The River

The personal professional blog of Pamela Parker -- musings on marketing, advertising, media and technology.

Marketing

Web 2.0 Insiders and Carol Bartz

by

picture-139.png

Just got — and really enjoyed — Doug Weaver’s musings on the new Yahoo! CEO in his Upstream Group newsletter, the Drift (latest not yet posted). The gist is that Carol Bartz is an outsider to the insular little Web 2.0 world, but that may be a good thing rather than a problem:


Those not part of our echo chamber “don’t get it” or “can’t possibly keep up.” Well, as Dwight Schrute famously said on “The Office” in a PG outburst: “That’s Bullcrap.”

Truth is, this a business. And business is about leadership and management. It’s about establishing a future vision for an enterprise and then hiring and empowering people to realize that vision and navigate the competitive landscape. It’s unfortunate, but many of the “experienced hands” in the internet business may have forgotten this. We become victims of our own success, slaves to our own cleverness.

JG: “pick up the weight”

by

My colleague James Gross got me thinking with today’s post, “Pick up the Weight. See what you can do with it.”

You see, before I took my current gig, I was something of a “thought leader.” I had a bi-weekly column (and wrote news articles) on ClickZ where I pontificated on the issues of the day — at least where it concerned interactive marketing. I thought big strategic thoughts. I talked to the major players. I updated this blog a hell of a lot more than I do now.

But I consciously chose to give up the free conference passes and the complimentary dinners at fancy restaurants hosted by PR people. Why? Because I wanted to practice what I was preaching. I wanted to do something — pick up the weight, so to speak. If nothing else, I thought it would make me an infinitely better reporter and pontificator on the space.

I’ve learned tons and been a part of creating some really amazing things. I’m too busy to talk (read: Twitter, blog, etc.) about it, mostly, and I’ve occasionally been frustrated about that. But James’ post today cheered me up a little and validated the unsung heroes of our industry (I fancy myself one of these, I guess) — those who may not speak the loudest, but those focused on doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

MTV “Alerts” TWC Customers on its Site

by

picture-125.png

Maybe I’ve buried my head in the ground regarding media other than the Internet, but I’m just learning of the dispute between Time Warner Cable and Viacom (MTV Networks) that may prevent me from seeing many of the shows beloved by my family after the New Year. The Daily Show on Comedy Central? Gone! Dora, Diego and Kai-Lan on Nickelodeon? Gone! Even our old stand-by on-demand channels will be affected, according to a statement on the Time Warner Web site.

But I’m not actually writing about the dispute. What has gotten my attention is the impressive array of online marketing tools that the companies are using to muster customers to their sides. Besides the statement I linked to above, Time Warner has even launched a Web site, TWCFacts.com, that begs, “MTV please don’t do it!” Viacom is asking “you” to pay “millions” more, the site says, adding, “Those demands would be unreasonable any time, but given the current economic conditions, they are outrageous now.” Interestingly, one of their arguments against paying more is that much of MTV’s programming is already available online for free.

Meanwhile, visitors to MTV.com are greeted by a pop-up that says “Alert! Alert! Alert!” exhorting readers to call Time Warner’s 800 number to demand they come to an agreement with MTV Networks. (Screenshot above.) Impressive.

I don’t see any search ads, and who knows whether Time Warner cares on Twitter (as @Comcastcares). But even these baby steps show some awareness of the relevance of the Internet audience — not to mention the huge impact digital media (and time shifting) are having on media monetization these days. I imagine this impasse won’t last long. I wonder who’ll be most successful in getting customers to rally to their side, giving them a possible leg-up in the negotiations. Viacom, as the home of those beloved brands, has a leg up over the most-hated cable behemoth of Time Warner. Sadly, as my husband and I discussed this evening, we have few options other than Time Warner. Thankfully, we’ve got a nice backlog of Dora and Diego taped on the TiVo and TiVo to Go.

UPDATE: They reached an agreement. And TWC is on Twitter. Over on the ClickZ Blog (thx for the link!) they comment:

Hi — I’m the digital communications director for Time Warner Cable. It may interest you to know that we’re on Twitter — follow me at jeffTWC and my co-workers at alexTWC and MsmarTWC

Posted by: Jeff Simmermon at January 2, 2009 1:44 PM

Babycarrying and Online Marketing

by

I suspect more than a few folks are scratching their heads about the whole #motrinmoms scandal du weekend. As my friend @fuzheado said, the divergence in reaction might make a good Mars/Venus case study. He didn’t get what all the fuss was about, but his wife honed right in on the problem.

Not surprisingly, I’m with the wife. Like the super-vocal moms who took such offense, I immediately “got” the problem with the ad — its tone. As a mom with a 5-month-old, I “wear” my baby all the time. But it’s not because it’s “in fashion,” because it’s “supposedly” is a good bonding experience or because I want to look like “an official mom”, as the Motrin ad implies. It’s because it works. The kid doesn’t cry and I can do whatever needs doing. And of course it’s a bonding experience, because any time you meet your child’s needs that’s the case.

And, yes, sometimes my back hurts. Others out there are admitting this, too, even though the conventional wisdom is that babywearing doesn’t hurt if you’re doing it right. So, I don’t think J&J is far off in targeting moms who wear their babies. They’re just going about it wrong. (And let’s not dismiss this as a Twitter crisis. For everyone that’s tweeting about this, there are many others that are hearing about it, or just seeing the ads themselves and having the same reaction. Twitter is just surfacing the word-of-mouth that would have been happening anyway. )

But all is not lost for the brand. Right now, everyone’s saying they will boycott Motrin. This bodes ill for their product for adults and may also impact their product for kids, given they’ve now offended the target that controls the purse-strings.

The silver lining is that Motrin has gotten everyone’s attention. They need to grab this opportunity, while they’re in the online spotlight, to connect in a positive way. They need to apologize and retool their condescending message about babywearing. To make sure it gets seen, an ad spend on mommy blogs is in order. Motrin have shown that they’re not the experts on babywearing, but they can certainly get involved with and sponsor conversations on the topic — a topic that inspires an amazing amount of passion. Whaddaya say, J&J?

Other links:

Sarah Evans on Mashable has a prescription for Motrin, as well.

CrowdFire

by

Battelle in AdAge on CrowdFire:

“We want to get a cloud of media to become something fungible that people can see and work with to create new things,” he said. “I want the performance to go from one-to-many to many-to-many.”


Very cool.

Study: Pregnant Women and New Moms Chat It Up Online

by

With action in Canada around Bisphenol A, the last few days have been hopping with online activity among parents — parents worried about the safety of plastics their kids are using; parents looking for information and products that will help them avoid this threat to their children’s health. From what I’ve been observing, most of the discussions are taking place on sites like Z Recommends — a “mom and pop”-type blog, not affiliated with any major media company — where the information in the comments are as valuable as the posts themselves.

This is the phenomenon documented in a BabyCenter/Keller Fay study released today, which finds that pregnant women and new moms engage in 1/3 more word-of-mouth conversations than other women, and 2/3 of those conversations involve product recommendations. Though the study found that most of the conversations happened in person, the Internet was the #1 driver of word-of-mouth among media.

Stuff like this is one reason I’m so jazzed to work with the highly-influential authors in our BabyCenter Parenting Federation (which FM runs in partnership with BabyCenter). Well, there’s that and the fact that I’m both pregnant and a new mom myself, so I personally love immersing myself in this world. Luckily for me (and marketers), the folks in this world are making tons of buying decisions (and having lively conversations about these decisions) every day.