Hipsters Deserve to Die. Crazy Old Aunts Deserve to Die. Cat Lovers Deserve to Die.

These were the provocative messages of a guerilla ad campaign launched recently by the combined offices from Milwaukee, Chicago and New York City of Laughlin Constable for their client… well, we will get to that in a moment. I had the chance to interview Denise Kohnke, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Laughlin Constable, about the campaign, the precautions and the outcome.

Of course, none of these people deserve to die (although some hipsters are darn annoying), and that was the intent of the campaign. Not that everyone caught the intent. As the posters appeared in cities across the nation, some folks took offense. That’s all in the game when a brand launches a shock campaign—some people get annoyed, the word spreads, and then comes the big reveal, hopefully accompanied by acceptance, interest and even more word of mouth. This campaign’s message succeeded in getting wide attention everywhere from Time Magazine to Huffington Post to Perez Hilton.

Screen capture from http://noonedeservestodie.org/

The reveal for this campaign, when the Lung Cancer Alliance was disclosed as the brand behind the program, came on No One Deserves to Die, a terrific site launched as the hub of this viral campaign. (Visit the site and scroll down the home page to see the campaign message exposed in eye-catching infographic-style animations.) The buzz was so great, the agency moved forward the planned date of the unveiling. Kohnke reports, “We moved up the reveal because of all the conversation that was taking place already about the campaign. We had people's attention and we wanted to make sure our real message was heard while audiences were still engaged and listening.”

The Lung Cancer Alliance didn’t use shock tactics for the heck of it but to make a point. “Many people believe that if you have lung cancer you did something to deserve it,” notes the site. “It sounds absurd, but it’s true. Lung cancer doesn’t discriminate and neither should you.”

Point taken, but while the campaign worked to catch attention and open minds, I still wondered about the risks. As social media and the importance of Word of Mouth grows, these sorts of shock campaigns run the risk of backfiring. A recent shock campaign to raise support for taxes for the Troy, MI library rubbed some folks the wrong way—including a local librarian—after it used a fake “book burning” event to create attention. And other shock campaigns have seemingly done more to harm the brand than help, such as Sony PSP’s racial-themed “Black and White” ads and the mobile campaign for Resident Evil that convinced people their phones were infected with a virus.

The agency was confident the message would be shocking, but not so much as to create a negative outcome. “Our campaign was intended to be bold, intrusive, thought provoking and a conversation starter,” notes Kohnke . “We wanted to show the absurdity of generalizing a hatred for a group of people based on a certain trait or characteristic. We selected groups that people may already have an unconscious or conscious bias against. It's hitting home to many because of that, but lung cancer patients and their families DO experience this. It's real for them and not just a hypothetical bias.”

The client wasn’t overly concerned about the risks, either. Kohnke shares that they were ready to shock people out of apathy. “Lung cancer has far too long been relegated to quiet conversation and hushed discussions because many who have been diagnosed with lung cancer have been humiliated, blamed and made to feel like it was their fault because of lung cancer's association with tobacco. The stigma has been alive for years despite voices calling for its end. It was time for bold action. We have to end the stigma in order to make real change in survival rates.”

The results validate the campaign strategy. Kohnke says, “Our social mentions and site traffic really began to peak after Yahoo.com picked up the story. Looking specifically at the #NoOneDeservesToDie hashtag alone, using Sysomos, we see that a majority of the conversation is quite positive with only 4 percent of those tweets negative.”

Not surprisingly, the successful campaign also delivered a great deal of site traffic: “Over the past three days alone, Lung Cancer Alliance saw as much traffic to the landing page as the organization usually sees in half a year,” reports Kohnke .

And the Lung Cancer Alliance hopes to get even more benefit from this catchy campaign. “We expect social media and public relations support to drive the conversation for a long time based on this campaign theme. Capitol Hill may vote on the Lung Cancer Mortality Reduction act this fall, and Lung Cancer Awareness month is November.” Kohnke notes that Laughlin Constable is working to ensure this campaign will continue to “fuel conversation about a disease that has been so stigmatized that people are ashamed they have it and lawmakers choose not to appropriate funding to seek a cure for it.”

Laughlin Constable and the Lung Cancer Alliance have done a nice job of making a point and raising awareness. Let’s see if it creates a wave of change that gets lawmakers’ attention later this year.

While social media may today feel mature and fully integrated into our world, we have only seen the start of the changes social technologies and behaviors will bring to our personal and business lives. Profound evolution is coming that will alter how we operate our businesses, buy products, manage money, attain status and establish and protect our identity.

It is instructional to look at how the Web developed, because it provides a means to understand how nascent social media still is and how much change is ahead. In 2011, the number of US adults that use social media sites surpassed 50% for the first time. To put that into a historic perspective, the Web surpassed the 50% adoption mark in 2000. Now consider the amount of change the Internet has brought to business and our lives since 2000, and you get a sense for the substantial transformation that social media and social business will create in the next decade.

Some of the changes social media and social business will deliver will be welcome, but some of it not. After all, the Web brought many changes we all cherish (Free email! Real-time news! Videos of cats playing piano!) but many we do not (Connected to work 24/7; loss of privacy; online bullying). Exciting and difficult times are coming.

As my friend, Neff Hudson, likes to say, “There’s a lot of future in the past.” We cannot predict the future of social media and social business with certainty, but the trends and outcomes become much clearer as we compare and contrast the Web experience of the past 15 years to the social experience we can expect in the coming 15 years.
 

PHASE ONE: Businesses and Most People Pay No Attention

The Web: The advent of the Web was not the first time people used computers to communicate and access information on networks; Bulletin Board Systems had existed since the 70s and were hardly setting the world on fire. When Prodigy and AOL opened up the Internet to the public in 1995, the world greeted this momentous event with a yawn. Most people said they had no interest and found it dangerous; business dismissed the Web as a place for geeks and kids; and naysayers predicted people would never purchase $2,000 PCs and rewire their homes just to use the Internet. Still, some people recognized the trends and invested in the future; in 1995, while bookseller Borders sat confidently on hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in their retail stores, a guy named Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com and sold his first book, “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies.”

Social Media:  The advent of Friendster, Myspace and Facebook was hardly the first time people used the internet to connect and share; sites like Geocities and SixDegrees.com permitted people to update personal web pages and share connections, and these sites were hardly setting the world on fire. When Facebook opened its gates and became a public social network in 2006, the world greeted this momentous event with a yawn. Most people said they had no interest and found it dangerous; business dismissed Facebook as a place for geeks and kids; and naysayers predicted people would never embrace online social sharing widely. Still, some people recognized the trends and invested in the future. It is too early to tell who may be the Jeff Bezos of social business, but at a time when few people saw social media as a business platform, Shelby Clark started RelayRides, Chris Larsen launched P2P lender Prosper,  Renaud Laplanche initiated LendingClub, and Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler created crowdfunding site, Kickstarter. (Only time will tell if these names are mentioned alongside Bezos' ten or fifteen years from now.)
 

PHASE TWO: Consumer Media Consumption Habits Change and Marketers (Slowly) Take Notice

The Web: In the late 90s, the Web was growing. Adoption was strong, particularly among younger consumers. Most in the business world still shrugged, but the Marketing Department took notice. The shift of marketing dollars into the online channel substantially lagged behind the shift of consumer online media consumption, but marketers cautiously began to invest in banner ads and search ads. Marketers also launched their companies’ first web sites, but they did not embrace the fundamental principles of this new medium. Early sites took the text and images used in existing print collateral and pasted them into static, non-functional Web pages, resulting in the term “brochureware” to describe the first generation of Web sites.

Social Media:  In the late 00s, social media was growing, led by blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Adoption was strong, particularly among younger consumers. Most in the business world still shrugged, but the Marketing and PR Departments took notice. The shift of  marketing dollars into the social channel substantially lagged behind the shift of consumer social media consumption, but marketers cautiously began to invest in blog advertising, sponsored conversations with bloggers, and Facebook advertising, with 70 billion display ads appearing on Facebook in the first quarter of 2009. Marketers and PR professionals also launched their companies’ first blogs, fan pages and Twitter profiles, but they did not typically embrace the fundamental principles of this new medium. Early blogs and social media profiles took existing press releases and pasted those social media sites, and some marketers treated blogs as they would paid media and were embarrassed when their efforts to buy their way to blog success were revealed, resulting in the term “splog” to describe spam blogs.

PHASE THREE: New Business Ideas Attract Investment Faster than Customers

NASDAQ's two-year 188% dot-com climb

The Web and e-Commerce: By the late 90s, a dot-com boom was underway. As early Web retailers like Amazon grew rapidly, the business world took notice and got scared.  Old-line business worried that it was out of step with a “new economy” defined by clicks and users and not earnings per share, and investors feared they were missing something big and threw money at any entrepreneur with an online business idea. For example, dozens of online pet stores launched and competed to gain users quickly and at any cost; Pets.com raised $300 million of investment capital and bought expensive Super Bowl advertising in the land grab for new online customers. The focus of all this attention was not really on robust e-business but specifically on e-retail; Amazon and Pets.com sold physical goods, just like the book and pet stores on the corner, and most business leaders obsessed over how the internet would affect price, selection and delivery of existing products rather than on how it might create new products and services. Then in 1999, Sean Parker launched Napster and sent shockwaves through the music industry, demonstrating that the Internet was not just a medium to market and sell physical CDs.

Social Media and Social Commerce: A social media stock boom has and may continue to occur. As Facebook’s share of the display-ad market grew from 2% in April 2009 to 20% in April 2010, the business world took notice and got scared.  Old-line business is worried it is out of step with a “new economy” defined by retweets and likes and not earnings per share, and investors fear they are missing something big and are throwing money at any entrepreneur with a social idea. For example, many group-buying and -discounting sites have launched and are competing to gain users quickly and at any cost; by the end of 2010, Groupon had turned down a $6 billion offer from Google, raised almost a billion dollars in venture capital and was buying expensive Super Bowl advertising in the land grab for new social customers. The focus of all this attention is not really on robust social business but specifically on social retail; Groupon and Facebook advertising are largely driving people into existing businesses like the book and pet stores on the corner (and to online retail sites) that sell existing products, and traditional retailers such as Gap and JCPenney launched early F-commerce stores on Facebook. While not as headline grabbing as Groupon’s, LinkedIn’s and Facebook’s IPOs, small peer-to-peer business companies are showing strong growth and demonstrating social media can be a medium for collaborative consumption and not just a medium to market and sell existing products.

PHASE FOUR: Stock Values Crash While Business Value Widens

NASDAQ's one-year 63% dot-com crash

The Web and e-Business: As it turned out, profits and earnings per share mattered. The dot-com bubble burst in painful fashion, destroying $5 trillion in market value between 2000 and 2002. The correction even caught the winners of the Web 1.0 era—after five years, Amazon had yet to make its first dollar of profit and could not build earnings quickly enough to justify its exorbitant stock price, and shares plunged from $107 to $7. Startups like Pets.com with weaker business models never made money and evaporated completely. However, what crashed were stock values and not the value of the Internet, and out of the ashes of the dot-com disaster grew something bigger and stronger. Consumers continued to adopt the web, broadening both the demographics and the use of the medium.

Online consumers had different expectations and demanded more—they wanted more product information, access to account information  and service in their channel of choice, and they wanted it now. Online advertising and e-retail continued to grow, but something more substantial was happening—brochureware sites were replaced by rich, functional web sites, and the Web evolved from a focus on marketing and retail to a focus on business value throughout the enterprise.

Social Media and Social Business: I believe we are in the midst of a slow-motion social media market correction. Profits and earnings per share matter, and soon investors will care that Zynga and Groupon are struggling to attain and sustain profitability. Groupon is already trading near its all-time low price, almost half of its peak price five months ago, and a recent analysis demonstrated that just three of 2011’s twelve social IPOs were beating NASDAQ. I expect the social media bubble burst to be less painful because exuberance is not as great today as it was in 1999, but it still would not surprise me if the correction caught the winners of Web 2.0 era, causing Facebook’s post-IPO price to plunge as it struggles to build earnings quickly enough to justify its stock price. However, even as the market reconsiders the valuation of social media companies, something bigger and stronger is growing. Consumers continue to adopt social media, broadening both the demographics and the use of the medium.

Social consumers have different expectations and are demanding more—they want access to the objective opinions of other consumers, demand companies respond to their complaints posted to social networks and expect organizations to be more transparent about corporate practices, and they want it now.  The first F-commerce sites failed because they didn't bring true social benefits to the shopping experience, but social commerce can be expected to grow. In addition, advertising on social networks will explode as marketers continue to shift more dollars to the channel where consumers spend so much time. But, something more substantial than just social ads and retail is happening today—PR-oriented corporate social media profiles are being replaced by robust communities and dialog where companies engage consumers (and consumers engage each other) around business policies, service needs, new product ideas, employment, and more. Social media is evolving from a focus on marketing and PR to a focus on business value throughout the enterprise.

PHASE FIVE: Now It Gets Interesting: New Products and Business Models Challenge Old Ones

Estimated Quarterly US  E-commerce Sales as a Percent of Total Quarterly Retail Sales

The Web and e-Business: For all the headlines and investor enthusiasm about e-retail in 1999 and 2000, the percentage of total US retail that occurs online did not surpass two percentage points until two years after the dot-com crash. Since then, the growth has been steady, but despite the fact online retail has shaken retail to its core and forced former powerhouses like Borders into bankruptcy, e-retail still represents just one of every twenty retail dollars spent in the US. Of course, online retail is wildly uneven, affecting some categories far more than others; digital sales of music surpassed physical sales just last year.

While the impact of e-retail has been significant, that is not the big story of this phase; rather, in recent years the Web has fundamentally changed consumers’ relationships with products and services. We used to buy CDs and listen to music in cars and at home—now thanks to iTunes, iPods and cell phones, folks download music and listen throughout the day. Many said they would never give up the joy of a paper book, but just a few short years after the creation of tablets and e-readers, one in five adults read an electronic book in the last year and Amazon already sells more e-books than print books. Mobile wallets, digital photography, real-time communications, online news, delivery tracking—the Web is no longer a way to market and sell traditional products but the foundation for completely new ways to conduct business.

Social Media and Social Business: Social media will bring great change to our products, services and business models over the next ten years, just as the web did in the last ten years. This won’t happen quickly—Amazon was selling books online for 16 years before e-books surpassed print books, and Napster demonstrated that consumers would download music 12 years before digital music sales exceeded physical ones. The companies that led these changes tended not to be the big, traditional, existing ones but the startups. Barnes and Noble has been remarkably nimble for an old-school organization, launching its first web site two years after Amazon.com and deploying the Nook two years after the first-generation Kindle, but today Amazon has diversified its business and enjoys a market capitalization more than 100 times greater than Barnes and Noble.

This trend repeated across categories—Kodak was too committed to print photography to lead in digital photography, and Apple handed the record industry its butt because it was unencumbered by physical music models. Today, for example, banks may be too invested in physical branches to lead in the social business space for financial services; no banks have launched or invested in peer-to-peer unsecured lending (Prosper and LendingClub), direct peer-to-peer lending between friends and family (National Family Mortgage) or alumni-to-student college loans. The nascent Sharing Economy and Collaborative Consumption models promise to change consumers’ relationship with products ranging from cars (RelayRides and Wheelz) to lodging (AirBNB) to lawnmowers and drills (Rentalic and NeighborGoods). Perhaps big companies will get smarter this time around—U-Haul has already launched a peer-to-peer model to finance the purchase of new trucks and GM has partnered with RelayRides.

PHASE SIX: New Technology Rewires People and Society

The Web: You might have thought Phase Five was the end, but the web has done more than just change products and services—it has altered consumers’ attitudes about themselves and the world. Our world is smaller, faster and more connected today than 15 years ago. We never want for communications or entertainment. We are never disconnected from our friends or our jobs, no matter the time of day or day of the week. The web flattened corporate structures and altered organizational dynamics--business leaders are no longer protected by Administrative Assistants, work relationships are more casual and the speed and pressure of business have increased.

The Web made the world flat, instantly furnishing insight into happenings around the globe but also creating downward pressure on US salaries as outsourcing became exponentially easier. The Web put spectacular power into the hands of people, giving them the capacity to launch businesses, communicate widely and build reputation but also providing a platform for bullying, coordinating terrorist attacks and stealing identity. The Web has brought us together to raise record amounts of money for victims of earthquakes and tsunamis, but it has also furnished a way to drive us further apart as we reject news and information offered by a handful of media conglomerates and consume hyper-local, hyper-niche and hyper-partisan content.

The web has made parenting more difficult. Children grow up faster, can get themselves in more trouble, are exposed to more worrisome content and are impossible to monitor and protect as in the past. Parents cannot punish children by sending them to their room, because those rooms contain access to more information and entertainment than a TV network control room had three decades ago. Kids never have to negotiate for access to limited resources--homes that 15 years ago had one way to communicate externally and one screen for entertainment today have options too numerous to count. (Go ahead and try.)

The Web has affected how we go to school, date, work, age, retire and play. Absolutely nothing happens today that isn't caused by, planned, hosted, captured or shared on the Web. Without the Web, there would be no Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street, no multi-tasking, no telecommuting, no smartphones, no iPad, no World of Warcraft, no Angry Birds, and arguably no President Obama, Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber or green movement.

Social Media: Social media has already affected communications in substantial ways, but the advent of peer-to-peer and sharing economy business models will do more than affect the communication networks we maintain. It will change:

• Our sense of identity: We are constantly connected to others, communicate in real time, and have more and stronger “soft relationships” (but some argue weaker “hard relationships”). Our identity is increasingly created not in quiet moments by ourselves but in constant and pervasive social interactions. A strong majority of Millenials say they are so connected they are never really alone.
   
• Ownership: Already, many people rent music via a subscription model rather than buying and owning audio tracks, and over half a million people have used Zipcar’s 8,900 vehicles. This is not just changing the way we get products and services—it alters long-held attitudes. Teens are less inclined to get drivers licenses than in past in part because they are more open to public transportation and often choose to spend time with friends online rather than driving to see them. Cash-strapped consumers are finding they don't need to own certain categories of things, they only need to access, borrow and rent them in real-time.
   
• Status: As Collaborative Consumption rises, we will be defined less by what we drive, wear and own and more by our experiences and sharing—already more than half of Millenials agree with the statement “What I post online defines me.”
   
• Privacy: In the past we cherished our privacy, but in the future many will happily sacrifice privacy in order to gain access to sharing economy goods and services. We may soon elect to add our credit history and driving record to our online personas so that others will be more willing to rent us their cars, lend us money, allow us to stay in their spare room or rent us their hedge trimmers.  Consumers will come under pressure to sacrifice privacy for transparency, but not because Facebook or some shadowy marketing research firm wants your data but because we will come to expect it of each other.
   
• Pricing: The more transparent we become, the more fluid prices will be—if you rent your car, would you charge the same to someone you can identify with a strong reputation, transparent credit score and open and clean driving record as you would to @HotGuy1992? Who we are, the trust we engender, the influence we create and our actions online won't just affect our access to sharing economy goods and services but also will influence the prices we are charged. The drive to earn our way to lower pricing with better behavior and more transparency will be a powerful force that encourages smarter financial decisions in the future.

We are just scratching the surface of the changes social technologies and behaviors will bring to our lives. For individuals, the future belongs to those willing to embrace both the welcome and difficult aspects of a more social, transparent world.

The same is true for business; the future belongs to those who see and invest in the future and not merely protect today's business models or chase this quarter's ROI. Amazon.com moved while others ignored the trends; it saw a business platform where others only saw retail and marketing; it invested for six years to achieve its first dollar of profit; and then it put its predominant revenue stream at risk with a bold new vision for how consumers would consume content in a digital and wireless world. Today, founder Jeff Bezos' personal wealth stands at $18 billion while the combined market caps of Barnes and Noble and Borders is just $730 million.

“There’s a lot of future in the past.”

[This blog post was cross-posted with my new Forrester blog at http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2010/02/single-id-what-consumers-think-and-why-it-may-not-matter.html.]

I saw some interesting Forrester research this week. We asked over 4,000 consumers about Single-ID systems, which permit a profile to be used on multiple Web sites and eliminate the need to register, create and maintain separate profiles on each new site. While we didn’t ask consumers about the currently available options (such as Facebook Connect, OpenID, OAuth, etc.), the Forrester survey did explore what consumers care about when deciding whether to use a single-signon tool.

We early adopters were quick to use and see the benefits of portable IDs, so I was surprised by one big discovery out of this study: A lot of consumers aren’t yet that interested. When asked to select the most important features that would motivate them to use a single-ID tool, more than four in ten didn’t see any of them as compelling. With a list that included features as simple and appealing as “The ID worked with Yahoo,” “The ID worked with Google,” and “The ID would only be used with sites I select,” 44% of consumers surveyed instead selected “I'm not interested in creating a single ‘ID’ that works at multiple Web sites.”

There is demographic skew to this data; only 32% of young adults responded “not interested” compared to 52% of those 55 and older. Still, a significant number of people don’t yet see the benefit of portable IDs and unified registration systems.

What should marketers do with this information? Given the significant indifference, should they slow down efforts to implement single-ID profiles on their sites?

I don’t believe so, and here’s why: First of all, while many people may not understand the benefits, a lot do. Facebook Connect recently celebrated its first birthday with an announcement that 60 million Facebook users are using Facebook Connect across 80,000 Web sites.

Secondly, single-ID systems provide benefits for marketers now, and when implemented with a focus on the user needs and experience, consumers see the benefits. Take the Huffington Post, for example; thanks to their implementation of Facebook Connect, I can easily see what content my friends find interesting (which—not coincidentally—always seems relevant to my interests). So, although many consumers don’t see the benefits now, it is reasonable to expect they can and will adopt these tools as sites make the advantages more evident.

With all the buzz about Social Commerce, there was one more finding from the study that caught my eye: The number one factor that consumers say is essential for them to sign up for a portable “ID” is that it not be associated with their credit card information. Consumers are just not quite ready to make their financial data as sharable as they are their photos and status updates.

Today I stumbled across real estate site Trulia.com and found it to be an excellent example of how Social Media tactics combined with a focus on consumer needs can create a strong user experience. It applies many of the essential concepts of Social Media, including:

• Aggregating diverse content and data to create new value.
• Providing a means for sharing and collaboration.
• Providing functionality where and in the way the consumer wishes.
• Create the means for a longer-term value-based relationship.
  

Trulia of course offers the basics you would expect of a real estate site: You can search for available homes and condos, view maps, define search criteria based on property type and value, and peruse lists of properties. This is fine functionality, but what makes it a great site is that they answered the question, "How can I improve this by making it social?"

Examples of great Internet and Social Media functionality on Trulia include:

• Local News Feeds: Once you search for a property, the site automatically offers a localized RSS feed to which you can subscribe. Data includes the number of new listings in the past seven days, average listing price, median sales price, number of properties sold in the past 60 days, and the recent changes in price per square foot. This sort of data is extremely valuable for house hunters and creates ongoing engagement with the site. Click here for an example of the Local News Feed for Celebration, FL.
  
  
• Property Alerts: Site visitors can stay abreast of properties on the market in a number of ways. They can subscribe to an RSS feed of properties based on city or neighborhood (here is the RSS feed for properties available in Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward), searches can be saved for later Web recovery, and email alerts can be created so that consumers can be informed when new properties enter the market. You can even subscribe to a daily email alert on individual properties, keeping you informed when the property sells or changes price.
  
  
• Personal Notes: As you search the site, you can add personal notes to properties that only you can view. (While this isn't very Social, it is helpful for home shoppers overwhelmed by the variety of property options.)
  
  
• Trulia Voices: Visitors may ask real estate questions for others to answer. Questions may be identified by topic and location. These questions and answers are made available to site visitors as they view data about a city or neighborhood. Here is a question asked by a visitor who wants to know whether to escrow for her property taxes; two fine answers have been received thus far. Site visitors may save any question, register to be alerted when new answers are received, and easily add any question to social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us. A cloud of common keywords provides insight as to the topics that are hottest right now.
  
  
• Create a Blog: For visitors so inclined, Trulia permits users to create their own blogs. You can write about your neighborhood or city, or you may focus on real estate topics such as Home Buying, Foreclosures, and Celebrity Homes. Here is a blog post written by a San Diego real estate professional that has received five comments to date.
  
  
• School Info and Ratings: Properties are associated with local schools and school systems; data includes parent ratings and comments aggregated from GreatSchools, plus test scores, enrollment information, and the number of students per teacher. Click here to see the data compiled about Celebration High School.
  
  
• Stats and Trends: The data available about cities and neighborhoods is really quite impressive. Visitors can compare neighborhoods based on average sales price, average listing price, price per square feet, and number of sales. You can also review statistics about income, crime, age of homes, and average travel time to work. Here is a slew of data on Milwaukee and the Historic Third Ward neighborhood.
  
  
• Heat Maps: All of the data noted above can be viewed as a heat map, with colorful data overlays based on neighborhood or zip code.
  
  
• Mobile Tools: Trulia offers a very functional application for the iPhone, Java phones, and Dash Express GPS. Enter a location on the Web site and they'll text you a link to a downloadable app that comes preconfigured for your desired search. (You can always change the search once it is on your phone.) The application pulls maps and data, providing an easy way to get helpful information while on house hunting excursions. Value-added features includes quick access to Yahoo Local and Yelp data, so finding nearby businesses and accessing consumer ratings is quick and easy.
  

There are ways Trulia might have made their experience even more social, but the site is notable for the Q&A, blog, data aggregation, RSS, email, and mobile tools they offer. If you're searching for a house (or just interested in a great user-focused Web site), visit Trulia.

Some time ago, I visited Disney.com and had what might be described as a violent reaction to what I found on the home page.

I am a huge Disney fan and have become accustomed to being treated as a "guest," whether I visit a theme park or their Web site. The organization has a storied history of dedicating itself to the guest experience, and much of what I know of experiential marketing has come from studying Disney. It is because I hold Disney in such esteem that my disappointing experience produced such an intensely negative reaction.

On this particular visit to Disney.com, I found a link on the home page that promised a "Main Street parade." Intrigued, I wondered if I might see a live video feed of a parade from the Magic Kingdom or a behind-the-scenes peak at the staging of one of their enormous marching spectacles. I had no particular idea of what I'd find when I clicked that link, but I expected to experience some variety of Disney magic.

What I found, after waiting 30 seconds for the Flash movie to download and launch, was a cartoon parade of wagons and floats, each one containing a brand logo of a Disney sponsor. That was it--nothing but a review of corporate logos. Had any thought gone into this promotion featured so prominently on their home page, it would've become obvious this little movie furnished no value to any concerned party:

• I felt my time had been wasted and that Disney broke it's brand promise to treat me with respect.
  
• Disney positioned itself as a selfish and unwelcoming host, more interested in its own interests than in consumers'.
  
• The brands featured received no value, since few if any consumers lured into this marketing trap were likely to dedicate precious minutes observing a series of brand symbols.

I respect Disney a great deal, and they have provided many positive online and offline experiences since, but this example demonstrates how easy it is for marketers to negatively alter consumer perception. It is no small lapse when marketers focus only on their own interests and forget to question and define the value of a program to the consumer.

This experience came to mind when I read the New York Times article, "In Overhaul, Disney.com Seeks a Path to More Fun." It turns out Disney has come to realize its Web site is too much about itself and not enough about the guest. According to the NY Times, "Disney is trying to position its Web site more as a place that entertains and less of one that exists to promote Disney wares."

In other words, they are trying to move their site further up the Experiential Marketing Continuum. Rather than provide a site that is merely welcoming--one that equips consumers with information about Disney products--Disney instead is seeking to make their site desirable and more worthy of repeat visits. This shift focuses on what consumers want, and thus encourages consumers to spend more time with Disney, to think of the organization as an integral part of their entertainment and relaxation time, and to make a strong emotional connection that will bear far more fruit than any animated parade of logos.


The changes, which are the second significant rejiggering of Disney.com in as many years, include some exciting and smart ideas. For example, one subtle modification will be to the navigational structure. The current Disney.com has categories such as “Movies,” “TV” and “Live Events," but new options will include “Games,” “Videos” and “Characters.” The current information structure isn't bad--it's descriptive and intuitive to visitors--but it focuses on the company; you could add "our" in front of each category: "Our Movies" and "Our TV Shows." By comparison, the new structure focuses on the content consumers seek--their favorite character or the videos they want to see.

The changes will be more substantial than just navigation. The new Disney.com will feature more videos (including some full-length Disney films), more games, and more activities that bridge the online and mobile worlds. This focus on the consumer experience is an exhilarating and fitting direction for Disney.com.

Another organization doing exciting things to improve the consumer's experience is Apple. We all know that Apple has an obsessive focus on elegant usability that has allowed its digital music players to crush Microsoft's similar product and its laptops and desktops to begin to chip away at Microsoft's PC hegemony. What you may not have realized (but perhaps appreciate) is that Apple brings its obsession with usability to its real world stores.

An Ad Age article entitled, "How Apple Is Blurring the Line Between Marketing and Service," describes how Apple is executing its customer-focused approach within its stores. Apple has increased the number of "concierges" who greet consumers at the door with the question, ""How can I help you, and where would you like to go?" As Ad Age notes, "These employees don't wait until you look utterly confused to ask you what you need. They intercept you -- though not intrusively and always with a smile... They assume you arrive at the Apple Store looking specifically for something, and in most cases they are right."

Much like Disney is doing with its Web site, Apple is moving the shopping experience up the Experiential Marketing Continuum. Most people find shopping a reasonably welcome experience, but is it desirable? Apple believes "service is marketing": Consumers aren't a bother; their questions aren't distractions; and their needs don't disturb Apple employees but are the reason the employees are there.

The Apple and Disney examples demonstrate a key concept in experiential marketing: Are your efforts focused on benefiting just yourself or on adding value to the consumer's experience?

Most Web sites exist for the purpose of promoting the brand's product--these sites help consumers to the point of purchase, but nothing further. And most retail outlets are staffed with the minimum number of people required to populate registers and stock shelves--the employees are there at the service of their employer. It is clear Disney and Apple bring a different level of commitment to the consumer than do most of their competitors.

Of course, focusing on the consumer isn't an act of corporate altruism--it should be done in a way that creates more brand value. Check out Apple's 71% market share in digital media players and the fact they "dominated the U.S. retail market for high-end computers in the first quarter of 2008, selling two out of every three PCs priced over $1,000." As for Disney, last year's redesign vaulted the average time spent on the site to 44.9 minutes; even though that's the kind of engagement most marketers would kill for, Disney wants more and knows it can get it by focusing even more on the consumer.

In an age of cost cutting and efficiency, Apple and Disney demonstrate how investing in the consumer experience pays dividends.

I was quite disappointed to read about the report issued by Citi analyst Mark Mahaney suggesting Google exploit the "opportunity" to monetize site traffic by pushing display advertising on every page they serve on certain properties.

I am not a high-priced financial analyst, but I do know that Google has succeeded in historic proportions by doing exactly the opposite of what Mahaney recommends. While other search engines and sites pasted blinking display ads wherever they could, Google instead put itself into the position of being the preeminent provider of search services to consumers and search advertising to marketers by providing a clean, user-focused interface. Perhaps Mahaney would be well advised to look at how Yahoo and MSN, with their pages of display ads, are performing compared to Google.

Mahaney's calculations provide some interesting insight into how miserably display advertising is performing on the Internet. To calculate how much incremental revenue Google might earn with display advertising, he started by computing the estimated CPM (Cost per Thousand) of advertising on MySpace. His calculations show that display ads are commanding just $1.13 CPM. That strikes me less as a financial figure than an indictment of display ad value and effectiveness. The impact of display ads are so minuscule, and consumers are so immune to them, that each view of a banner ad is worth just one-tenth of one penny.

Mahaney forecasts that plastering display ads on YouTube, Google Maps, Google Images, and other Google properties could add $1 billion of additional revenue in 2009. That sounds like a lot, but Google's revenues were almost $17 billion last year.

Google won't turn up its nose at a possible revenue increase of 6%, but I'm sure they are assessing Mahaney's suggestion with great caution. I don't have access to Citi's report, but according to the info posted to TechCrunch, it appears that Mahaney did not consider the potential negative ramifications that could come if Google includes display ads on every YouTube, Map, and Images page:

• Will users abandon Google? On this blog, I've frequently mentioned how fickle Internet audiences can be. MySpace ruled the social media roost just a couple years ago, but once consumers perceived it was becoming too commercial they began an exodus to Facebook (which many feel is now becoming too commercial, as well).
  
  While today it's hard to imagine consumers abandoning YouTube or other Google properties, it isn't out of the question. Nor would it take a mass exodus to eviscerate Mahaney's proposed display ad strategy--if consumers begin to leave Google for other sites, Google could damage the commanding advantage it has in search advertising. Google shouldn't be too quick to kill the goose that laid the $16.6B golden egg in search of a mere $1B more. I question if Mahaney has fully investigated the potential risk of his proposed display ad strategy.
  

• What is the impact of so much advertising inventory entering the market? As noted, the CPMs for online ads are already quite a bit lower than they were in past years. What would be the impact of having Internet traffic giant Google enter the display ad market with an additional 1 trillion ad pages annually (725 billion for YouTube, 235 billion for Google Images, and 14 billion for Google maps)?
  
  According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, in 2007 display advertising revenues totaled $7.1 Billion. Mahaney is suggesting that new display ad opportunities could add $1 billion to Google's top line. So, it seems he is suggesting an expansion of total industry-wide display ad revenue of 14% in one year, and we can surmise this also means display ad supply will increase somewhere in the range of 14%. An increase this substantial in the supply of display ad inventory would exert even more downward pressure on CPMs, thus decreasing Google's potential gain.
  

I'd be disappointed to see Google significantly increase its display advertising in the coming year. I believe the company has greater and more profitable avenues to explore by offering consumers ever better tools and sites and advertisers more targeted ad opportunities. Google may find far more revenue than Mahaney is proposing by continuing to explore how it might revolutionize traditional ad media in the same way it has online advertising. And Google sees more opportunities for revenue and profit in the burgeoning mobile space.

More importantly, it seems to me Mahaney is neglecting to consider Google's brand. The company has always been respectful of its Web visitors and aware of how little value banner ads provide to either advertisers or to consumers. The sudden appearance of animated banner ads on a trillion Google pages doesn't strike me as congruent with Google's brand or their world vision.

Just a couple weeks ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt shared his view of how online advertising will work in the future. He said, "The advertising has to be more entertaining, more interesting, more immersive compared to what we have today." Citi's Mahaney is suggesting Google offer more of "what we have today" while Schmidt sees more experiential and welcome ways to market to consumers.

I predict Google will not embrace the Citi report's suggestion that they step backwards by pushing at consumers some of the least successful and least welcome online ad media; instead, I believe Google will find innovative ways, both online and off, to provide value to consumers and advertisers.

MediaPost shares a study from Ipsos MediaCT that shouldn't surprise us. It demonstrates that the share of video consumed on TV is decreasing and on computers it is rising.

Considering that as recently as five years ago, the percentage of video viewed on either the television or the movie theater screen was probably 99%, the current stats are pretty striking. Among those who have streamed or downloaded video content, which is 52% of Americans age 12 and older, the share of video viewed online has grown from 11% to 19% in just one year.

And of course, the portion of video viewed on a computer monitor increases as age decreases--consumers age 12 to 17 view just 55% of their video on TV and 24% on a computer. While this isn't particularly unexpected, what I found surprising is how much online video is being consumed by older Americans. If you think those 55 and older are glued to their TVs and only use their PCs to check email, you'll be surprised to learn that among this cohort, almost one of every five hours of video viewing occurs on a computer.

This is just further evidence that marketers are going to need to shift more of their marketing dollars online. This will take some creativity and a willingness to experiment, since online video advertising is not yet standardized.

As discussed here last week, online video advertising is not likely to take the form of 30- and 60-second spots, an ad format that is being rejected by consumers on television and won't be any more welcome online. ABC.com and Hulu are experimenting with movies and TV shows that are interrupted just as frequently as on television, but with substantially fewer and shorter ads. If this ad approach catches on--and I think it will--this could mean that video advertising inventory (both TV and online combined) could shrink in the coming years.

This sounds like a problem for marketers, but there is a trade off--consumers seem to be accepting of ads they cannot skip provided those ads are kept brief. And unlike on TV, online video ads can entice consumers to click through to learn more, so the right ad can create immediate and deeper engagement than is possible on TV.

If you care to learn more about the percentage of video consumers view on TV and PCs (not to mention portable DVD players, cell phones, and DVD players) visit MediaPost's Research Brief.

The article on Technology Review seems so obvious, it's hard to imagine this idea hasn't been tested before. Then again, being obvious and being cost effective to implement are two entirely different things, aren't they?

According to TR, researchers at MIT's Sloan School of Management hope to make web sites better at selling products by making them adapt automatically to each visitor, presenting information in a way that complements that person's style of thinking. The idea is to match a site's experience to the cognitive style of the visitor. Says John Hauser, a professor of marketing at the Sloan School, "You can see that someone who's very analytic is probably more likely to go to 'compare plans' than to the direct advisor. If we determine that you like lots of graphs, you're going to start seeing lots of graphs. If we determine that you like to get advice from peers, you're going to see lots of advice from peers."

The Sloan system adapts to unknown users within the first few clicks on the web site by analyzing each user's pattern of clicks. In addition to guessing at each user's cognitive style, the system can track data over time to see which versions of the website work most effectively for which cognitive styles.

Of course, as anyone who has launched a large site knows, it can be a taxing and challenging effort simply to launch a one-dimensional site. Understanding all of the possible information needs for a variety users' cognitive styles and storing that data in a way it can be served differently to different visitors sounds, well, expensive. The article doesn't say much about costs or ROI--it just states that studies show ecommerce sales can increase 20%. I suppose if a brand's online sales are sufficiently large enough, a 20% increase may pay for this sort of system, but the more complex the site and the broader a site's product selection, the more costly it would be to implement.

It should also be noted that smart site owners and developers already have a way to match content to users without a complex system. With the use of research, personas, content development, information architecture, and design, a site can permit consumers--even without their explicit awareness--to choose a path that best suits their needs. In this way, careful research and design can create a site experience that may feel just as customized as the Sloan's cognitive, site-morphing system.

That said, I'm intrigued by the Sloan approach. Imagine the entire Web morphing to your own personal style of hunting and gathering information. If Sloan or anyone else can work out a system that makes maintaining and changing content easy and cost efficient in this sort of dynamic environment, it could present enormous benefits both to brands and to consumers.

Thanks to Sam Ewen of OnTheGroundLookingUp.com for sharing this article on the Experiential Forum.

I'm sure that as a marketing professional, you find yourself with too much time and a lack of reading material. If this is the case, be sure to visit http://Marketing.Alltop.com. This site aggregates the top marketing blogs in one place so you can easily peruse headlines and access articles.

While Alltop may at first seem a bit overwhelming, I've found it indispensable. Rather than waiting for the latest email newsletter or, heaven forbid, snail mail, environment-killing, last-month's-news-sharing magazine, Alltop has all the news that matters right now.

In addition to accessing the best of the Marketing blogs in one easy spot, there is another benefit to Alltop--you can easily discern trends at a glance. Right now, several of the top blogs are buzzing about Dave Balter's free downloadable book on Word of Mouth marketing. Seeing this mini groundswell (to borrow Forrester's term) was my clue something big was happening and worth my attention. And it was--see my prior post with a link to his PDF WOM book.

So, head on over to Alltop, and perhaps someday soon you'll find E:TB in their list of top Marketing blogs!

Last night I enjoyed a couple of drinks with one of the smartest people I know in marketing. She and I were discussing social media, and she mentioned that she felt obligated to try Facebook and MySpace, but having registered for the sites she just couldn't find the value in them. She also dabbled in Twitter, but again was overwhelmed with the time and attention required to stay engaged. She wondered if social media was simply too cumbersome to sustain engagement. In other words, is social media a trend that will gain critical mass among the general population, or is it the over-hyped fad-of-the-moment?

I sympathize with much of what she had to say. My Facebook site has become cluttered with dozens of widgets, each one requesting or demanding some sort of attention: Someone wrote on my wall; someone is poking me; someone is taking a quiz and wants to compare answers; someone wants me to join a list to save the world (as if joining the list will do so). And over on Twitter, even though I am trying to be selective about who I "Follow," I get so many Tweets that I can't possibly hope to keep up.

Is Social Media this year's Second Life--an online trend that gets hot, peaks with headlines and magazine cover stories, but slowly fades away? To be fair, Second Life hasn't faded away, but neither has it changed the world like some were predicting two years ago. After explosive growth, the vast majority of people who tried Second Life have found better uses for their time. While Second Life usage stats continue to show modest growth, there's ample evidence the virtual world has, at best, niche appeal--of the almost 14 million "residents" claimed by Second Life, only 855,000 have signed on in the past 30 days. Compare this to Facebook's 34 million unique monthly users or MySpace's 44 million.

While many consumers find social media daunting, it should be evident that the need and desire to share, communicate, and connect will only grow. As a result, I believe consumers won't turn away from social media; instead, they'll demand and gravitate to tools that help them adapt and customize social media to their own needs.

In fact, this is already happening. We've seen the way consumers can migrate en masse from one social networking tool to the next. Early social media sites such as Classmates.com, Friendster, and SixDegrees made way for MySpace, which is now losing users to Facebook. Twitter was the first micro-blogging tool to gain critical mass, but others are knocking on Twitter's door. Plurk and Pownce have been gaining some trial from Twitter users exasperated that the service has been down so frequently. Plurk and Pownce are arguably more functional and do a better job of allowing users to track threaded discussions, but neither is yet making much of a dent on Twitter's world domination.

And now Google is threatening to shake up the social media landscape with Friend Connect, it's tool that will permit consumers and site owners to create niche social networks that people can join using a single, portable profile. With this tool, even small sites can offer social media gadgets such as messaging, chat, and product ratings; and consumers can maintain a single profile and friend list, rather than registering and maintaining multiple memberships in dozens of different sites and social networks.

But even if social media remains fractured, consumers will find and use those tools that make it ever more useful. For instance, today fewer than 50% of the Tweets on Twitter are posted by people visiting Twitter.com; instead, consumers are using a plethora of tools to track, manage, and make posts on Twitter. Almost every tool offers some sort of improvement upon Twitter's own Web-based interface. Popular tools include Twhirl, Twitterrific, and Twit. Other applications that use Twitter's API to offer information and functionality include Tweetscan and Summize for searching and Who Should i Follow? to find Twitter users you might like.

A new and growing breed of tool is one that helps you to aggregate your online life in one place. Rather than managing accounts across multiple sites, you can track, review, and engage with sites in one place. A new favorite tool of mine is Digsby, a desktop application that permits users to setup all their email, IM, and social media accounts in one spot. I can check three different email boxes, the latest on my Facebook site, and recent Tweets in one convenient tool. Digsby really has changed my perception of the difficulty and value of participating in the social media phenomenon.

So, if you're one of those folks who signed up for Facebook or Twitter and are having a hard time figuring out what all the fuss is about, remember to keep things in perspective. Early automobiles were horribly dysfunctional things--they were dirty, loud, unreliable, difficult to start, unable to handle the rutty roads, and required gasoline in an age without gas stations. Yet people didn't reject cars and return to their trusty horses; because the human desire for mobility was so innate, automobiles became ever more usable, and within a couple decades horses were being pushed off roadways by cars.

Similarly, the human desire to be connected, to have friends, to communicate, to share, to show off, and to belong are so innate that today's kludgy social media tools will evolve into ever more usable forms. We marketers shouldn't tune out because the 2008 version of social media is imperfect, but we should be part of what makes future versions more usable and valuable for both consumers and for our brands.

We humans are easily deceived into doing things. Just ask Ben Rogers, Mark Twain's fictional character. Ben happens upon Tom Sawyer, who is toiling at the task of painting a fence. Ben starts out to mock poor Tom for being stuck with the chore, but within a couple of paragraphs Ben is willfully and happily laboring applying paint to the fence.

Tom Sawyer, and Mark Twain, recognized the power of a challenge. All Tom had to say was, "I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand that can do it the way it's got to be done." Poor Ben was no match for Tom's craftiness and his own ego.

Present us with a challenge and provide the means so that we might prove our speed, power, coordination, skill, or knowledge, and we'll do just about anything. So powerful is the draw of gameplay and competition that the gaming industry will soon eclipse the music business. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the gaming industry will reach $48.9 billion globally in 2011, surpassing spending on music and growing at a CAGR of 9.1% between 2007 and 2011.

This many consumers spending this much money must provide some powerful lessons for marketers, don't you think?

On this blog, I've frequently shared information about marketers' use of advergames--games created to increase a brand's awareness, preference, or purchase intent--but now I'd like to explore games that aren't games. Knowing the human desire to play games, how can the ingredients of gameplay be remixed to do cook up a dish that does more than simply provide a leisure activity?

There are some terrific examples of online applications that look like games and feel like games, but really aren't games. Like Tom Sawyer, these sites craftily capture visitors' time and attention with challenges that not only entertain but also create other value.

Google Image Labeler
One of the great challenges to Internet search providers is furnishing relevant search results for those seeking specific images. Search engines don't really know what is contained within the images they index; instead, they make assumptions based on the words that appear in proximity to those images.

This model frequently produces odd results. For example, search Google Images for "Jumping Girl Wearing Red," and just two of the top fifty results are what you and I might expect. The first image returned is of a girl who is neither jumping nor wearing red, but the page on which Google found it contains photos of a birthday party and text that notes one girl "loves to jump" and another is wearing red.

Since no computer can (yet) scan an image and determine the subject matter with any reliability, it would seem providing graphical search results is a problem that defies solution. Some companies are trying to pay people to view and tag images, but this approach does not offer a sustainable revenue model. Leave it to Google to find a workable (if small) solution with the Google Image Labeler.

You couldn't pay me for the dull task of tagging images, but I happily spent 30 minutes doing so for free because Google turned this task into a game. Users commit to two-minute intervals during which they are randomly matched with a partner. Both partners see the same image, enter descriptive labels, and earn points when a label matches; the more specific the label that you match with your partner, the more points you earn. After the match, each partner is presented with the images they saw and the labels input by the other. You also accumulate points and can see how you rank relative to others.

The Google Image Labeler succeeds by using the following elements associated with games:

• Defined, brief time period
• Simple rules
  
• The mystery of cooperating with another
• A points-earning challenge
• A task that requires (and allows one to demonstrate) their knowledge, memory, speed, and spelling
• The ability to compare your scores to others
  
  

Brand Tags
BrandTags.net attempts to decipher what consumers think of brands by asking them to enter a word or phrase that first comes to mind as a series of logos are presented. The results are fascinating to review.

Entering labels for each brand is interesting for only a short while. It doesn't take long to get tired of seeing one brand after another and entering a word into a field. Brand Tags could encourage more engagement by providing more game-like feedback to participants. For example, the site could inform people how the word they entered ranked among the list of words entered by previous participants. (To be fair, this might undermine Brand Tag's objectives by inspiring people to guess what others entered rather than entering their own labels.)

Where Brand Tags turns more game like is with its Backwards feature. The site presents you with a word cloud (where the size of the word is associated with the frequency it was entered) and asks you to guess the brand. On one page, I saw the giant words "camera," "film," "photo," and "picture". This could've been any photography brand, but the page also included the words "moment", "dead", and "old"--so I correctly guessed the brand was Kodak. If the site added a scoring function to the Backward feature, they might generate considerable more interest and traffic.


Free Rice
Charity, hunger, advertising, vocabulary and gameplay collide on this entertaining site. The simple challenge is to define a word by selecting another that it best matches. As you do, you accumulate grains of rice to be donated to the UN World Food Program to help feed the hungry. With each correct answer, you begin to increase your vocabulary level to ever more difficult words.

The free rice is paid for in simple fashion. On each page is served an ad from a sponsor. The site seems to be wholly sponsored by Unilever's Country Crock, Rama, and Blue Band, at this time.

The game is addictive. You quickly advance from words like "vaunt" and "wearisome" to words such as "larboard," "cuneate," and "proem." If you are familiar with those words, your vocabulary is better than mine and you should definitely visit the site to play for a while. See if you can best my highest Vocabulary Level of 43.

Of course, part of the fun is playing for a good cause. Each correct answer earns 20 grains of rice. In quick order I had accumulated over 2,000 grains of rice. That's nowhere near the 19,200 grains of rice that is required to feed a person each day, but it's a start toward helping people in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Cambodia--and all I had to do was play a game!

This site succeeds by generating value for everyone involved. The sponsors are associated with charitable and educational endeavors. The visitors enjoy the gameplay. And hungry people receive needed supplies. To date, people visiting the site have earned 36 million grains of rice and in its first five months, FreeRice generated enough rice to feed more than one million people.

FreeRice.com might consider a couple upgrades to foster even greater involvement. Learning from true gaming sites, FreeRice could spark a great deal more traffic by providing a means for consumers to challenge friends to beat their scores. Allowing consumers to register so they can save and compare their accumulated rice grains to others would create more competition and repeat visits. And a feature that allows groups of people, such as schools or employers, to aggregate their scores would generate a great deal of excitement.


As these three sites show, marketers and interactive developers can borrow from the desirable and engaging aspects of gameplay to create interactions that draw and hold consumer interest. We all can learn from Tom Sawyer: A little competition never hurt anyone!

It's either the end of the Internet as we know it or a smart business move on the part of an ISP, depending upon to whom you listen: Time Warner is testing download caps in Beaumont, Texas. They are offering two plans, the richest of which provides consumers with a monthly cap of 40GB. Customers who exceed their limits will be charged $1 for each extra GB per month.

Early adopters, tech lovers, and bloggers are outraged, but I've been expecting ISPs to begin testing "pay as you go" plans. While as a consumer I don't welcome the idea (since I can recall $150+ bills from Prodigy for my 56k access back in 1994), it isn't hard to see the need from the business perspective. With BitTorrent and P2P sharing already taking up huge portions of Internet bandwidth and demand for high-bandwidth applications growing, ISPs are seeking a way to prevent from getting swamped (or at least to profitably upgrade hardware to keep up with demand).

So, what does that mean to the average consumer? Even though the blogosphere is flaming Time Warner, my guess is that the average consumer doesn't exceed 40 GB per month. Even if you download an entire digital music album per night for 30 days, you'd still have around 37 out of 40 GBs left at the end of the month.

If most consumers are unlikely to be unaffected by the plan Time Warner's testing, why are so many people concerned? Aside from the worry about one's personal finances and the fact this flies in the face of the Libertarian leanings of many bloggers, there is a reason to be concerned for the future. Bandwidth needs are only going to increase, as they have since the Internet went public. Back in the early 90s, pages were all text, then we added images, Flash, music, video clips, application downloads, Massively Multiplayer Online Games, file sharing, and now full-length TV shows and movies. With hi-definition movies available for download running as big as 5 GBs, it's easy to see how quickly a 40 GB limit could be consumed.

Should marketers who've come to rely on the Internet be concerned? Certainly not yet, but it's worth keeping an eye on Time Warner's test and the reaction of consumers and competitors. We'd all hate to see consumers starting to cut back on Internet access or having to consider if visiting a brand's site, watching a brand's video, or playing a brand's game is worthwhile considering the expense.

Perhaps if more ISPs jump into the "pay as you go" model, the costs will come down. Right now, having consumers pay $1 per GB seems expensive to me. We can't really know what a gig of throughput costs Time Warner but we can look at the plans offered by the big hosting companies, and it would seem Time Warner sees costs of a dime or less. Maybe if Comcast and others adopt this approach, Time Warner will be forced to be more competitive and the price of additional throughput will moderate. At a certain price, the incremental cost of gigs won't be a concern to consumers, just as the cost of a few extra minutes on a phone bill doesn't stop people from gluing the cell phone to their ears.

This news from Time Warner isn't the end of the Internet, but it is a potential concern worth monitoring should this small test become a national policy and then a trend across the industry. There is a chance consumers may simply reject this approach; while I am sympathetic and expect other ISPs to follow suit, the truth is that if Time Warner unilaterally implemented this sort of variable-price plan in my neck of the woods, I'd be looking at AT&T and other options.

My friend, Erik Hauser, shared a great article over on the Experiential Marketing Forum. Disney is closing a virtual community it created in 2005 to promote the 50th anniversary of Disneyland. According to the Wall Street Journal, this news is being met with some disappointment and anger by those fans who have come to use and love the Virtual Magic Kingdom (VMK).

The challenge Disney faced is one created by the success of this marketing tactic. According to the WSJ, "Disney says it never intended the 50th-anniversary promotion to run this long." This 18-month endeavor was extended by two years, but given VMK was not launched to be a permanent online community, and considering Disney has fee-based virtual communities such as Club Penguin and Toontown, the company had to make a tough decision.

I have no personal experience with the VMK or any information other than was shared in articles and blogs, but I have learned a great deal about experiential marketing by observing Disney's actions over the years. I believe this situation provides some great lessons from which experiential and interactive marketers can learn.


If You're Going to Make Something a Campaign, Do So From the Start
If you're going to do something cool, interactive, and most importantly functional on the Web and you intend it to be short-term (i.e., a "campaign"), make sure that is communicated from the start. It sounds as if Disney did this and VMK members are upset anyway, so clear and obvious deadlines won't necessarily avoid the potential problems but may help minimize them.

The important thing about taking a campaign approach is that this requires special care for experiential marketers. If all you're doing is launching a traditional ad campaign, no consumer will care when it ends. But if your campaign brings consumers something of value that they'll use regularly (and if the whole point of the campaign is to provide a tool that people will want to use time and again), this requires deliberate planning, communication, and transparency from the very beginning. For example, perhaps Disney did this, but they might have launched VMK with a prominent banner counting down the number of days until the end of the program so that everyone had their expectations set (and could thus manage their own level of engagement) from their very first VMK experience.


Proceed Cautiously With Temporary Social Network Strategies
We understand a whole lot more about social networks today than back in 2005 when the VMK launched. Today, in the era of Facebook and MySpace, the concept of a temporary social network seems difficult to understand. I think we can all sympathize with VMK users when we read lines in the WSJ article such as, "Disney plans to throw everyone out of VMK and lock the gates -- erasing their online profiles, lives and collections of virtual trinkets and real estate." (I know how I'd feel I lost my Twitter account name, my email address, and/or my Facebook profile.)

In 2008, it's easy to see something that not even Disney might've suspected in 2005 when VMK launched: A place where people create their online selves and form real human connections is not a place that should be temporary. It's one thing to create a social campaign that borrows some aspects from social media--such as product ratings or profiles--but it's quite another to build and then destruct a living, breathing community. We experiential marketers can get excited about the opportunities social media offer us, but we need to proceed cautiously and respectfully of our audience, since true success creating a community can become it's own problem.


Monetization Comes in All Shapes and Sizes
I have no idea what Disney did or didn't try with respect to monetizing the VMK. In his EMF post, Erik says that Disney tried several ways to monetize the community and failed. I'd be interested to learn more.

Obviously, charging a monthly fee is one way to monetize a social network, but it's the sledgehammer approach--easy but crude. If it works, the community can become financially self-sustaining, but if it doesn't work, you'll kill the community.

Some social networks are beginning to find ways to generate revenue through the sale of virtual items. China's QQ made an operating profit of $224M last year; in contrast, the hottest site of 2007, Facebook, lost $50M last year. The vast majority of QQ's profit comes from the sale of digital goods, games, and mobile services.

We cannot know what Disney tested or explored, but it seems unlikely they proceeded without first considering how to turn this active community into a revenue-generating service.


Measure, Measure, Measure
Even though we may sympathize with disappointed VMK users, we all understand that Disney has an obligation to stockholders to ensure value was being created continuing to operate VMK. Knowing the care Disney takes with measurement and with its brand and marketing decisions, I strongly suspect Disney wouldn't have decided to shutter VMK without testing the ROI it was generating.

The question is, while VMK clearly had raving fans, was the fan base large enough (the site had only "a few thousand daily users" according to the WSJ) and the impact wide enough to produce either hard results (increased Disney resort visits or purchases) or soft results (positive impact to brand perception)? We can't know the answer to these questions, but I'll bet Disney knows--and this is probably why VMK is closing.


If Your Fans Are Raving Fans, You Can't Make Everyone Happy All the Time
One thing my time studying Disney has taught me is that successful brands walk a fine line. The more successful you are, the more strongly your customers feel about your brand, and the more they take ownership of that brand, becoming not just "customers" but "brand ambassadors". You can see this not only with Disney, but also with Harley-Davidson, Apple, and other great brands.

When your consumers take personal ownership of your brand, it yields incredible results. It also means you cannot please all the people all the time. Almost any change a successful brand makes will initially be greeted with some level of consternation from the consumer "owners." The key isn't to avoid making anyone unhappy--since that is the road to paralysis and ruin--but to make sure you make the right "big decisions" and manage as best you can the "small decisions."

A Disney example of this was the closing of the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride in Disney World in the mid 90s. Every attraction in Disney parks has its fans but this ride was being underutilized by guests, and with EPCOT offering a view of real sea life, it must have seemed silly to continue maintaining this faux submarine ride through a lake of plastic fish. When Disney closed the attraction, some people were upset, angry letters were sent, petitions were launched, and Disney fans complained and consoled each other on the precursors to today's social networks (such as Prodigy's Disney Fans Bulletin Board, of which I was a member.) But people got over it; they didn't stop loving Disney; and they didn't stop visiting the resorts.

I don't know the care that was taken launching or closing the VMK, but I trust Disney to be careful marketers, to be considerate of their guests, and to make smart decisions when it comes to these sorts of actions. While there is some implied criticism of Disney's actions in the WSJ article and on some blogs, it seems to me that given the strength of its brand, the company may have done everything right and still ended up disappointing some passionate Disney fans.

In fact, this may be the scariest lesson of all: Big success with experiential marketing can come with its own set of problems, so its important not just to envision huge success but to plan for it. Whether it's the viral campaign that goes so viral you find yourself hosting expensive terrabytes of data and bandwidth, the widget consumers add to their site that shuts down once the campaign ends, or the social site that becomes more social than anticipated, success is great, but it can come with its own set of issues.