10 things I learned from ad:tech Singapore 2009

10 things I learned at ad:tech Singapore 2009

1. Social Media Engagement Tactics based on Social Technographics

• Social Technographics (Ladder) mentioned in Forrester report should be one of the frameworks to form the social media engagement tactics. It will help to determine which market should use key blogger tactics (where there are more "Creators") vs Topic engagement tactics (where there more "Critics")
• Emerging Markets like China has lots of Creators 40% and Critics 44% compared to Aus Creators 26%, Critics 35%. And this could be because China economy is only opened up in last 10 years and this creates an outflow of expression/ opinions that may been subpressed over the years. UGC contest like upload photo/ write essays, etc will work in countries with a lots of "Creators" - in this case China.

2. Monetise Social Media / Tactics

• Social Media can be monetised when the right social media tactics is used (e.g. team buying - Dell Swarm) In the Obama campaign case study, I am encouraged to see social media helped in fund raising, however the speaker didn't share in depth the tactics to drive conversion using social media. On the other hand, I think content/ topic of Presidential Election is key and social media is just a communication vechicle.
• Different stage of the product lifecycle requires different social media tactics - from new product introduction / crossing the chasm / tornado / mainstream, etc. E.g. Key bloggers tactics will work for NPI (new product intro) more.

3. Yahoo vs Google - Competitor Keyword Bidding

• Google has changed their SEM policy to allow keyword bidding using competitor keyword which means... the next time you search for "Sheraton hotel", you'll get "Hilton Hotel" as Paid search results. Interesting to see the exchange of comments between Yahoo Search and Google on the panel.
• Google uses the analogy of a supermarket where brands has to put their products on shelves and they have to manage get the best spot on the shelves. I think this analogy doesn't work. By changing their policy, it seems like Google is allow brands to cover up the competitor's brand products with a stick over. A customer wanted to buy a Dove product may end up taking a Pantene product - where is the customer experience then? This is not giving choices to consumers but confusing them further.
• By allowing competitor keyword bidding, CPC will go up - brands pay more, customer will suffer poor experience and the only winner seems to be Google.

4. Mobile/Social Media in Japan

• Although Japan has 55% accessing internet via mobile and 51% access social media (ie high usage) BUT most marketing agencies are still NOT using social marketing pervasively as a platform for marketing. A lot are still on experimential stage.
• Mobile URL - there is actually a short URL generator for mobile market so that URL can be passed around in microblogging which has 160 char limitations for some. And Japan has high penetration of QR codes and mobile email (and SMS is not popular in JP)

5. Mobile Updates

• Like Social Technographics, Mobile has its set of framework:

1. Inactive
2. Talkers
3. Communicators - uses SMS/ MMS a lot
4. Connectors - uses on needs basis - check map / flight details/ movie
5. Entertainer - download wall paper/ iavatars/ ringtone
6. Heavy Connectors - heavy on status update / microblogging

6. Youth Panel insights

• News will reach me (youth) if its important enough - hence youths don't read as much from newspaper.
• Prefer Opt in rather than Opt out - don't auto-sign up me for twitter. If I think you are interesting, I will sign up to your subscriptions / tweeter.
• Look for bad reviews more than good reviews to decide if they can put up with the bad experience before buying.
• Prefer peer recommendations than from advertiser
• Need to be unique - Shop clothes online because they want to be unique - so that no one else on the street has it.

7. Email Best Practises

• "No, not now" choice for customer - apart from getting to click now and buy, have a separate flow for "No, not now" that gets channeled into a survey asking them about purchase cycle 30 days / 60 days, etc and work that into a trigger to send reminder based on prefered purchase period.
• Sequential email trigger - for every trigger, look at response type and create subsequent trigger rules for various response - no open, no click, click on review, click on buy, click on tell-a-friend, etc
• Abandoned shopping cart program - create a flow to trigger an addition discount/ free gift X days after for the specific product that he left in the shopping cart without check out and throw in a bunch of other products (under cross sell/ upsell program) so that he can have more choices. This can be executed in controlled session - send reminder 1 /3 /7 days later - 50% with incentives, 50% without incentives
• UGC enhances email relevancy (a case study shows 42% increase in revenue per email)

8. Older Marketers vs New Marketers

• Older Marketers - excel in Brand, Marketing experience and consumer knowledge
• Newer Marketers - excel in Digital Marketing, Experimential Marketing
• both has to work together and be open to listending to each other - partnership

9. Social Media - Obama case study (scott@revolutionmessaging.com)

• Social Media used as 3rd party validation.
• Ease of adding video to pages - this sounds tactical but it a strategic move to create video viral.
• With the right convincing content / key message, delivered by right media (e.g. video), customer will move their mouse from $10 donation to $20 donation. This is the needle we want to move.
• In US, mobile subscribers have to pay for incoming and outgoing SMS/MMS.. hence mobile is still not big in US.
• Key influencers can even be your barber because they talk all the time. In Singapore, it could be taxi drivers.

10. Publisher vs Content Creators

• Its interesting to put FT and BBC next to Google and Yahoo. It seems the tranditional content creator has not reinvent to catch up with the new model of content distribution. When Google and Yahoo provides all the tools to aggregate content from various sources to meet customers needs of new form of content consumption, content creators grapple with copy rights issues, new business model that works with new way of content consumption.

Download presentations

• Forrester's report - Digital Consumers & Interactive Marketing in APAC - The State Of Play by Steven Noble, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research (Note: I got a call from Forrestor 2 hours later after I downloaded their presentation ... amazing!)
• Advertising Networks & Exchanges From Chris Schaumann, Microsoft.

URLS mentioned

• www.mob.com - social networking site
• www.iab.sg - Singapore first Interactive Advertising Bureau. WWW version is at www.iab.net
• www.paywhatyouwant.com.sg - Iibs hotel campaign site
• http://www.eventful.com/ -social network of consumer events
• http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/ - uses Microsoft Silverlight technologies

Acronymns / terms mentioned

• CPM - Cost per impression
• CPC - Cost per click (not cost per conversion - conversion - refer to CPA)
• CPA - Cost per Acquisition
• CPI - Cost per Interaction
• CPE - Cost per Engagement
• CPP - Cost per Period (time)
• CP#@$! - Cited by one of panelists who "likes to swear"
• Prospect Acquisition Cost
• Customer Acquisition Cost
• Prospect Asset Value
• CSR - Corporate social responsibility

Quotes

• "Brands have to be prepared to give control to customers"
• "Content proliferation (distribution & aggregation) is a thread to content production"
• "We lost Encarta to Wikipedia"
• "The web flattens the marketing funnel"
• "All impresssions are not created equal"
• "Social Stream of consciousness" -- ???

Statistics Mentioned

• Straits times full page color ad - S$28K (from SPH Raymond Teoh)
• 56% of mobile users in AP are happy to receive advertising if its relevant
• 15% uplift in results if 360 marketing is used (instead of marketing in silo media)
• $60 for a Obama poster on online store
• Consumer visits 85 online sites a month.
• Hotel Intercon analytics team grew from 4 to 40 in 3 years.