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I feel for Sprint, I really do. They were the first and only top-tier national fiber optic voice and data network yet they never made it past #3. They started when analog telephone calls and digital data packets were coin of the realm. Today, when speed is needed more than ever, when iPhone users are complaining about dropped calls while sitting in front of computers with sluggish load times, poor Sprint and its lightning fast fiber still aren’t getting any respect. Fiber is an idea consumers understand. Sadly, the story has never been correctly told.
FIOS, a Verizon product built on Fiber, is gaining mindshare in NY as a faster means of digital transport. (Fiber into the house makes machines scream.) Sprint, on the other hand, is airing a TV spot promoting the HTC EVO mobile phone running over its 4G network — the world’s first 4G network – using a strategy about “firsts.” The TV spots borrows a visual idea from Honda and Google (so much for firsts) showing other technology innovations tipping over in dominoes fashion. A Model T, knocks over a bi-plane which knocks over a steam locomotive, etc. It’s so far removed from fiber, a medium that connotes speed and clarity, you might as well be watching a Fruit Loops commercial.
Verizon, via Droid, is implying “futures” in its TV work. Sprint focuses its images on the past. Quick, close your eyes. Visualize which company gets credit for speed? No contest.
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Tags: 4g network, EVO, Fios, fruit loops, google, honda, HTC, iphone, sprint, Verizon, whats the idea, whatstheidea
Google, the most successful, exciting brand in technology and consumerdom is at a crossroads. Its culture of technological obesity (sitting on a lot of tech calories) has it on the verge of creating a social networking property intended to wrest control of that category from Facebook. Eric Schmidt is a very smart man. He made many investors lots of money as CTO at Sun Microsystems, leading he team that developed Java software among other things. He saw what happened to Sun after his departure when innovation lagged and he doesn’t want that to happen to Google, the company for which he is now CEO.
Search
Fall forward fast is sound business advice but its best done when following a focused mission. Google’s mission (We deliver the world’s information in one click) is not what social networking is all about. As the Web gets bigger and more tangled — like kudzu in Georgia – it will be harder, not easier, to find the stuff we want. Owning search is still huge and will become more so. Worldwide pricing. Finding people. Finding the right content. Finding geolocated mobile phones. Finding video. Audio bits. This (and then some) is what Google and its next gen technologists need to be developing. Why are they focusing on Facebook? Search me. Peace!
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Tags: cto, culture of technological obesity, eric schmidt, facebook, google, search, social networking, sun microsystems, whats the idea, whatstheidea
Mission Control is a well-produced 76 second video by PepsiCo’s Gatorade ‘splaining how Gatorade marketing monitors the web for comments, chatter and potential product improvements. The “war room” at mission control is filled with AT&T NOC (network operations center) -like people in front of multiple monitors — their fingers on the pulse of Gatorade enthusiasts. Looks like they are a busy bunch.
Interspersed with the mission control pictures are great shots of Kobe, Serena, etc., helping viewers work up a sweat…which is what Gatorade is and should always be about.
Right now this vid is kind of inside baseball for the marketing, advertising and social community – plus I think it’s being used in and around Cannes to round up votes. It’s a great spend, by Gatorade as they “set the stage for digital leadership.” I’ve written before that every large corporation in America will have a social media dept. and I believe it. Smart senior agency people have nodded in agreement yet told me that the truly creative ideas and productions that hit wire/less will still come from agencies. That, too, I believe.
After a while though, after all marketers have jumped on this listening bandwagon and consumers are conditioned to provide product input, message input and marketing input, it will begin to dull the strategic senses. It will turn the world into a place filled with screen-scratching marketing interns, when what we really want to do is listen to the influential “Posters.” (Google whatstheidea+posters.)
Let’s watch out for that monster that we are creating. Peace!
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Tags: at&t, Cannes, digital leadership, gatorade, Gatorade mission control, google, Kobe, marketing, pepsico, Posters, Serena, social media monster, whats the idea, whatstheidea
Slide 4 in Mary Meekers’s Morgan Stanley presentation entitled “Internet Trends 2010” shows the pace of mobile internet adoption. It compares iPhone/iTouch to that of AOL’s desktop, Netscape desktop and NTT docomo iMode; laying out growth by users, by quarter from launch.
iPhone’s Internet access tipped 86 million users in its 11th quarter – less than 3 years. Let’s just say the others never came close to coming close. (Check out the chart on slide 4.) Smartphone growth is hockey sticking. Motorola is starting to get it. HP bought Palm and should buy some corporate share. Blackberry is too big and too rich to fail, even though they’re getting a little paunchy around the middle. And we haven’t even started to talk about the software guys Google (after its trivestiture), Microsoft (drawing a blank) and carrier switch provider Alcatel-Lucent.
Ladies and germs, smartphones are the future of computing, commerce and community. They will dock next to monitors and keyboards, but they are the device. Think about the iPhone4’s new videoconference app. Wait for fingerprint apps, and galvanic skin response apps, sobriety apps…. Cool times, these. Marketers, put on your thinking apps (I mean caps), innovation awaits! Peace!
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Tags: alcatel-lucent, AOL, apple, blackberry, docomo, google, hp, iphone4, marketing, mary meeker, morgan Stanley, motorola, netscape, ntt, smartphone marketing, thinking apps, whats the idea, whatstheidea
There was a fascinating quote in The New York Times today in an article on Facebook’s privacy decisions. (Facebook’s privacy actions will either create mad blowback or turn it into the world’s first trillion dollar company.)
“If I’m looking for day care for my 6-year-old, I’m going to put that in my status (Facebook) message, not do a Google Search.” (Sean Sullivan, F-Secure.)
Search, Curation, Advice.
In the world, and on the internet, there are important common behaviors: search, curation and advice. Search is a great way to find things and it’s clearly a huge business; results are organized and prioritized… by the algorithm. Curation, on the other hand, growing in importance online, is search but with a human hand. Social networks help curate in a sense because one “friends,” organized by degrees of separation, share content they care about. But advice? Many a web property was built around advice. Most have failed or languished.
Mr. Sullivan’s quote points to the need for trusted advisors, not algorithm results of independent ranking experts (e.g., Better Business Bureau, Consumer Reports, your newspaper). Mr. Sullivan’s important day care decision will be assisted by the advice of friends and respected Web friends.
As Facebook creates tools that blur the lines between search, curation and friendly advice, it will likely lose its way. People are their own best filters and Facebook needs to make sure it doesn’t cross the line. Peace!
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Tags: better business bureau, consumer reports, F-secure, facebook, friendly advice, google, new york times, sean Sullivan, search curation advice, social networking, whats the idea, whatstheidea
Advertising ain’t what is used to was (a little Southernism I made up). Creation of big selling ideas by highly paid creatives and marketing people, broadcast to millions via TV, radio and print was the ad business. Today, thanks to technology, the ad business is undergoing a diffusion like never before. Digital agencies, though not yet offered a seat at the big table, are new and important players. Google is the most profitable advertising agency in the world and Facebook is hot on their trail. And when I say “mobile advertising” does any one company come to mind? That one is going to be huge…but it’s still to play out.
Buy or Build?
Big traditional ad agencies clearly see the need to offer digital, social and mobile but are asking themselves “Do we buy or build?” Right now they’re doing both: hiring someone smart in each discipline and using them to select cottage industry players who are truly immersed. Better than last year, which was all “Go out and get me a subservient chicken.” Or “Find me those nerds who built the US Weekly Facebook poll.”
I’ve long thought that mid-size agencies were poised to win in this diffuse advertising world, but now I’m not so sure. True, they can more quickly parlay a powerful branding idea into a market-moving integrated campaign but the model may not be extensible.
Bud Cadell is right when he says the old ad agency model is broken. It will take open minds, forward thinking, experience, software, an understanding of brand building, and lots of money to fix the process. I’m of the mind that the successful model is more likely to come out of MDC Partners than WPP. It will be fun to watch though. Peace!
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Tags: bud cadell, diffusion of advertising, facebook, google, MDC partners, subservient chicken, US weekly, whats the idea, whatstheidea, wpp
Google and Facebook are collecting scads of data about each and every user of their applications. They are doing something smart with that data, serving ads, but have not yet scratched the surface of what they can do with that data.
Google bought DoubleClick a couple of years ago, the world’s leading advertising server and analytics company. Facebook is also strengthening its analytics capability.
Planning and buying media, both online and offline, has always been a pretty technical and complicated science and it still is to a large degree. The practice has been specialized and data-driven but always managed by the capable hands of usually creative human beings. Yet if Google and Facebook use the algorithm to parse and predict buying behavior, and do it with NASA-like precision, what will become of ad agency media departments? Or Nielsen? Or stand alone media buying agencies?
Do you think C-level agency executives are thinking about this? Does this keep Mssrs. Levy, Wren, Sorrell and Roth and their successors up at night? Mr. Levy and Publicis own Altas – that was a smart move. Do you think there will be a backlash against Google and Facebook? Are they getting too much power? Love to hear your thoughts. Peace it up!
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Tags: doubleclick, facebook, google, John Wren, marketing, martin sorrell, Maurice Levy, media planning, Michael Roth, Nielsen, publicis, whats the idea, whatstheidea
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