Web traffic : Eaon in Brand Republic this week
I wrote this for Brand Republic ages ago and had forgotten about it, it just appeared today. In case you can’t log in to BR (Ithink you need to be a subscriber, not sure?) I’ve re posted it here.
As an aside, i think i’ve been sub-edited as I’m fairly certain that the liberal sprinkling of the c-word (consumer)was not my doing. I’ve amended it for republication here.
“How to generate traffic to your website:
Conventional marketing usually involves investing a lot of time, effort and money trying to interrupt people who are busy doing something else and probably don’t care about your products or services — and it’s usually through advertising.
About 5 years ago I could expect to encounter around 1,000 marketing messages per day as I go about my business. Today with more fragmented media channels, it’s closer to 5,000.
The bad news for brands is that I am now better equipped for ignoring their messages than ever before.
The good news for brands is that they have assets to affect this that are massively underused and undervalued, which come in the form of the customers they already have.
More importantly, there’s the core group of those customers who are strong brand ambassadors.
Brands need to work out who these people are, get their permission, build a relationship and dialogue, and then ask!
The big question is, can brands handle the fact that no-one actually cares much about them?
People care about their own passions and the groups and communities that they are part of — even those that are extremely brand loyal only care because their chosen brands make it easy for them to do what they want to do (not vice versa).
We need to give our customers the tools to make their brand experience personal and relevant.
Build the affiliations — syndicate the content using RSS and embed codes.
Attract visitors by sending them away — link out to the individuals and groups that are talking about the same stuff.
The nature of the web is not as a communication channel, it’s a connection channel.
Amazon.com is of course the great example of this empowerment of the customer: A friend of mine produces a podcast on Buddhism.
He has a core community of around 200,000 listeners via his blog and i-tunes. Amazon’s affiliate shops allow him to create his own “shop” within Amazon via a widget embedded in the blog where listeners can easily purchase further reading material to aid their practice.
Brands need to think about their site: “Is the content compelling? Is it worth talking about? Have I set in place the mechanisms to allow my best customers to personalise their experience, adapt and share the message? Does my site serve the needs and desires of my customers, not just the brand message? Do I have the systems in place to be able to listen and quickly respond - with a human voice - to comments and queries?”
And finally, brands need to ensure that their products, services and customer service is so good, actually forget good, so great that their core group of influential fans have something to shout about.”
Opportunity: a challenge for 2009
People are spending less, retailers are going under, agencies are laying off staff and the weather is unseasonably cold. 2009 started as 2008 ended, with many in the communications business wondering what lies in our immediate future in these troubled times.
I remember listening to Timo Veikkola from Nokia (who on an unrelated note holds one of the coolest job titles I’ve stumbled across - Future Strategist) at PSFK London 18 months ago telling us that the future will be utterly fantastic. He was right, but not in the way I interpreted it back then.
A perfect storm has been brewing for the last decade, and perhaps we are now entering the vortex of this beast. Media consumption has diversified beyond many “experts’” predictions (remember the guy from IBM who said there was a worldwide market for “maybe 5 computers”?), people are more cynical than ever with regards to their attitudes towards profit-seeking corporations and the economic avarice that was bred during the industrial revolution under the guise of free-market capitalism has crippled our economies to a degree that could never have been predicted.
With this backdrop, how is the future fantastic and what does an agency like Geronimo have to look forward to this year?
If I could boil it all down to one word I would say: opportunity.
There are a myriad of clichés that tell us how in tough times, the best shine. And in that is the challenge that is on our doorstep as individuals, agencies and an industry. Are we really ‘creative’? Or have we been hiding behind our self-appointed expertise and generous budgets? Do we really believe in the primacy of the idea, or is it the primacy of ‘I hope this idea convinces a panel to give it an award’? Can we tailor our messages to the complex reality that faces customers and people today, or are we more from the ‘throw enough things at a wall, and something will stick’ school of thought? These are the questions we need to asking ourselves, because the time to really prove what we as an industry have been telling clients for years (namely that we understand people and are the most skilled in providing the service we do) is now.
Now is the time for us to give people communication ideas that resonate with them, that make their lives better, even if only in a tiny way. The value of a positive experience, the power of good if you will, has often been overshadowed by our own egotistical drive for obtuse creativity that extravagant budgeting has allowed. Now that the belt has been tightened, it’s the value of the idea, the experience that is paramount. We need to be more effective than we have ever been before.
The only way to survive in these times is for us to be exceptional at what we do.
How’s that for a challenge?
Sam
Geronimo wins GlaxoSmithKline work
Press Release
Geronimo wins GlaxoSmithKline work
Following a pitch, the Consumer Healthcare business of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has appointed integrated marketing agency Geronimo to help establish Imigran Recovery, a unique over-the-counter migraine relief product, as an empathetic migraine expert.
Geronimo has created and launched a new website imigranrecovery.co.uk to encourage trial, loyalty and word of mouth amongst consumers, which will also act as a platform for an ongoing eCRM campaign. The site launched this week, and is full of useful information and tools for migraine sufferers, as well as being fully integrated with PR and POS activity.
Speaking about the appointment, Group Account Director at Geronimo, Sara Evans said:
“This is the latest in a long line of recent wins for Geronimo. Taking our place on the GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare roster is testament to our growing integrated digital capabilities and we look forward to developing our relationship with them further”.
Jacqui Szlachetko of GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare added:
“Geronimo understood our need to engage consumers with the Imigran Recovery brand, but also recognised the importance of ROI and accountability. Their knowledge and experience of the digital sphere and our target audience gives us confidence in achieving our objectives”.
are ‘rewards’ the new ‘free’?
I must admit this slipped past my radar until recently.
Nectar, the UK supermarket loyalty card sceme, now gives you music ‘free’ as rewards.
Like perks as the new ‘free’…or what trendwatching call perkonomics.
‘A new breed of perks and privileges, added to brands’ regular offerings, is satisfying consumers’ ever-growing desire for novel forms of status and/or convenience, across all industries. The benefits for brands are equally promising: from escaping commoditization, to showing empathy in turbulent times.’
For certain artists and genres the ‘perk’ model suits better than the ‘free’ model of radiohead, prince et al.
The music is free but manages to retain it’s ‘value’ in what could be described as a slightly jaded market of free everything (ie where free just means ‘worthless’).
And i’m still trying to work out where this sits in Chris Andersons ‘four kinds of free‘.
For added value, fans who downloaded Dido’s free track ‘Look No Further’ are entered into a prize draw to win a VIP trip with 4 nights accomm to a playback of her new album in NYC.
Eaon Pritchard, Head of Digital
Flash on the beach - Day 3
Ok to complete the set here is a review of all the stuff I saw on Wednesday and the final session on Tuesday.
Tuesday 8pm
Rober Hodgin
This is a bit of a strange one for Flash on the Beach as he hasn’t used Flash for quite some time and now mostly uses an open source compiler called processing. His work is mostly visualisers for music and the stuff really blows you away. The work pulses and explodes in time to the music and is all rendered on the fly in time to the music. It was the kind of work that makes all but the most talented designers/coders feel inferior. You can see some of his work on his vimeo gallery.
The Party
There was then a party in the Honey Club down on the sea front, which didn’t turn out to have many honeys, just geeks. There were burlesque dancers and a musician, not sure why. The £1 a bottle beer ran out within 2 hours so I moved on elsewhere.
Wednesday
Seb Lee-Delise - Simplifying Papervision 3D
3D work is some of the most interesting stuff going on in Flash at then moment and the session was designed to give new users of the framework nice easy entry points to start using it. He went through some really simple examples which involved the earth, ping pong and a cow floating in space. The source code was also supplied so we can can do some stuff with the cow ourselves. So now I’m expecting Hiro to to do great things in the next few months using Papervision.
Neil Webb - Cairngorn for beginners
Flex is an alternative method for creating large technical projects for the Flash platform and Cairngorn is an Architectural framework endorsed by Adobe. A bit over my head but was interested to see how a Flex project is set up and how a framework can help with the process.
Andre Michelle - Adobe made some noise
This guy is a nutcase! Using the new AS3 sound model he has completely created a Roland 303 the classic sequencerer from the 80’s. The site has central mixer which you plug components into including the 303, he has a demo on his blog.
Rob Chiu (AKA The Ronin) - Intentionally left blank
Another strange one for FOTB but still amazing. He is one of, if not the best motion graphics short ident designers out there. Was really interesting to see the freeform way that he works and the collaborative approach he has with his sound designer. The work is lovely and well worth a look if you can stand to wait for it to chug down our 56k broadband connection.
Paul Bateman - the ying and yang of Flash
This was a chance to see what is involved in the upcoming Flash CS4 Application and Flash 10 player. The app has lots of really nice new features for Flash designers including a completely re-written tween engine which will make animation much easier to set up and edit, as well as new trick that we could never have thought of before. It was interesting to hear from the head developer on the Flash player and to get an idea of how the team work over at Adobe. Some of the new abilities within the player will give us designers some really nice new toys to play with.
Richard Harris - Beyond Flash
Well what can I say about this guy? Certainly for me it was a case of the best came last. He has don some amazing work over the last 5 or so years.
Starting with Word count which trawls the web and counts the usage of words in the English speaking websites of the world, it then orders them by popularity. He then did something similar for photos with 10×10 by keeping a record of photos that represent what was happening on any given day since 2004. Probably his best known work is WeFeelFine, it also trawls the web searching blogs, this time looking for sentences that include the word feel. It then does some clever stuff to work out gender, age, location and weather to capture that persons feeling and the surrounding data. The interface lets you play, search and categorise with this data. Any articles that have pictures attached are represented by a square.
He then went on to say that he thought the web industry was capable of and some useful ideas on how we could get there. He believes that Flash could be one of the next great mediums and if used correctly with ideas strong enough could transcend the web and become something truly special. All in one of the most inspirational talks I have ever seen, amazing.
Martin Lee, Senior Interactive Designer