown Jewels via photopin (license)

Content is not king. It is important–vital, in fact–but it is not king. A new study from TrackMaven demonstrates that while brands continue to pursue greater content production strategies, they are getting less engagement for their effort. This is an outcome that a simple supply-and-demand analysis could have predicted, and it demonstrates once again why customer experience is the real king.

Even without examining data, it should be apparent why customer experience has a stronger claim to the throne than does content. Content can attract attention but it cannot hold loyalty. You do not stay loyal to brands that produce the best content but the brands that provide the best customer experience at the right price (excluding, of course, those brands were content is the product like Disney or FOX). No one has ever said, “The product is disappointing, but I’m not going to switch because the brand produces great content.”

In the consumer half of your brain, the idea that customer experience is more important than content seems pretty obvious, but the marketer half of our brains clings to the belief that content is the ruler. This may be a holdover from a time when creative Mad Men ruled our industry, but media has splintered, the number of channels has risen, and the content available to consumers has exploded. The marketing equation that worked in the era when an advertiser on “I Love Lucy” could reach 70% of households is different than the one today with millions of websites, YouTube channels, Spotify lists, blogs, mobile apps, Video on Demand, streaming and cable channels.

Over the weekend, I read a funny article on Heavy.com called, "10 Social Media Trends We Wish Would Die in 2013." Although it is included in the site's "Comedy" section, the article seems an accurate overview of the dubious habits many of us hate on Facebook. Unappetizing Instagram photos of food? Duck faces? Cryptic Facebook posts (a/k/a "vaguebooking")? Die. Die!

The article got me to thinking about the corporate social media practices that should die in 2013. I hope you will comment or tweet me (@augieray) with items to add, but here is my list of three business social media trends that we should kill in 2013:

Demanding people spam their friends in order to participate in Facebook sweepstakes and deals

Remember when this 1973 magazine cover was considered a parody, not a strategy?

Remember when Donald Trump offered to donate $5 million to charity if President Obama released his college transcripts? If so, then you will recall Trump was roundly criticized for withholding money he could have given to charities until Trump got what he (and others) wanted. (Many in the New York City region were further enraged when, in the wake  of superstorm Sandy, Trump took to the airwaves to extend his offer to Obama rather than donating the funds to the many in need in the region.)

It is easy to understand how Trump's "quid pro quo" offer to make a donation only if someone responded to his demands might be viewed as self serving. Why, then, do so many brands do the exact same thing, demanding people like their page before they will make a charitable donation? If your company has money to donate but you will not do so until your customers honor your selfish request, what does say about your brand?

Source: TapSocialMedia.com

Yes, I know this model has worked to gain many fans for many brands, but as consumers experience more of these programs, the message it sends is becoming clearer--not that organizations care but that they are selfish. Does your brand wish to be seen as Donald Trump, only donating cash if people do something that your brand wants, or would you prefer to be Mark Zuckerberg, who selflessly donated $100 million to Newark schools without requesting a single like, tag or share? (If the founder of Facebook can donate millions without requiring Facebook reciprocation, certainly your brand can do so, as well.)

Source: Chase Community Giving

There are appropriate ways to integrate social networks into your corporate giving programs that do not run the risk of making your brand seem greedy and self-serving. One way is to involve customers in the allotment of your brand's charity dollars, as demonstrated by Chase Community Giving. (To participate, users must allow access to the Chase Community Giving application and may earn additional charity votes by liking, tweeting or emailing content from the application.) Chase also does an excellent job promoting its charitable efforts and encouraging others to get involved in their community via frequent Facebook posts and images with a distinct and recognizable brand aesthetic.

Pandering for Meaningless Engagement

Too many brands pursue Facebook strategies with engagement as a primary goal. The problem is that engagement is a means to an end and not a goal unto itself. Brands can get caught in the trap of chasing every like, comment or share without considering the larger brand impression that is being conveyed.

One way a brands' obsession with engagement can manifest is with Facebook pages that are nothing but jokey and vapid posts unrelated to the brand, mission or audience. Check out the page for "Flo, the Progressive Girl." In recent weeks, Flo has posted jokes about unicorns, dogs, the limbo, Christmas sweaters, s'mores, houseplants and dinosaurs. This strategy may increase the page's "talking about this" statistic, but what do these posts say about Progressive? Meaningless posts cannot build meaningful relationships on Facebook; that was quite clear when Progressive faced a PR crisis last year and found the brand had earned little to no advocacy despite having 4.5 million "fans."

Another way to detect brands that are overly focused on engagement is when every single Facebook post requests a like, share or comment. There is a fine line between encouraging engagement and begging for it. The Clorox Facebook page is an example of one that, I believe, crosses that line. Almost every post on the page asks you to "like if you..." or "share if you..." The impression one gets is of a brand desperate for attention and more interested in what fans can do for the brand than vice versa.

Who wouldn't want to share this post?!

There is another way. Disney does not need to ask people to like or share their posts because they provide content that is so good people engage and share without being asked. Of course, not every brand can be Disney, but you do not need to be Disney to furnish strong, powerful, brand-appropriate content that gets engagement. Look at Kit Kat, Starbucks, Samsung, Barbie, Intel, Kohler, PetSmart, Ford, Gibson Guitar, Monopoly, Sharpie, Duracell and Duck Tape. These diverse brands are creating engagement on Facebook without having to ask for it, and they are sharing humorous posts that aren't just funny but say something about the brand. These brands do not beg for fans and likes--they earn brand-building engagement by offering Facebook content that conveys confidence, desirability, style, personality, affinity with customer interests and respect for customers' time and intelligence.

It is vital to remember the reason your brand is on Facebook in the first place: not to get "likes" but to build business. Focusing only on the factors that affect EdgeRank will not build awareness, consideration, intent and advocacy. Don't forget your brand vector--if your Facebook posts are not moving people closer to your brand, then you are just wasting your brand's time and opportunities on Facebook. (To learn more about brand vector, please read my blog post, The Complete Facebook Success Formula Every Marketer Should Know.)

In 2013, I would like to see better corporate Facebook strategies that give consumers more reasons to pay attention and that result in stronger brands and customer relationships. If brands can kill these three atrocious social media practices, Facebook will be a better place for both brands and consumers.

What do you think? Do you agree with my list? Anything you would like to add? Comment below, and perhaps I can write a follow-up post entitled, "Three More Corporate Social Media Trends That Should Die in 2013."

For decades, technology has chipped away at TV. VCRs, streaming Internet video, file sharing, DVRs, on-demand cable and mobile video provided TV alternatives, decreased TV's audience, increased time shifting or encouraged ad skipping. One of the intriguing things about social media is that it is the first technological advance that really benefits TV without specifically being about TV.

Of course, television was social before we had social media. TV shows drove "water cooler" chatter since Lucy Ricardo gave birth to "Little Ricky"--71.7% of all American TV sets were tuned to "I Love Lucy" the night Lucille Ball's character gave birth in 1953. Crowdsourcing is not new to television, either; letter writing campaigns to save TV shows date back to at least 1968 when fans got NBC to renew "Star Trek" for another season. The fact TV viewing is innately social makes it the perfect match for today's social media and mobile technology.

Two recent studies furnish what seem like contradictory results: One found that 26% of consumers say they have complained about a brand on Twitter while 58% report they've praised; the other study found that 48% of tweets about brands were negative while 16% were positive. It's possible that people's perceptions of their complaint-to-praise ratio are incorrect, or it could be the complainers are very active at complaining. Either way, the message is that organizations must strive to stimulate praise and helpful user-generated content while minimizing reasons for gripes. That should come as no surprise to anyone, which is why it seems odd so few brands acknowledge the praise and help they receive in social media.

Social media professionals focus a great deal of attention on influence, sentiment and the authenticity of peer-to-peer communications, so you would think that acknowledging and rewarding people who praise and support our brands would be among our highest priorities. To the contrary, it seems the opposite is true; in social media, the squeaky wheels get the grease while the cogs that are actively driving brand engagement are ignored.

I've experienced this firsthand. I've praised restaurants, car dealerships, radio stations, auto brands and other service providers and have rarely received an acknowledgment of any sort. In those rare instances when I've  been acknowledged, I can trace my subsequent actions back to the relationship-building responses that I received.  For example, several months ago, Bohanan's thanked me for checking in, and I've been back six or seven times since. And two years ago, when I tweeted my love of Bay Area jazz station KCSM, the station's response resulted in me taking a tour of its facilities, tweeting more about the station, and donating around $150 over the next year.

For some small businesses, ignoring those who check in, tweet praise or post positive reviews is (barely) excusable because it can be tough to find time to monitor social media; however, acknowledging consumers is an excellent way to create a strong personal connection for a small local brand. For a great case study of a small business driving tremendous success through social media engagement and acknowledgment, check out AJ Bombers, a burger restaurant in Milwaukee.

While small businesses may struggle with the time and resources for social media, it is a different story for large organizations with considerable social media resources. Even among large brands, there seems to be focus more on complainers than fans. A month ago, I was stranded in a very hot elevator, and after my release I tweeted, "When trapped in an elevator in San Antonio, you definitely want an AT&T phone and not Sprint. No signal on Sprint; AT&T saved me." Given AT&T's reputation issues with service reliability, you'd think a tweet such as this would be welcomed and appreciated, but I heard nothing. It's not that AT&T isn't present in social media--the company responds to dozens of complaints and service requests each day via @ATTCustomerCare--so why turn a deaf ear to compliments?

People who advocate on behalf of your brand or furnish content for your brand deserve acknowledgment. The time has come for smart brands to reward positive, brand-building behavior from anyone who takes the time to share a positive review, a tweet of praise, a recommendation on Facebook or traffic-driving content.

Of course, that word--"reward"--comes with a lot of baggage. If you start furnishing anything of value that creates a material relationship between the brand and the fan, you've crossed a line in terms of FTC endorsement guidelines and authentic marketing practices. That's why the best rewards are also the cheapest and the easiest. Here are three brands that do it right (and yes, I need to disclose that I work for one of these organizations--USAA--or else I'll be breaking those very same FTC regulations):

Tripadvisor lets consumers know they have impact:  I've praised Tripadvisor before for the way they close the loop with people who complete reviews. This seems the most basic and easy way to reward people who create content--simply make them aware that their content matters. I received an email from Tripadvisor today that informed me over 1,000 people had viewed my recent reviews. This simple notice let me know the time I spent writing the reviews wasn't wasted and brought Tripadvisor top of mind.

Yelp does something similar, informing reviewers how many compliments and votes as Useful, Funny, and Cool they receive. While some feedback is better than no feedback, I've never understood these random adjectives. "Useful" is certainly valuable, but why do I need to strive for "Cool" or "Funny" in my reviews? Should I be completing my Yelp reviews with an eye towards being helpful and accurate or instead work in vain to have others perceive me as hip and hilarious? Yelp does a good, but not great, job of closing the loop with reviewers.

USAA acknowledges all Facebook comments:  I'm very proud of the way the community managers on my team at USAA represent the brand on Facebook. During work hours (and frequently at other times), USAA responds to virtually every Facebook post. We don't simply look for opportunities to offer service to our members when they have problems; we also thank them when they take time to post to their friends their appreciation for USAA's service and products.

You wouldn't think this sort of responsiveness would be that earth shattering, but if you survey brands on Facebook, you'll find that consumers who praise do not get the same level of attention as those who carp. What sort of behaviors are we motivating when we leap to respond to each complaint while ignoring compliments?

Wheat Thins writes personal thank you notes:  Have you ever been thanked by your crackers?  Me neither, but Wheat Thins found a way to surprise people in a very personal way:  They occasionally write thank you letters to the people who post and tweet about the brand--and it doesn't hurt that they include a box of Wheat Thins as part of the thank you. The result? People post videos like the one below.




If you need a brush-up on how to accept compliments, Lifehack has a good article. In short, when you receive praise, be gracious, be appreciative, and when appropriate, involve the person giving the compliment in your success.  And when people furnish content that makes your site or Facebook wall a more interesting place, let them know you appreciate it!

If someone were to compliment you or offer you a gift in person and you ignored it, that would be considered rude. Why is it so hard for brands to recognize, acknowledge and thank people for their compliments and gifts in social media?

One trick that some social media professionals use to puff up the impact of their Facebook efforts is to equate the number of fans on their fan page with the number of people who are exposed to their wall posts.  The sleight of hand goes something like this: "We posted four status updates to our 50,000 fans--a reach of 200,000 impressions."

Of course, the number of fans who see a brand's wall post is likely far less than the number of people who have "liked" the brand.  Implying that every fan sees a wall post is no more accurate than implying every email subscriber receives and opens a message; this is because, just like email, Facebook communications have to pierce a spam filter firewall that protects Facebook users.

Facebook doesn't say it has a "spam filter;" instead, it has a "News Feed."  As noted in Facebook's Help section, the News Feed "is a constantly updating list of stories from people and Pages that you follow on Facebook." The center column of your Facebook home page isn't a pure stream of posts by friends and brands but a distilled view of the posts and shares you'll find most interesting.

How does Facebook know what's interesting to you? "The News Feed algorithm bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is."  Put another way, Facebook knows you don't sign on to the social network to find out what your underarm deodorant or favorite retailer is doing but to interact with the content your friends create and share.  Friends' content makes it through the filter; brands' content largely does not.

Here's how you can tell just how much brand content is being hidden from your eyes.  The following assumes you have friended a number of brands on Facebook, and if you haven't, why not start by friending USAA?  (In the event it isn't perfectly clear, let me disclose that I am an employee of USAA.)

First, sign into Facebook and check out the News Feed on the home page.  Review the posts made in the past eight hours and count how many of them come from the fan pages of brands.  Since the "Top News" feed isn't in strict chronological order, it is an inexact science to count the posts made in the past eight hours, but you need not be exact to recognize the point being made.

Tonight, I counted approximately 30 posts on my News Feed, not one of them from a brand. Does that means the brands I follow had an off day?  To find out what your favorite brands posted today:

1. Step One:  Click "Most Recent" at the top right of your News Feed (see image below.)
2. Step Two:  Click the tiny arrow that appears next to "Most Recent" and select "Pages."
3. Step Three:  Count how many wall posts were made by brands in the past eight hours.  

The following is a slightly updated and edited version of a blog post from June 2008. I'm on a brief vacation, and I thought you might find this article just as interesting today as a year ago.

Social Media is often likened to a conversation where marketers "seek to be part of the discussion" or "engage consumers one-to-one." This conversation analogy--which emphasizes the one-to-one over the one-to-many--may neglect important aspects that differentiate Social Media from other forms of communication. If marketers and brands think of themselves not as joining "the discussion" but instead "the party," it may help set the appropriate tone for engaging in Social Media.

Marketers didn't need social media to have "a discussion" with consumers. Email, which has been a primary online activity for over a decade, has always allowed for one-to-one discussions with consumers. Nor did we need technology to enable one-to-one contact; before email, consumers and brands used the telephone and snail mail to engage in discussions.

The analogies that liken Social Media to a private discussion are widespread but incorrect. A more appropriate simile is that Social Media is like a party already underway. Groups of people are gathered, they have existing networks of relationships, and they are already talking.

As brands enter the Social Media "party," they must not make the mistake of thinking they are guests of honor; in fact, the truth may be exactly the opposite. Nielsen's recent "Trust in Advertising" report reveals that consumers are 30% or more likely to believe recommendations from other consumers than they are information provided by brands on Web sites, on TV, on the radio, in magazines, and in every other medium except newspaper. So, don't expect "partygoers" to stop and pay attention just because your brand walked through the door.

The value of the party metaphor becomes even more apparent when you think of the distributed nature of Social Media. It's a big party--people are talking about your brand on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube, not to mention on hundred or thousands of blogs. You can no more control the many discussions underway across the Internet than you can command the floor at a large party. Sure, you can try to shout, but that won't encourage others to pay attention but instead to leave (and to take with them a very poor impression of you).

You might wonder if all this focus on analogies is an intellectual exercise without purpose, but here's why it matters: Once you perceive social media not as individual discussions but as a never-ending and constantly-shifting party, you can begin to appreciate what it takes to succeed. The following tips are derived from party etiquette sites such as those found here and here:

• "Determine what your goals are." Is there a better tip for a smashing party experience or for success in Social Media?
  
• "Extend your hand and introduce yourself to unfamiliar guests." Be sure to introduce yourself, and be honest. Let others know you represent or are working for a company or brand.
  
• "Keep conversations away from sex, politics and religion." I'm sure this needs not be said when interacting with others on behalf of your brand, but this tip can also be interpreted more broadly: The line between the private and the professional is at best thin and at worst nonexistent. Whether it's the Social Media professional who insulted his client's hometown or the job candidate who lost an offer from Cisco due to an ill-advised tweet, there are plenty of personal topics and observations that should be carefully considered before they are uttered.
  
• "If attending a cocktail party in a private home, treat household staff with dignity and respect. There are to be no personal or special requests from you to the staff." Do not treat bloggers or bulletin board moderators with anything but professional courtesy. You may not see them as "official" members of the media, but you should treat them with as much care and deference as you would a reporter or editor.
  
• "By all means, converse. But don't dominate all conversations; be a good listener, too." If you attempt to control the conversation on blogs and boards, others will ignore or complain about you. And don't interrupt--when joining a discussion that is underway, do so respectfully and in a way that enhances the discussion for everyone and not just yourself.
  
• "Smile, mingle and converse." A successful party is one where you circulate, seek out others, and engage people throughout the room. Your Social Media policy should require the same commitment to listening and covering ground. And, perhaps most importantly, while it's fair for a brand to talk about itself or advance it's own agenda, this has to be done with respect for and in balance with an interest in others. Any professional and successful sales person will tell you that parties are a great place to prospect for opportunities, but being obsessively self centered, graceless, and annoying can do far more damage than good.

Those party etiquette tips are helpful, but since your brand's goal in social media is to protect and enhance your reputation and not simply to be entertained, I'd offer the following additional ideas for your consideration:

• If you are unwelcome in a discussion, leave. Your brand has every right to combat incorrect information, but engaging in a flame war with an unreasonable, bull-headed, and biased individual won't yield results. If you find yourself unwelcome in a discussion, excuse yourself and find a more welcoming corner of the Social Media party (but continue to monitor the discussion and jump back in if damaging and erroneous gossip is being spread).
  
• Simply being at the party isn't what impresses others; it is how you behave, the personality and mood you convey, and the respect you show for others that will alter perceptions.
  
• Realize that the party is going on with or without you. If you want to know what is being said, or better yet influence others' opinions of you, you have to get dressed and show up.

The invitations are out, the table is set, and the guests have arrived. Are you coming to the party or do you intend to sit at home with your ears burning?

Is it possible to garner consumer complaints for doing precisely what you say you're going to do? It turns out you can, particularly in our interconnected, real-time world. This is a lesson CNN learned during the Olympics, and there is a moral we can all take from their experience.

TechCrunch reports on the strong reaction a CNN Twitter account received for broadcasting the results of the Olympics as they occurred. It seems hard to blame a news network for reporting breaking news, but people who wanted to feel the excitement of the competition as they watched the delayed coverage were left annoyed at CNN's "spoilers". (It turns out the Twitter account that sparked the most complaints isn't even an official CNN feed, but CNN itself was doing the same thing on their own account, cnn.)

We could focus on how the people who complained can't possibly want their breaking news filtered based on how some (but not all) consumers may feel about the immediacy of the news alerts. Instead, let's consider how CNN might have avoided the issue and earned more attention and loyalty for it.

CNN is in the business of getting all breaking and important news out to consumers as quickly as possible. This is why it blasted news of gold medal performances as soon as they happened, thus spoiling the fun for people who wanted to get home to watch NBC's delayed coverage. But what if CNN had focused just a bit more on the needs and wants of their Twitter subscribers? What if they had treated Twitter not like a one-way channel for broadcasting news but engaged their consumers in a dialog?

Looking ahead at its Olympic coverage, CNN might have anticipated some (and perhaps many) consumers wanted to avoid immediate news out of Beijing. Perhaps CNN did foresee this situation but unilaterally decided their mission trumped the Olympic enjoyment of a few, but in the age of social media, CNN had a different course: to engage consumers, involve them, and make them feel like valued participants and not just recipients.

There are several ways CNN might have leveraged the tools and philosophy of Social Media, not just to avoid a problem but to create greater brand value:

• At the very least, CNN might have announced its intention to immediately share all Olympic results via Twitter. This would have given subscribers the power to decide in advance whether to unsubscribe for a short period. Of course, no one in the social media business wants to encourage disengagement, so there are better ways CNN might have proceeded.
  
  
• CNN might have used this potentially sensitive issue as a means to create engagement with and between consumers. Two months in advance of the opening ceremony, the news organization might have asked consumers to participate in a survey or engage in a discussion forum about whether or not results should be broadcast in real time. This would have positioned CNN as a consumer-focused brand and given a voice to its subscribers.
  
  
• Hindsight is 20-20, but maybe the best idea of all is that CNN might have announced it was creating a second Twitter account for people who wanted to avoid Olympics coverage. The first CNN account could thus continue with its mission of broadcasting all news in real time, while allowing consumers to opt into a second CNN Twitter channel where they could avoid the Olympic news. (Since sports is prone to this sort of desire to avoid news until one can get in front of a television, perhaps CNN might consider a "CNNMinusSports" channel, allowing sports fans to get their football, baseball, and Olympics highlights in the timeframe and way they most desire.)

It used to be enough to know one's brand and to stick to it, but Social Media is changing consumer expectations. They want and expect to have a voice, particularly in those brands to which they are most loyal. Gone are the days when big brands could believe they had an obligation and right to decide what is right for their consumers; instead, the brands that will garner the greatest loyalty are the ones that give power to consumers and make them feel part of the brand.

CNN did nothing wrong by sticking to its mission and broadcasting Olympics results in real-time, but it might be argued the news organization also did nothing right by ignoring the opinions and wants of its consumers.

Since starting this blog, I have occasionally shared a minor disagreement with other bloggers, but I've never had quite the adverse reaction that I had while reading Aaron Smith's Email Insider column. In Email As Experience: Punch Up Your Transactional Messages, Aaron writes about how consumers seek a "memorable experience" from companies, and he proceeds to offer advice on how transactional email messages are a "chance to give them something special at every turn."

Let me first start by saying that I do not believe transactional email messages offer the opportunity for a "memorable experience." Certainly every communication and interaction between brand and consumer provides some level of an experience, but I think we need to differentiate--in language Aaron uses in his article--"Big E" experiences from routine experiences. Transactional email messages are functional communications that can enhance relationships by being especially helpful and informative, but there's a big difference between function ("Small E") and Experience ("Big E").

Function is the theme park map you use to navigate to the rides--done right, it enhances the visitor experience, but no one would call the map memorable--while Experience is the incredibly frightening, exciting, or overwhelming theme park attraction that has you sharing your memories months later. Function is table stakes and merely reinforces existing brand relationships while Experience creates the emotional bonds that increase awareness, consideration, and loyalty.

If you disagree and believe that transactional email messages can create a memorable "Big E" experience, I'd welcome you to share examples that you found unforgettable--ones that aren't merely well designed or full of best practices but truly memorable. This isn't to say that I haven't received some memorable email messages. Many have been funny, heartbreaking, or thought provoking, but few of these memorable messages have come from a brand and certainly none have been transactional in nature.

But this isn't really where I disagree with Aaron; instead, I took exception to Aaron's advice on how to create a "Big E" experience in a transactional email. His first piece of advice: "Include your company logo and colors to make transactional communication feel consistent with your other marketing materials." His second: "Use text treatments, color and graphics to maximize usability and legibility." The rest of his tips--such as upselling relevant products and showing product photography--were equally absurd in the context of an "Experience" discussion.

The reason I found this article so grating is that too often marketers seem to believe that an experience can be created merely by executing well. It can't--executing well is expected, and experiences are created by violating expectations. You can't do what you've done in the past and create an experience.

(There are exceptions to this rule, but they are rare; 99.99% of TV advertising is forgettable and thus creates no experience, but every now and then the right creative idea and execution can result in something that violates expectations and creates an emotional experience. Examples include VW Cabrio Pink Moon, Apple's 1984, and Telecom New Zealand's Father and Son ads.)

More importantly, experiences aren't created by focusing on yourself but by focusing on the customer. In other words, you cannot create an experience with your logo, font, or how you upsell. Brand consistency is important--the lack of it can harm a brand--but consumers aren't going to find your consistent visual identity noteworthy.

Lastly, experiences are created by engaging consumer's emotional or physical senses. I do not believe email is particularly well suited for engaging emotions, and transactional messages have less emotional opportunity than other types of messages.

I don't dislike marketing email. It serves several important purposes: It keeps brands top of mind, generates traffic, offers consumers news and information, and provides a vehicle for promotion and direct response marketing. But theorizing that a logo and some nice product photography in a transactional email message can create an emotional bond with the brand is like suggesting a very attractive theme park map is what brings park guests back year after year.

By all means, execute your transactional email messages with care and brand consistency, but look elsewhere for the unexpected, customer-centric, and engaging experiences that really create memories for the consumer and value for the brand.

Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) lying and dishonest?

That's a purposely provocative question, and I should make it clear that I have a strong belief in the value of SEO. (In fact, I'd hasten to add before I get into hot water with my peers that Fullhouse offers terrific SEO services with a strong record of success.) But if you can for a moment let go of the idea that SEO is a necessary tactic for interactive marketers, I think you'll find some interesting and challenging ideas that can enhance a brand's web performance and improve the online experience for consumers.

While I would never argue that a brand shouldn't carefully optimize their site for maximum relevance in search engines, I think SEO has become a bit of a crutch. For example, let's imagine that we're responsible for a Web site about hammers; as a result, we want our hammer site to appear at the top of search engine results. We may want this in part because we believe our site is the best hammer-oriented site on the Internet, but chances are our primary motivation for improved search engine placement is that we need traffic to justify the investment in the Web site. As a result, our and every other hammer site are locked in an SEO arms race, all trying to create the best META tags, the most SEO-relevant copy, the most useful ALT tags, and the best brand-managed link-building tactics.

But what would happen if we took these tactics away? Imagine a world without SEO. What if we couldn't optimize our Web copy? What if our ALT and META tags had no value to search engines? What if no amount of PR or paid link-building tactics would create any better visibility on search engines? How would we succeed in generating relevance on and traffic from search engines if our only avenue to do so was through our site visitors?

The Fullhouse Experiential Marketing group has a number of beliefs that guide the work we do for clients. One of them--to which any decent SEO consultant would agree--is this:

The best way to create traffic to a Web site isn't to optimize it...
it's to get people linking to it.

This belief challenges our employees and our clients to consider this question: What if instead of worrying about creating links or evaluating our sites' code for SEO value, we instead concentrated on creating an online experience so terrific, so valuable, so fun, or so informative that our visitors became uncompensated cogs in our SEO machine? What if our hammer site was so spectacularly engaging that consumers couldn't help but to spend time on the site, revisit it, tell others, talk about it with coworkers, link to it from their Facebook site, and blog about it?

These thoughts came to mind last weekend when visiting one of Milwaukee's oldest bars, the Safehouse. This bar has a James Bond theme and creates the ambiance of a secret location where spies may "come out of the cold". You can buy into the clandestine theme or not, but you can't argue with its success: The Safehouse has been in operation for 42 years.

The bar has no signage, at least none that promotes "The Safehouse"; nor does it have an easy-to-find-location. To get to it, you must walk down an unmarked alley. If you arrive at the door, there are subtle signs of something worthy of your attention (an awning, a couple of flags), but there is no indication of the bar name; just a small plaque announcing you've arrived at International Exports, Ltd. If you walk through this unobtrusive door, you will find yourself in a tiny, old-fashioned office, and depending upon when you've arrived, it may be unstaffed. No doors are evident in this office, and I've seen people walk back out thinking they were in the wrong place. But if you pay attention, you'll notice a small sign pointing to a timeclock; if you pull the handle on the timeclock, a bookcase will swing open and allow you entrance into the bar.

The Safehouse advertises in area print magazines, particularly ones focused on tourists, but how can a bar stay open for 42 years with no signage? How can it be successful when it is so difficult to find? And why would a commercial establishment create those sorts of barriers to entry for consumers?

The answer has everything to do with SEO, because the bar has generated four decades' worth of Word of Mouth and business by being the kind of destination about which people rave. If your Web site created the sort of experience that the Safehouse offers patrons, your SEO tactics would be the icing on the cake and not a major driver of search engine traffic.

Yesterday on this blog, we began an exploration of how to measure engagement and ascertain marketing ROI. The limitations of Exposure and Action Tallies were reviewed, and we ended with a brief summary of Transaction Metrics, which work well for direct response programs but aren't an option for marketing efforts that lack an immediate purchase or other call to action. For these sorts of marketing programs, different engagement measurements must be explored.

Content Engagement Measures: For programs without a transactional purpose, one way to measure engagement is to track how often key content is viewed. This is accomplished easily online since typical web analytics reveal how often a particular page or section of the site is viewed, how many pages were visited, and common paths through the site. This sort of measurement can be used to gauge which content consumers find most appealing and which content draws consumers into deeper brand engagements.

This type of measurement is most typically used online but can also be implemented within event footprints. With the use of passive crowd measurement techniques such as video tracking, RFID, and other means for monitoring physical movement, event marketers can evaluate if consumers are pausing within key content zones as they pass through an event footprint.

While Content Engagement measures are valuable for evaluating different content, design, and promotion alternatives within a particular medium, they provide no means for comparing engagement across media.

Blended Metrics: Some smart marketing experts have offered up new blended metrics that attempt to derive an objective engagement value by combining different sorts of web measures into a single calculation.

This one comes from Eric T. Peterson, and it combines Content (click depth, duration), Action (recency of repeat visits), and Transaction (Feedback) into a single calculation. Visit his blog for a complete explanation:

A simple blended metric was suggested by my friend, Jeff Larche, on his blog, DigitalSolid.com. Jeff's Content Interest Index is calculated by adding instances of a page’s “Printer Friendly Format” and “Email a Colleague” actions divided by page views.

While these are fine attempts to derive some sort of objectivity out of diverse Web statistics, these sorts of approaches fall short of measuring true engagement. First of all, they are manufactured values prone to the same biases and problems as the component statistics from which they are derived. Also, these are Web-only metrics that do not provide any basis for comparing engagement across media. As with the other measures previously mentioned, these are best suited for split tests or tracking improvement over time and not for comparing dissimilar marketing programs.

Brand Lift Metrics: For marketing programs with non-transactional goals, the best but most difficult statistics are those that measure brand lift. Depending upon the goal of a program, this could include aided and unaided brand awareness, brand preference, purchase intent, or desired brand associations.

Measuring brand lift is more complex and expensive than other forms of engagement measurements, requiring pre- and post-program surveys or the use of control groups to determine the effect a particular program. One of the greatest challenges can be to track or find consumers who've been exposed to a particular program or marketing communication; how can the people who see a print ad or visit a site without registering be located and surveyed?

ROI: The Only Engagement Metric That Matters: With the exception of direct response programs specifically geared toward purchases or other transactions, every category of marketing measure fails to assess engagement. There is no single magic yardstick that will permit marketers to compare the value of a print ad versus a microsite versus a live event.

Of course, we can't merely throw up our hands and tell our CFOs to get off our backs. Accountability and ROI are the hottest topics at marketing conferences these days, and the focus on marketing results isn't going away. Despite all the buzz about marketing ROI, the situation is pretty darn poor; Ad Age reports that nine of 10 finance executives say they don't use return-on-investment metrics to set marketing budgets and just one in 10 marketer respondents say they could forecast the effect of a 10% cut in spending.

I have no secret recipe, but I'd suggest the way we marketers can improve our ability to measure ROI is to do the following:

• Specifically define the goal of a particular marketing investment.
• Ignore every metric that isn't laser focused on that goal.
• Focus on only those metrics that matter.
• Involve your financial peers in the creation of an ROI model.
• Plan and budget to execute not merely the marketing program but also the measurement program.

Sound easy? It isn't--not by a long shot. Say your goal is to increase unaided awareness of your brand; what is the dollar value of a one-point increase in unaided awareness? You'll need to know this in order to ascertain if your $500,000 investment that increased awareness five points represents positive or negative ROI.

The ability to assign value to marketing outcomes is vital for ROI calculations. If your goal is to increase traffic to your Web site, you must assign a dollar value to each site visitor (or perhaps different dollar values to different site visitors). If your goal is to obtain additional consumer records for your permission marketing database, you'll need to determine a dollar value for each individual added. No matter if the objective is to increase market share, increase consumer awareness of a particular brand attribute, or spark Word of Mouth in social media, we must first understand the value of the outcome in order to establish an ROI model.

The Limits and Distractions of ROI: I'll admit that part of my concern with today's obsession with marketing ROI is that it cannot be determined with the same ease or in the same manner as the ROI of an investment. Investments are discrete--you can easily track the impact within your portfolio of each specific security--but marketing programs aren't discrete; they're chaotic.

If a consumer sees a print ad, then later searches and clicks a link optimized via an SEO program, surfs through a Web site, opts in for future email communications, and months later responds to a marketing email, how do we attribute value to each of these components, none of which engages the consumer in a vacuum? Is it reasonable in today's highly-niched, media-fractured, multi-channel, rapidly-changing, consumer-controlled marketing environment to expect marketers to have more mathematical acumen than chaos theorists?

Furthermore--if you'll permit me to turn philosophical for a moment--how does one measure love? As marketers strive to create strong emotional bonds between consumers and brands (or lovemarks, as Kevin Roberts call them), how is that to be captured in cold, hard numbers. What is your love for your spouse worth compared to your children, parents, or best friends? And what is the value of your love for Disney, Harley-Davidson, Coca-Cola, or the brands you hold near and dear to your heart? Must everything be measured in cents rather than sense? Would you trust a marriage counselor who tried to objectively measure progress by counting hugs and kisses rather than the feelings and perceptions of the troubled couple?

These are exciting times for marketers with a dynamic ever-changing environment and new methods for measuring and validating the work we do, but we cannot let the drive for measurability get in the way of good marketing. The lack of an easy measurement methodology shouldn't prevent us from exploiting great marketing ideas, because if we avoid programs that cannot be weighed, probed, surveyed, studied, and measured in detail, we will miss opportunities.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. There are too many interesting and valuable screws and bolts in the marketing world to be ignored!

Kim, a reader of this blog, shared some comments about marketing ROI and got me to thinking about this complex and challenging topic. I blame her for this lengthy but hopefully thought-provoking overview of marketers' quest to quantify engagement and ROI. Your input on this two-part blog post would be greatly appreciated!

There's a lot of buzz in marketing about the challenge of measuring consumer engagement and ascertaining ROI, and for good reason. Developing and maintaining more engaging consumer experiences such as live events, advergames, social networks, and branded content can require significant investments. Marketers need to know these investments are worthwhile in relation to alternative programs.

The problem is how to measure and compare engagement across multiple channels. This is particularly important for experiential marketing programs because the number of people "touched" is much less than for mass media programs (but the touch is far more substantial and meaningful). If a marketer must decide between spending $50,000 on a full-page ad in a national publication with 5 million subscribers or spending the same $50,000 on an event that will attract 5,000 prospects, you can bet there will be a great deal of discussion about the deeper engagement of the live event and what that is worth to the brand.

Those in Experiential Marketing--particularly the Interactive side--have a tendency to gripe that they're held to a different standard than those who execute traditional mass media campaigns. Marketers never inquire as to the ROI of a specific billboard or pore over reports on the effectiveness of a print ad on a monthly basis, but they will will do so for banner ads, online media buys, microsites, PPC programs, and social media programs.

These gripes aren't completely without merit, but those complaining are seeing the glass half empty. While the measurability of experiential programs does come with a burden to do the measurement, prove ROI, and constantly improve the program, it also provides the opportunity to do the measurement, prove ROI, and constantly improve the program.

The challenge we face is to use all of the monitoring and analytical power at our disposal to validate the effectiveness of our marketing strategies and tactics. But with the plethora of metrics available to us, which ones permit us to measure engagement? Which metrics are best to validate ROI? The answer is all of them and none of them.

Here are some categories of metrics along with their strengths and weaknesses for measuring engagement in a meaningful way:

Exposure Tallies: The easiest and cheapest type of marketing assessment is to simply count the consumers who are exposed to the marketing program. We can count magazine subscribers who see a print ad, viewers who see a TV ad, people who walk past a mobile event footprint, or Web surfers who view a page containing a particular banner ad.

Problem is, exposure counts are a measure of reach and not a gauge of engagement. Using exposure tallies allows us to know how many people theoretically viewed a print or banner ad, but we cannot measure the impact of this ad exposure without gathering additional data.

One way Exposure Tallies are used is to compute a "Cost per Touch" (CPT), calculated by dividing a program's financial cost by the number of people exposed to the program. Since the depth and impact of the exposure isn't considered, this calculation is almost meaningless; worse yet, CPT turns marketing metrics into a game.

For example, some event agencies will quantify as a benefit of a mobile program that thousands of consumers will see the brand's logo on the side of a truck while the event is in transit. We'd all agree that seeing a truck on the highway imparts minuscule brand benefit at best, but including these exposures decreases the CPT and makes an event program seem more attractive. (If seeing a logo on the side of a truck really created significant brand engagement, wouldn't U-Haul be the most valuable brand in America?)

Action Tallies: Exposure Tallies do not consider occurrences such as consumers walking into an event footprint or visiting a site. These represent actions taken by a consumer; in order to experience an event or visit a site, the consumer must have been sufficiently engaged to decide to enter the event or click a link. As a result, Action Tallies--counting the number of desirable actions taken by consumers--are a much better way to assess engagement.

For example, the easiest way to capture the engagement of an online ad is the click rate (the ratio between the number of times consumers click on an ad and the number of times they see it.) Since a substantial level of attention and motivation must be attained before a consumer clicks on an ad, this seems like a relevant engagement metric; and it is, but only under certain circumstances.

A banner ad that promises deep discounts will get clicked often but produce little brand engagement while an ad targeting the right consumer with the right message may see fewer clicks but furnish better and more engaged consumers. This may be an exaggerated example, but it does demonstrate that an action isn't an action isn't an action. Action Tallies provide no basis for comparing the value to the brand of different actions across various media.

Mass media advertisers have been attempting to increase accountability by building trackable actions into ads. While this is a very welcome development toward improving the trackability of traditional media, this tactic isn't widespread and would likely lose its power if overused. An example of this type of campaign is the airport out-of-home campaign for BMW: The brand used airport signage containing SMS short codes at major airports nationwide. A consumer who sent a keywords to the short code received a deep link to a mobile application promoting BMW’s new convertible, and BMW could track which airport signs were best at driving interest based on the submitted keyword.

Another valuable purpose for Action Tallies is to measure improvement over time. For instance, if a live event is failing to draw consumers into the footprint, counting event attendees as different traffic-driving tactics are tested can be helpful to improve the flow of interested prospects. Of course, what you do with those people once they are attracted to your event is where the real engagement lies, and this is why most Action Count metrics fall short of furnishing marketers with objective engagement or ROI results.

Transaction Metrics: Transactions are the actions that matter. They involve consumers exchanging dollars or information with the brand.

Counting the number of purchases or adding up the total monetary value of transactions generated by a marketing program is a good measure of engagement. This works especially well online and overcomes the click rate biases described previously. Banner A may produce 1,000 clicks and 10 purchases while Banner B may produce 500 clicks and 25 purchases; in this case, Banner B is obviously creating a greater level of engagement and ROI, despite furnishing fewer clicks.

Another typical form of transaction measurement is prospect acquisition--securing new consumer records via online registration, business reply cards, sweepstakes entries, and similar means. Consumers who are appropriately engaged will be enticed to furnish their data; ones that aren't will withhold their personally-identifiable data.

Transaction Metrics can provide insight into consumer engagement that directly produces monetary value, but only for programs with a direct response objective. This makes Transaction Metrics perfect for some channels (PPC ads, banner ads, direct mail) but unavailable for others. For instance, how can a CPG brand site measure engagement when the goal isn't to motivate a purchase but to inform consumers, enhance brand consideration, and improve purchase intent?

For my answer to that question, please return to Experience: The Blog tomorrow for the second part of this article on engagement and marketing ROI. We'll explore Content Engagement, Blended Metrics, Brand Lift Measurement, and why ROI is so darn elusive in the marketing world.

This is one of those articles that reports something so painfully obvious, you have to wonder what the heck took so long.

Think of the last time you visited a cell phone store or kiosk with the intention of selecting a new phone. What were the top things you wanted to know about the phones you were considering: How was the sound quality? Was it easy to operate? Did the buttons feel solid--like they'd take a beating over time? How heavy was the device?

And which of these questions could you answer by picking up the phones at the store? First of all, you might've been lucky to pick them up at all, since many stores have the phones bolted to the wall. Even if you could get it in your hand, what you likely found was a dummy phone with dummy buttons, no "guts", and no battery. If this was your experience, you were able to answer absolutely none of the primary questions you had about the product.

Apparently Verizon finally figured out that it is in the cell phone business, because they're making news for opening a series of "Experience Stores." According to MediaPost, Boston's "6,600 square foot store... offers consumers a high-tech and hands-on experience with wireless voice, data, music and video services. The store, one of about 100 now open across the country, displays more than 55 working phones, broadband services and integrates kiosks for easy check and bill paying."

What interests me isn't so much that a mobile company's store is allowing consumers to actually experience the mobile company's phones but how they're promoting the new store: they're letting the experience and the consumers do the talking. As discussed here in Maslow's Hierarchy: Why People Engage in Online Communities, sparking a marketing community or WOM begins with a differentiated brand experience; no differentiation means no desire to tell others which means no WOM.

Verizon knows this, and that is why a significant portion of their store promotion plan relies on WOM and blog chatter to help attract attention and drive traffic to the new store. A consumer market research expert is quoted in the MediaPost article pointing out that Verizon's advertising phrase "Can you hear me now?" has become so well known that there's no reason to spend serious money to advertise services. "The phrase has arguably reached iconic status, which adds to the experience message Verizon tries to communicate in the stores."

Verizon has created a solid foundation for success: The combination of a differentiated marketing message and a differentiate shopping experience can ignite a great deal of WOM. Thanks to Erik over at the Experiential Marketing Forum and Swivel Media for sharing this article.

I just got done reading a great report from Forrester called, "Social Loyalty: How To Find, Create, And Nurture Brand Advocates." If you subscribe to Forrester, check it out; and if you don't, you might find it worth the $379 price tag.

The Executive Summary outlines Forrester's concerns with traditional loyalty programs and the opportunity social loyalty offers brands:

Traditionally, loyalty programs have provided transactional interactions with customers. But marketers who embrace social loyalty — brand affinity built on the connection of consumers to the brand as well as to each other — can use it to move their loyalty programs from mercenary rewards to a portal for identifying, creating, and nurturing high-value customers.

The problem with "loyalty programs" is that they tend to reward the wrong thing (short-term behavior and manipulation of points) and the wrong people (not those loyal to your brand but those loyal to whichever brand offers the best rewards program.) In fact, I've come to despise the term "loyalty program," since true loyalty isn't built with a program, rewards, and points but with great consumer experiences.

The classic example of loyalty program misfires comes from the airline industry. Which airline brand are you most loyal to and why? Here in Milwaukee, most of us are loyal to Midwest Airlines because they're based in our home town, often feature two-across leather seating throughout the plane, and are famous for their fresh-baked cookies distributed on each flight. Midwest has a "loyalty program," but almost no one will cite it as a reason they're loyal to the brand. For those of you not in Milwaukee and not lucky enough to fly Midwest Airlines, chances are you're loyal to an airline such as JetBlue or Southwest, and it probably has nothing to do with the many rewards cards you carry in your wallet.

Loyalty programs in the airline business have become a cost of business, and an expensive one at that since they aren't differentiators and don't build loyalty. If only the airlines focused on creating loyalty through differentiated consumer experiences! Just think of what an airline could achieve if it took all that money they spend administering, advertising, and servicing those loyalty programs--not to mention the cost of all those free flights--and instead invested the cash on improving and differentiating the customer experience.

Alas, the airlines cannot suspend their loyalty programs because consumers have come to expect this feature. These programs have become demotivators (factors that reduce loyalty when absent) rather than motivators of brand loyalty.

Forrester has some interesting ideas on how to overcome the problems of "mercenary" consumer behavior induced by traditional loyalty programs. The key is to get consumers talking to each other. According to Forrester, "less than 25% say they trust even the emails they sign up for"--and this was the highest trust level of any traditional advertising channel, beating TV, radio, print, in-store, and online ad media. Conversely, when asked what influences their perception of a brand or company, over 50% cited their friends and family and just under 50% said a third-party review.

Getting people talking to each other pays brand dividends not just with the people who listen but also with those who do the sharing. Forrester notes that Word-of-mouth (WOM) consumers — those who both give and receive advice about products — are 50% more likely to agree with the statement, "When I find a brand I like, I stick to it." Getting people to speak on behalf of your brand yields loyalty in both the sharers and the listeners.

So, how do you build social loyalty? To learn Forrester's ideas, you'll need to purchase their report. They have some interesting ideas and examples, but the gist of their recommendations is to determine what peer-to-peer actions are valuable to your brand, figure out how to motivate and measure those actions, and reward consumers for these behaviors.

Unlike traditional loyalty programs that only motivate purchases--a positive outcome but by no means one that cultivates or represents ongoing brand loyalty--social loyalty programs encourage a much deeper emotional investment and provide a greater payoff.

Of course, a social loyalty program that merely gives away something of value to someone who blabbers on a forum or refers imaginary friends does even less good than a purchase-oriented traditional loyalty program. This is why these programs require careful planning, definition, measurement, and execution.

There is an even better way to assure a social loyalty program succeeds: A brand that provides undifferentiated or mediocre experiences will run the risk their social loyalty program is merely rewarding tasks and not true loyalty. But a brand that creates memorable experiences that engage consumers' emotions won't need to worry. Their social loyalty program will encourage and reinforce behavior consumers will tend to do anyway--sharing positive stories, posting complimentary reviews, and recommending your brand to others.

After all, I didn't rave about Midwest Airlines because I'll earn some loyalty points for doing so; Midwest earned the praise with nothing much more than a warm, soft, chocolaty, and delicious cookie that melts in my mouth and reminds me of home, even when I'm 2,000 miles away and 35,000 feet in the air.

The earth is shifting under the feet of people in Hollywood (and New York and everywhere else where big media and marketing are found). No, it's not an earthquake; it's an adquake.

The television industry is being shaken by rapid changes in technology, consumer tastes, and demographics. For decades, the role of television in the marketing environment was assured--to reach a large audience with a branded message that appealed to the emotions, you used television. The combination of universal reach, barriers to entry for competing networks and media, and video delivery assured television of its lucrative place and caused the media mix to change very little for many years.

But in recent months, we've seen a series of news reports that validate what we already know: Television is losing viewers and thus its confident place atop the marketing portfolio.

In February came news of a new IDC study of consumer online behavior found that the Internet is the medium on which online users spend the most time (32.7 hours/week), almost twice as much time as spent watching television (16.4 hours).

In April, Microsoft announced it would take advantage of the Internet's growing power to deliver video to broadband-connected consumers and offer its own original slate of programming via its Web properties. Also in April, the New York Times featured an article about Naked Communications, a new type of agency that helps brands determine their appropriate media mix; one brand executive praised Naked's "media agnostic" mindset and said it was a fresh approach to "not presume that you have to have a 30-second TV spot.”

In May, Forrester released a report that showed that consumers ages 18 to 27 are spending less time with television and more time online. The reported showed that in just three years, time spent using the Internet has risen 80% while time watching TV is down 15% among this demographic.

In June, MediaPost shares a study from Ipsos MediaCT revealing that among those who have streamed or downloaded video content, which is 52% of Americans age 12 and older, the share of video viewed on television dropped while the video viewed online had grown from 11% to 19% in just one year. The study found that consumers age 12 to 17 view just 55% of their video on TV and 24% on a computer. Also in June came a report from Magna Global USA that noted that even though just 25% of TV homes have a DVR, "the current impact of DVR viewing on ratings is twice as high as the impact of VCRs when they were in 90 percent of TV homes." What this means is that ad-zapping DVRs already account for 9 percent of the Big Five networks’ TV ratings, and 15 percent of viewing by adults 18-49.

The adquake continues this month with a study released by Magna Global that demonstrates TV is no longer within its own target demographic. Television has long bragged about its ability to reach the 18-to-49-year-old demo, but "the five broadcast nets' average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season". (The median age for U.S. households is 38.) Such is the impact of gaming, the Internet, cable, and DVRs, that network television is losing its ability to reach its traditional core audience.

The adquake is already being felt in the network's pocketbook. The big network's ad revenue fell two percent in 2007 while all ad spending was up slightly (0.2 percent). Internet ad spending was up 15.9 percent last year, but the shift in media spend is nowhere near complete. Despite the demographic and TV viewing changes noted above, ad spending on network television was 135% greater than on the Internet, and the ad revenue for all television was almost seven times that of the Internet.

The adquake presents real challenges for marketers. As has been noted on this blog, online display advertising isn't much of an answer for marketers seeking to shift dollars out of TV advertising. Online ads are seen as untrustworthy, annoying, and ignorable; plus, ad blocking software threatens to decrease ad viewership on the Internet in the same way the DVR is used to screens ads by those who time-shift their TV.

Despite the challenges both online and on television, I think these are exciting times for marketers. The old way of marketing had become stale and--let's face it--boring. There were few challenges to advertising on TV and in print; with demographics, media outlets, and technology stagnant, the focus was entirely on the message and not the medium. There was a belief back when I started in marketing that a brand only needed to find the right tagline to create relevance to an audience.

But today, marketing is so much broader and deeper than it was 20 year ago. Rather than focusing on just the graphic, headline, or copy, we marketers have become as creative as film makers, theme park designers, and game developers. Successful campaigns aren't simply about finding the right ad to place in the same old spots; it's about finding the right combination of strategy and experiences to engage consumers in fun, interactive, and fascinating ways.

We've gone experiential, and its a change to be embraced! The adquake will continue for years to come--probably for our entire careers--as mobile, social, and other media we cannot yet imagine change consumer media habits, expectations, and relations to brands. The marketers who succeed will be the ones who learn to shift as quickly as the adquake changes the world around us.