Digital Day Toronto - Snap Shots of Now...

It was Marketing Week in Toronto this week. Digital Day drew almost 500 attendees and was jammed with colourful presentations from a number of industry leaders and visionaries.

Perhaps it was the event’s theme question “How do we focus our digital efforts” that inspired such down to earth and practical presentations. The line up included representation from all walks of digital from Social Media, Online Video and Mobile to ecommerce and Digital Signage.

The morning kicked off with Kevin (@Nalts) Nalty providing some from the trenches views on what it takes to participate in online video. Nalty is a well -seasoned marketer with a background in pharmaceuticals and CPG and is one of the most-viewed YouTube personalities. This combination clearly brought some great insight into how Fortune 500s can balance the basics of online media with the newer emerging initiatives. I’ll be writing more on Nalty over the next few days but a great line from his presentation was “It’s not an impression unless it makes an impression”. This was an excellent line to describe the migration from traditional CPM buying to creating more advanced media initiatives.

Steve Levy, President of Canadian Market Research, Eastern Canada of Ipsos Reid gave an insightful presentation on the Pulse of Canadian Digital Marketing. Levy revealed that email had completely penetrated the nation as an acceptable form of B2C communication (80% of Canadians sign-up to receive communication) and that companies were taking email initiatives back in-house from the agencies. This theme came up again in the Search Marketing data as he shared that companies are getting more involved in this discipline.

Sears Canada and Canadian Tire, two of Canada’s eCommerce giants sat on a panel and agreed that labeling their businesses as “eCommerce” was becoming a bit outdated. A more holistic view of the business is more appropriate and as with any other business shifting deeper into the digital channel, they voiced some challenges involved with driving the operation to focus more intently on its online presence. When asked about local media initiatives, Chris Thompson, Vice President of Canadian Tire Online expressed that a lot of focus has migrated from Yellow Pages to the free Google Maps service. When you’re as big as Canadian Tire, with search budgets touching thousands of product skews, Google kicks in the labour required to maintain the local listings.

I managed to listen in on a few of the breakout sessions. Igloo gave a persuasive presentation on the use of social networking software to fodder Enterprise 2.0. A great quote jetted around on the Twitter broomstick “If HP knew what HP knows, we'd be 300% more productive." - HP employee via @igloo”. We’re still in early days in terms of understanding a return on investment but there was general consensus that building a collaborative environment was a step in the right direction.

GestureTek’s President, Vincent John Vincent showed some innovative uses of Gesture-based Interactivity. The integration of games and mashing of data like Google Maps was clearly in swing at GestureTek. The presentation gave case studies that showed how interactivity could be implemented to enhance user experiences in-store or outdoors. This category showed clear growth.

Jonathan Lister, Managing Director and Head of Google Canada gave a great talk on the effect that offline media has on search. He cited a Koodo mobile campaign that showed an 800% lift in search terms as a result of a flight of TV ads. Superbowl advertisers saw a 122% lift in searches on their brands following the TV ads. Lister didn’t miss the opportunity to communicate that “data beats opinion” and that “qualitative Media is critical” today. Another interesting observation he shared was that there is a strong trend in finance specialists moving into the digital media space as a result of the numbers game it appears to have become (in Google’s view).

The final keynote was a riveting talk given by Dr. David Weinberger, Author of Everything is Miscellaneous and Co-Author of The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Weinberger defined markets as conversations. The Internet and the conversations it fodders now enables markets to form based on common interests. He went further to describe these markets as "ripples". These naturally formed markets have time as an added dimension creating a constant movement based on the ebb and flow of interest levels. A great example of this was of parents with sick children. This interest group is as passionately engaged with the Internet as a source of information and communication as it is transient. The market while constant, is made up of social members that come and go.

Today, markets are emerging without the help of marketers. Weinberger described the traditional ways of defining targets as creating “fictional markets” that are based on “demographics that may be susceptible to the same messages”.

I’ll follow up with a lengthier discussion of this talk as it delved into the importance of transparency and its impact on communicating effectively across the online channel.

Truly fascinating and forward thinking content...

"E" For Everyone - Gaming & It's Hypothetical Pool of Data

While watching iCarly yesterday (because it’s that cool), I was reflecting on all the holiday ads directed at kids and the incredible advancements that have been made in the world of toys. I’m not just talking about the Easy Bake Oven that now comes with awesome new frosting tools and a sleek, smooth shape or the doll that does number one and two (why????). I was particularly interested in the video games that were coming out this season, specifically for the Nintendo DSi.

The Nintendo DSi comes equipped with a built in camera that allows you to take photos and upload them directly to Facebook or to play around with them within the unit. There are hundreds of games available and it’s got wireless connectivity so that you can get online using the DSi browser, chat with your friends, play games online and do all sorts of other cool things that the internet affords you to do.

There’s a fairly new (launched about a year ago) series of games out called “Imagine”. There are about 25 titles under the “simulation” series including Imagine Fashion Designer, Music Fest, Secret World, Interior Designer, Wedding Designer and Detective.

It occurred to me how brilliant this would have been a few years ago when I was working with a major automotive company that really wanted to get a handle on what kids were thinking and doing online and off. We ended up building a (today archaic) social network to cultivate conversations and link trending. Even then, we had categories designed for different groups of interest. The Imagine Series has 25 categories allowing kids to fully interact with a vocational interest or hobby. You can design clothes, create a band, enter your deepest secrets and of course...share everything!

I’m always fascinated by the organization, collection and ultimate use of information and so I can’t help but view this series as such a great opportunity to source qualitative data from an otherwise extremely elusive target. As the users dump their details into the network, there are all sorts of trends that can be observed. Nintendo could theoretically collect anything from emerging fashion to musical tastes and behavioral information (through all the “fun” quizzes) and align them geographically by age and any other identifiable traits collected through registration. Even dialogues can be scraped for content over the chat and email systems.

Here are a couple of examples of how the games are marketed:

My Secret World

· Express yourself in the diary, which is fully customizable like an interactive scrapbook

· Know yourself better with dozens of fun quizzes and your personality star

· Socialize with your friends trading tons of customization elements, sharing secrets, taking quizzes together or playing mini-games

Music Fest - Create a Band, Run the Concert!

· You’ve just scored a chance to attend the premier Music Fest, where you’ll be in charge of creating a band, designing their look, and putting on a rockin’ concert! Design your band's logo, customize the look of their instruments, hair, and wardrobe, and earn cash to buy cool new clothes and accessories for your band!

Fashion Designer World Tour

· Design the next big thing in fashion and travel the world to build it into a worldwide fashion label. Create unique fashion collections; even use the Nintendo DSi™ to take pictures and apply them to your designs! As a young designer, launch your international brand, open boutiques around the world, and design the hottest, most wanted fashion in the world!

Last year Nintendo reported 96,220,000 units sold with roughly a quarter between April-December 2008. A separate analyst’s report stated that by 2011, Nintendo DSi would penetrate a staggering 89% of Japanese households.

100 million (by now) units is a lot of hands. Nintendo’s market has primarily been focused on ages 5-17. A few years ago, this was heavily skewed to males but with the introduction of games like Zelda and the understanding that mothers were a prime target (mother influence 85% of all household purchases), the market has broadened significantly to include girls 5-17 and women 25-45.

Now…take all of this with a grain of salt. It’s really just theoretical but it's so deliciously viable. I'm not suggesting that there's a play here for children's intellectual property (not blatantly at least) but I did check the general privacy policy and found this line fairly close to the top:

“we will only collect the information deemed reasonably necessary to fulfill your online requests and our legitimate business objectives”

I'd be curious to see the policies for the individual games.

Data mining has become a game of survival let alone a "legitimate business objective".

In Short...A Behavioral Masterpiece

Consumed with the topic of behavioral targeting over the past few days and then experiencing what seemed like a catastrophic outage on Twitter recently, I started to reflect on the incredible amounts of data that Twitter has at its disposal and the many uses it has to target consumers behaviorally.

There are so many solutions that are available to target behaviorally. To avoid some of the red tape behind the creepy privacy issues, some solutions providers are labeling the systems “re-targeting or re-marketing tools”. It doesn’t matter how you slice it, keeping tabs on an individual’s user activity and then formulating a profile with rules attached to it and an ad server is behavioral targeting.

Now, let’s look at what Twitter is sitting on in terms of data. Here’s an example of a timeline:

• Beautiful Toronto day…sun is shining and the lake is gorgeous.
• @exampleA I can’t wait to go to Cuba next week.
• Driving the kid(s) off to school – 12 month old is jealous of 4yr old brother going to kindergarten - must be a girl thing...
  
• Looking at cars this weekend…can’t wait!
• Loving the Car1 but the Car2 is good too. Any suggestions?
• Ugh Air X sucks – lost our luggage – time for mojitos
• Planning hubbies 40th – glad I’ve got 2 years to savour my youth.

This 7 entry string provides us with:

Age, gender, location, car purchaser, leisure traveler, # of children and their ages.

Now imagine millions of individuals with hundreds and thousands of entries.

Mining this data for advertisers is a huge step forward in marketing. With an integration like what Google is proposing with Wave - communication could be served in real time to garnish any behavioral cue. Sunscreen promotions leading up to the trip to Cuba, financial offers from car companies etc.. But what about analyzing this incredible amount of data from a more general perspective?

Having the ability to understand trending of global car purchasing intentions, travel profiles, financial profiles and the list goes on. Heck it’s almost as good as having access to someone’s personal email content only better because:

• "Contained context" - 140 characters are much easier and faster to crawl than email communication
  
• Micro-entries are not as filtered and contain raw, impulsive communication
• The ability to index one individual within a network of followers and trend consequential behavior across the individual’s network (influence factor)
• The real time factor is subtle but enormous in value – the speed of crowd sourced content is unprecedented and can be indexed with news and current events

Those are just a few examples. There are many more.

In closing, here is some food for thought.

On May 29 I tweeted this:


On June 1st, this appeared in my gmail box.


If you’re wondering why Twitter is taking so long to monetize, picture yourself realizing how much data just landed on your entrepreneurial lap and ask yourself what you would do with it all.

Taking Online Video Shots on the Net...Targeting Men

Here are notes and thoughts on the male focused presentations from the IAB Canada Video Day conference in Toronto last month.

There were two presentations that dealt with male audiences and while most of the rules of creating engaging content apply to all demographics, there are some properties that have a clear advantage when brands are looking to reach men.

These discussions showed how Molson Canadian and the US Army deployed online videos to reach their targets and engage them in fresh new content.


Branded Content - The Future of Online Video

David U.K., Managing Director, Worldwide of Heavy.com presented a neatly packaged perspective on the power of video and how it has evolved to become a high impact media vehicle.

Heavy.com is a leading online entertainment brand for men. The Heavy Men’s Network is a distribution network reaching more than 45MM men worldwide through music, urban lifestyle, gaming and comedy. The company has been working with brands to create branded content and has done some interesting experimentation in video production.

U.K. stated that brands are a part of the modern fabric of society and have as much legitimacy as consumers to create and share content. He also shared his opinion on the shift in advertising roles from the interruptive model towards less interruptive formats such as video commercials, sponsorship and branded content which help consumers access new content.

Based on the premise that we have the tools and we have the critical mass, the current environment is perfect for the creation and distribution of branded content. U.K. argues that consumers are creating content in unprecedented numbers and that brands that have far more resources at their disposal, should to the same.

"Consumers expect to see and are happy to share it if the content is good" says U.K. So it's clear that creating branded content to be distributed across the global social media platforms, vertical publishers and the web is an effective way to engage this new breed of open mindedness and sharing mentality.

U.K. presented the Molson Canadian Code as an example of engaging content that speaks to the core standards of today’s media consumption – the time people make for humour, brevity and entertainment that can be easily shared.

Molson Canadian Code recently won the MEC Global “People’s Choice Award”


Men Like Custom Content Too: NHL.com Brings The US Army's Core Values to Life With Their "Hockey's Finest" Integration

Larry Gelfand, SVP Media Sales at NHL presented the league’s approach to video integration and showed the tremendous growth in video consumption on the site.

Quick NHL Stats:

• 54 million fans in North America
• 13.5 monthly unique visitors to NHL.com
• In Canada almost 50% of the country are NHL fans (14.2 million)
• The #1 sports property in Canada
• Over 5 million unique visitors per month on the NHL.com Network
  

When the NHL launched video on their site, there were seven channels with aggregated videos from the league and its 30 clubs. All programming featured on the site was original, exclusive and all-access.

NHL has invested in their functionality by:

• Built in flash for optimal consumer experience
• Embedded in-page player
• Extensive, searchable Video archive

The NHL broadband platform has been extended across all 30 team sites providing advertisers a seamless way to reach hockey fans across the entire NHL network – nationally and regionally.

Total video “starts” on the site – including live streams have increased 50% year over year.

82% of fans who started a Video, watched at least 50% of that Video

61% of people who watched a Video, finished watching the Video

Gelfand presented an example of customized content that (clearly) targets males using NHL.com content.

NHL.com is currently producing an original broadband series (12 features) exclusively for the U.S. Army. The show spotlights U.S. born players and teams who best embody the Army attributes, as it relates to hockey. The featured players will be from amongst those playing in the NBC Game of the Week on Sundays at 3PM ET.

While there were no details on the results, it was clear that the NHL had made a significant investment in customizing their content for the purposes of producing media properties that were once removed from their core focus. On YouTube, the videos are averaging over 5,000 views each, add the home site and other distribution channels, and the U.S. Army appears to be reaching its audience in an engaging way.

Here’s an example featuring Chris Chelios:



Aligning sports with the military…it’s like peanut butter and chocolate I guess…

Notes & Observations:

It’s interesting to see how brands are working out diversification strategies and expanding on their existing content to create new opportunities.

The Canadian Code plays heavily off the trendy quest for Canadians to identify their cultural fibre while working the male camaraderie angle to gain consensus on general life issues. It's simple and that's why it works.

One-dimensional sponsorships of the past relied on multi-media exposure for added effectiveness (PR, rink boards, TV mentions etc.). Now, the sponsorships have morphed into synergistic new productions.

For men, based on the success stories I've seen - Beer, Sports & Chicks – in any order… work.