From iMedia: 10 digital tactics for 2010

Drew Neisser lists for iMedia 10 tactics that will dominate digital in 2010. He uses the Olympics as inspiration to describe 10 ideas to go for gold.

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10 tactics that will dominate digital in 2010

By Drew Neisser

December 18, 2009

1. Social media: A marathon, not a sprint
Hoping to become fast friends with their targets, a lot of brands rushed into Facebook and Twitter in the last 24 months without investing sufficient time or resources. In 2010, savvy marketers will increase their commitment to social media by first listening and then offering up a steady stream of engaging content that their fans actually want. This will be particularly true for B2B brands, only 38 percent of which included social media in their 2008 marketing plans (compared to 71 percent of B2C brands).

One comScore study indicated that branded social media activities can have a multiplier effect on search results, providing a quantifiable rationale for brands to up the social media ante in 2010.

2. Mashups: Taking inspiration from biathlons
A few innovative marketers took a shot at mashups in 2009. E.P. Carrillo, a new cigar manufacturer, created a mesmerizing Twitter and Google Maps mashup for its "coming soon" site that tracks cigar tweets from around the world. In 2010, these kinds of mashups will become smoking hot as marketers look to extend the value of their social media activities. Recognizing that tech-savvy consumers glide seamlessly between personal and business, online and offline, mobile and desktop, farsighted marketers will bring together formerly disparate elements into a cohesive and self-perpetuating social media experience.

3. App happy: On your mark, get set, go crazy
Given the success a handful of marketers enjoyed with their "apps" in 2009, expect a blaze of new entries in 2010. iPhone apps that provide demonstrable utility like Kraft's iFood Assistant recipe finder, Benjamin Moore's color matcher, and Zipcar's GPS-based car finder will continue to gain traction. Expect more apps that integrate with other social media like the GapStyleMixer that allows you to mix and match clothes and share them with friends on Facebook.

And don't forget the non-iPhone universe. The steakhouse Maloney & Porcelli cooked up a humorous and somewhat deviant web-based app Expense-A-Steak that extrudes faux expense reports that look stunningly authentic.

4. Measure up: Track every second
With more dollars earmarked for social media, marketers will undoubtedly use new tools to monitor the conversations that are happening with or without them. Radian6 and Scout Labs emerged in 2009 as two of the leading social media monitoring tools. Molson Coors uses Radian6 to stay on top of all the banter about its major brands, allowing it to respond with remarkable speed to one of my blog posts about a Coors Light Twitter account that turned out to be unofficial.

And while these tools are great, each requires a sizeable commitment by the marketer in time of staff, a commitment that can and does pay off. Just ask JetBlue, which manages to enhance customer loyalty daily by responding to any and every customer tweet within minutes. JetBlue follows 117,000 people on Twitter, generating more than 1.3 million followers for itself.

5. POV power: Don't just talk the talk
While lots of brands raced into social media in 2009, few established true connections with their targets. The reality is that consumers engage with brands they like on a visceral level and that provide a distinct perspective on the world. Aflac's Duck quacks up a gaggle of quirky content, including charitable requests that appeal to more than 161,000 fans on Facebook and more than 3,000 followers on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Geico's Gecko has been left in the social media dust due to its surprisingly dry and unresponsive online voice. Ironically, a brand by definition is a point-of-view that, once clearly defined, should guide all communications, social or otherwise.

6. Expose yourself: Win the crowd with honesty
The emergence of several "tell all" consumer-created sites signals the arrival of a new era of honesty and transparency, especially for brands targeting those under 35. Sites like fmylife.com, textsfromlastnight.com, and MyParentsJoinedFacebook.com reflect a generation willing to bare and share all without the least trepidation.

Even the emergence of "Untag Mondays" speaks to the socially acceptable norm of posting embarrassing content that one might not want a parent or employer to see. Marketers that share this sense of honesty, that admit mistakes and address shortcomings in real-time, will find a youthful army of comrades willing to do their bidding. As Comcast discovered, this kind of honesty can even transform a PR nightmare like ComcastMustDie.com into an industry-leading customer service, like its Comcast Cares Twitter pages.

7. Hold the presses: Major comebacks are possible
Though a 50-percent decline in ad pages certifies 2009 as the worst year in print's history, don't write it off as a viable media channel just yet. More than 80 percent of U.S. consumers still subscribe to at least one magazine and 83 percent believe newspapers are still relevant, according to MediaPost.

Experimenting with video in print publications like Entertainment Weekly is but one of the ways certain magazine segments will hold onto their targets and satisfy advertisers. Fashion magazines and enthusiast publications continue to offer a visual showcase that is far superior to what most online magazines can serve up. Models, both human and auto, simply look prettier in print.

And while Procter & Gamble shut down its 72-year-old TV soap opera Guiding Light in 2009, it is cranking up the presses with a custom-published glossy, Rouge, that it expects to reach a whopping 11 million North American households in 2010.

8. Go to the video: Separate from the pack
The emergence of viral video rankings in 2009 reflected the mainstreaming of this approach to audience engagement.

While everyone and their branded brother aspired to cut through with a viral hit, surprisingly few found an audience. In 2010, marketers will undoubtedly crank out more of the same, while a savvy few will worry less about mass reach and focus more on grassroots appeal, providing content that their core targets really want. B2B marketers in particular will find that using informative videos that transform the complicated into the comprehensible, like Commoncraft's Plain English videos, will generate quality leads from grateful prospects.

9. Mobile media: Catching up at last
Despite all the hype by this author and others, less than a third of marketers had a budget for mobile in 2009. In 2010, smartphone penetration should rise to at least 25 percent (from 17 percent in Q2 '09), making it a lot easier to deliver a rich mobile experience worthy of consumer attention. The blending of mobile and social apps like Facebook, Loop'd, and Twitter has also created a new openness toward this medium.

Given the desirable demographics (18- to 34-year-olds with household incomes of more than $75,000) of smartphone owners, marketers should, at the very least, give strong consideration to creating a mobile friendly website, thus allowing prospects to engage whenever and wherever they happen to be.

10. Be positive: Attitude is everything
While honesty is a worthy friend to marketers, don't forget that almost no one wants to date a Debbie Downer. A recent Adweek/Harris poll found "relatively little enthusiasm and lots of indifference for ads that refer to the downturn." Even if the economy is slow to recover in 2010, find the silver lining for your customers and prospects with both words and actions. Like the athletes whose positive outlooks and superior skills propel them to victory, so too can marketers find success with an upbeat message and an unimpeachable value proposition.

Go for the gold in 2010
While 2009 hasn't been much fun for most marketers, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the approaching year. There are more ways than ever to engage with consumers and a new willingness from consumers to engage with brands. Marketers are showing a renewed desire to listen to their customers and offer "marketing as service" that favors the dissemination of meaningful value over disruptive messaging.

To borrow the words of the President after Chicago's disappointing Olympic bid this year, "Although I wish that we had come back with better news, I could not be prouder."

Drew Neisser is CEO and founder of Renegade.

From iMedia: Mobile predictions for 2010

Mobile predictions for 2010

By Noah Elkin

November 30, 2009

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ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:

• The mobile divide among consumers is closing rapidly as more adopt smartphones
• The more relevant gap that persists is the one between marketers and consumers
• To succeed in mobile, marketers will need to provide utility, relevance, and entertainment

Next in Wireless

It's amazing how quickly we return to the hyperbole (emphasis here on the "hype") of yore. Google announces it plans to buy AdMob for $750 million, and the next thing you know, we start hearing that next year is the year of mobile. This is hardly anything new: Industry boosters have perennially declared the year of mobile every year for the past decade, and somehow it never quite works out to be the year of mobile. Next year promises to be no exception. In fact, we'd all be better off reinstituting the moratorium on declarations of the year of mobile in favor of focusing on the serious work marketers need to do to bridge the gap with mobile consumers.

The outlook for mobile is still positive, mind you, but it's possible to have steady, even solid growth without the need for any "year of" declarations. After a decade or more of unfulfilled expectations, we can say with near-certainty that, Google or no Google, mobile advertising and marketing are not going to "explode" next year or even the year after. Instead, mobile will continue to grow incrementally as more brands and agencies fold it into their marketing mix, a trend I pointed to in my recent outlook for mobile advertising.

At the same time, it's also worth remembering that there are two sides to any marketing equation: the marketer and the consumer. On the marketer side, the AdMob acquisition comes at a time of renewed enthusiasm for mobile. A case in point is Millennial Media's recent "state of the industry" study, conducted in conjunction with online knowledge base DM2PRO. The study highlighted two key trends for 2010: more marketers planning on employing mobile advertising in the year ahead, and bigger budgets, especially among the brand marketers surveyed.

The vast majority of respondents to the Millennial/DM2PRO survey also indicated that the mobile campaigns they've run performed at least satisfactorily against campaign goals, although brands and direct marketers were more apt to say their campaigns exceeded expectations and publishers were most likely to say they underperformed. Overall, though, this is a positive finding -- it shows that mobile is working for brands, agencies, PR firms, and publishers alike.

Yet, many respondents, including both marketers and publishers, classified themselves as "non-mobile." Most cited a lack of resources and a lack of knowledge as their primary barriers to entry. Nearly half of the publishers and a little more than one-quarter of the marketers who declared themselves to be non-mobile said the availability of reputable data demonstrating positive ROI would encourage them to adopt mobile advertising. These results suggest that even with all of the positive momentum in the mobile space, gaps still exist on the marketer side.

A mobile divide persists among consumers as well, although it is closing rapidly as mobile users voraciously upgrade to ever more capable smartphones. The NPD Group noted recently that more U.S. consumers have mobile data subscriptions than last year, and the Yankee Group's November 2009 "Mobile Commerce for the Holidays" webinar likewise indicated strong consumer demand for multimedia smartphones with data plans. Similarly, the third wave of BIA/Kelsey Group's "Mobile Market View," an annual mobile consumer study, found significant growth in both mobile internet usage and more "advanced" behaviors such as video viewing, purchasing, and sending.

The more relevant gap that persists is the one between marketers and consumers. As consumers' usage of mobile devices has grown more sophisticated, their attitudes toward mobile marketing have become more negative. BIGresearch's "Simultaneous Media Usage" study indicates that relative to last year, more consumers now dislike receiving text ads, video ads, and text voicemail ads, and more feel that mobile ads constitute an invasion of privacy.

These are not positive findings for marketers, but they beg the question of cause. It's tempting to chalk it up to familiarity breeding contempt, but that seems too simplistic an explanation. When asked directly about their attitude toward advertising in any channel, consumers routinely respond negatively, so more likely, it is a function of the ongoing disconnect between consumers and the marketers trying to reach them.

Marketers can take heart from some of BIGresearch's findings, namely that the percentage of adult consumers who feel mobile ads can be helpful in making a purchase and are acceptable as long as they get content in return both remained stable, dropping by an insignificant 0.3 percent year-over-year. Within this sliver of hope lie the keys for marketers. To succeed in mobile, they will need to provide consumers with a measure (and measurable degree) of utility, relevance, and entertainment.

So let's pause to celebrate the strides mobile has made, but let's also build on the momentum. There's still plenty of work to be done, gaps to be bridged, and problems to be solved before we truly reach that oft-promised year of mobile. With much on the agenda, it's safe to say that 2010 promises to be an exciting year for mobile.

Noah Elkin is a senior analyst at eMarketer, where he covers trends in mobile marketing, content, and commerce.