Social Media Success & Failure

Learning from brand victories and losses on Facebook, Twitter et al.

Last week, Zeitgeist tried to book a holiday at one of the lovely resorts looked after by the luxury group “One & Only”. This company – which advertises mainly in Vanity Fair and Harrod’s magazine – ostensibly caters to discerning travellers who expect a certain level of service from the place they go to and the people that serve them. On trying to call one of the hotels, no one would pick up the phone, and the call rang off. The same thing happened when Zeitgeist tried again. Zeitgeist fired off a tweet, “mentioning” the company’s twitter feed, alerting them to the fact that a room was in need of booking but that no one was picking up the phone. This was mid-afternoon. At 10pm the next day, Zeitgeist received a private message from the One & Only account:

The only trouble was that the “OOResorts” account was not following Zeitgeist, so he found himself unable to reply. Thus the communication from the account was useless; they either were not social media-savvy enough to know I would not be able to reply to the message without them first following me, or they did not care enough to bother. Either possibility casts the brand in a poor light. It’s far from mandatory to have a Twitter account, but if you are going to set one up, you need firstly to respond to pleas for assistance in a timely manner (within 24 hours), and secondly to know how the platform works. The more equity your brand has (in the case of One & Only, it’s a fair amount), the more it has to lose by making simple errors such as this. In the meantime, Zeitgeist ended up booking a holiday at a different destination with a different company.

Starbucks, by comparison, although seen as a pin-up boy for the creep of homogeny in a globalised world, for the most part has done an excellent job when it comes to courting fans and maintaining a good PR stance on multiple subjects. This was the case again on Monday when it offered free coffee all day to UK customers. Zeitgeist found out about the offer through Twitter, but there was also an event on Facebook. A voucher could be downloaded and easily printed out or merely shown on your phone to your local barista. Now, the key here was, unlike the unpleasant (but free) glass of wine that Zeitgeist was entitled to upon checking into a restaurant on Foursquare at the end of last year, this coffee blend was delicious, it was not the sludge one would expect from an item that is free. That is because Starbucks realise the point is to use the free coffee to encourage future use; for newbies to think “Oh, their coffee is actually pretty good” – it’s not a throwaway gimmick. (It’s also so that people, when in the store collecting said coffee, will indulge in a muffin or some other accompaniment.) Good thinking, guys.

TechDisrupt :: The future of content, digitally

If Content is King, then last week saw the gentry discussing how best to serve their master. The other day Zeitgeist watched a fascinating roundtable from the TechDisrupt conference, where talking heads with varied interests discussed how content would be created, distributed and consumed in the future. The below are some of the more pertinent and interesting things we managed to peel from the chat.

Sarah Chubb, president of Condé Nast Digital, noted that Apple was lending a helping hand to the sales of the publishing empire’s magazines. Since the launch of the iPad (recently revealed to have sold 2m units in 59 days), Chubb states that the device has played a significant role in boosting sales. Regarding the iPhone / iPad split, she says 60% of GQ readers are accessing the publication through their iPad, 40% through the iPhone. For Vanity Fair, fully 90% is from the iPad, which is incredible after such a recent release and given that the iPad was only released outside the US in the last week or so. In related news, it was announced today that The Financial Times “iPad app has registered three times more downloads in its first two weeks since launch, than its iPhone app managed”.

Fred Davis, founding partner of Code Advisors, ruminating on how people perceive content now, makes the declaration, “It’s not about owning, it’s about accessing”. This is crucial. This is ‘I want my MTV’ for the next generation. As we have moved away from purchasing tangible goods like CDs – and to an increasing extent DVDs and books – the pleasure of owning content dissapates. People, however, still want to be able to use that content, and use it immediately. This is where, helpfully, cloud computing comes in. Perhaps this new type of demand makes the iTunes model – when compared to Spotify et al. – antiquated. Buying a track on iTunes is about owning content. It can be bought quickly and easily over your phone via a Wifi or 3G signal, but once purchased, the song is on your phone, it is not kept in the cloud somewhere for you to access at any time from any device. It is not easily shareable.

John Hagel of Deloitte talks of companies of the future having to make a choice between what they want to excel at: product development or customer relationships. In other words, product profitability or audience profitability. Is the company’s USP going to be “Come to us because we know your product” or “Come to us because we know you“? Zeitgeist ponders whether a company, GE for example, might not be able to manage both.

The IPTV service Boxee recently signed a deal with Google to make use of its Android OS, linking with Google TV. In related news, units that the OS operates on outsold iPhone for the first time this quarter. The CEO of Boxee, Avner Ronen, was also one of the speakers present at the conference. Taking an optimistic stance, Ronen stated that one of the benefits of increased fragmentation and availability of content was that, in a free market mindset, the more content published, the more competitive the environment and thus the better the content.

Of course, piracy is an enormous factor, and Davis pointed out that there is still a problem with people not equating downloading a song illegally off of Limewire with shoplifting from WalMart. Perhaps it is now too late for any efforts at education in this matter, as the MPAA seem to have singularly failed to educate the public. Chubb countered that people were now willing to pay for things in mobile that they wouldn’t normally pay for otherwise. This dovetails with the idea of paying not for the content itself, but for the instant access to it. The film industry, in particular, has combatted the threat of piracy in other ways. Now that international box office accounts for some 65% of a film’s total gross earnings, release windows are being narrowed for simultaneous releases. “Iron Man 2” was released at the end of April here in London, a full week before the US launch. The world premiere was supposed to have taken place in Leicester Square, but sometimes even savvy film execs come up short, especially against volcanic ash.

Ultimately, the way we interpret ownership is undergoing significant change. What we used to be possessive of, with the arrival of the mp3 we suddenly felt inclined to share. Increasingly we do not have need of the physical product, merely the ability to use it when we wish. This might easily be linked to the continuing vogue for ephemeral clothing that is besetting the fashion industry, where cheap clothing is made to be worn once then tossed aside like New York Times stock. Zeitgeist thought it fascinating to watch these people prognosticate on the future of content; they may all be completely wrong, of course, but then that’s the interesting thing about the future, isn’t it?

There was much more discussed, and you can see the whole video here.

Promoting “Lost” farewells

Marketing a series finale of a hit TV show should be relatively easy. However, with “Lost”, just as with its storyline, nothing is ever as it seems, as Zeitgeist has previously reported. In that instance, the marketing team at Disney’s ABC network went to great lengths to introduce some clips, that they hoped would go viral, of the start of the final season, only to have the terribly web-savvy fans -whom it had been assumed were desperate for any crumbs falling from the “Lost” table – reject the clips out of hand, choosing instead to wait until they could see the episode in its entirety, and in HD.

Their ultimate gambit was to simulcast the show’s finale (for which, in the US, they charged advertisers $900k per 30-second spot according to Time magazine, “more than anything save the Oscars and the Super Bowl”) across multiple timezones, meaning it was at a comfortable 9pm PST (unfortunately those viewers still had to avoid any spoilers for the three hours after it was broadcast on the East Coast) and a bright and early 5am for those in the UK (with higher viewing figures than the show usually gets in its 9pm slot). Variety reports, “59 countries will air the final episode of “Lost” no later than 48 hours after the U.S. broadcast.” To Zeitgeist’s mind, this sort of thing has not been attempted before to such an extent. When we think of other broadcasts that are viewed live globally, we think of the Olympics and the World Cup; “Lost” hoped to piggyback on this aura of unity. By closing the viewing windows it also discouraged piracy, though Sky Player suffered unfortunate hitches, as did Zeitgeist’s Sky+ recording, which stuttered its way through the entire finale, leaving Zeitgeist to wonder why he paid a premium for corrupted content that he could have easily downloaded for free (albeit illegally).

However, what such synchronicity meant was that, at the time of its airing, there would have been a lot of buzz (facilitated by ABC’s “Lost” page that allowed users to sign in via the site to Twitter and Facebook to post their comments) about the show online, more or less simultaneously. What would usually have been a community of fragmented chatter that was localised by geographical region, with people talking about the same episode, at different times, suddenly became coherent. The official “Lost” Facebook page certainly did much to help promote the show, with regular status updates (commented on by hundreds, “like”d by tens of thousands), clips, as well as the obligatory Facebook event page for the finale, “attended” again in the tens of thousands. Conversely, a lot of people went into hermit-mode during the run-up to the finale so as to avoid any hint of a spoiler. The New York Times writes “The show’s time-bending storyline and layers of mysteries can mean that a single indiscreet tweet might ruin a whole episode for someone who has yet to see it.”

The simulcast was the last in a series of bold moves those in the marketing department had made for “Lost”. To promote the series premiere, bottles were wedged into the sand on the East and West coasts of the US. The doomed plane’s airline that the passengers fly, Oceanic, had its own, official-looking website (which now redirects to ABC’s “Lost” homepage). Variety continues “The Oceanic Web page idea morphed into a competing site claiming a conspiracy behind the plane crash; Find815.com was nominated for an interactive Emmy. The network posted Oceanic billboards in several international cities connected to series characters, then ‘vandalized’ them with conspiracy claims.” During the finale in the US, SMS messages that viewers had sent in were displayed, presumably during commercial breaks. A UGC competition was also run online to see who could create the best trailer for the show (see video below).

Further to this of course were comic books, podcasts and videogames – not to mention the fan-made wiki Lostpedia – that expanded the mythology of the show’s universe. Moreover, as Mashable points out, “Lost was among the very first series available on iTunes, giving the option to watch on-demand on your computer, iPod or iPhone… At the time of writing, seasons 1-6 are available in HD, all for free (with ads) on the ABC website.” Michael Benson, one of ABC’s executive VPs of marketing said that “viewers want to believe there really are people lost on an island somewhere.” By playing on this insight, Benson and his team have crafted a lattice framework of exciting, original promotions. The proof is in the pudding; six years on, “Lost” bows out as one of the most talked-about shows of the past decade.

Location, location, location

Foursquare is to the zeitgeist what Chatroulette was all those days ago. Location-based targeting has been gathering steam for some time, and the potential blossomed with the release of the iPhone 3GS last year. For the user, it allows them to ‘check in’ to a certain place, alerting those who follow them. If said user checks in to a certain place often enough, they become ‘mayor’ of that location. Moreover, with time a map builds up showing definitively where the user tends to go. It is this last point that is of particular interest to advertisers, who are always desperate for more facts and figures to make it appear that the industry they work in is one of cold, hard, calculable facts, with no irrational outliers in order to better know the consumer they are targeting.

An exhibition detailing the evolution of maps is currently on show at London’s British Library; today we seem to rely on maps ever more as they become – with GPS functionality – an important feature on most mobile devices. It was reported earlier today that the Foursquare service has now exceeded forty million check-ins. Not one to miss out on anything that involves the decay of personal privacy, Facebook shortly intends to release its own version where users can check-in through their site, with McDonald’s already on board.

eConsultancy has a list of ten select marketing examples using geo-location, however Zeitgeist are going to focus on two specifically. The first is that of the Financial Times and its walled garden. Borrowing a page from other brands of getting a user while they’re young, the FT may soon begin providing free access to those who check-in in certain areas. Those areas being “select coffee shops located by major financial centers and near business schools including Columbia, Harvard, the London School of Economics, London Business School and London’s Cass Business School”, in other words, superior centres of academia, that Zeitgeist may or may not call an alma mater. According to FT.com, “Only the ‘mayors’ will be granted a free pass, and only for a limited time”. It’s a nice incentive and it will be interesting to see how competitive the race for free content becomes among ostensibly cash-strapped students.

The other example Zeitgeist likes is that of the luxury shoemaker Jimmy Choo, who have decided to organise a shoe hunt. As one blog describes it, “The idea is pretty simple, a pair of Jimmy Choo’s new trainers will check into some of the most exclusive and fashionable places in London, if you can track them down and catch them while still checked in at a venue, then they are yours.” Sounds like a very fun idea and a fantastic excuse to run around town going to lots of great places. Let the games begin.

On Google’s HK move

Nietzsche said that are “no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena”. Zeitgeist has been closely following news of Google pulling out of China to the somewhat more independently-minded Hong Kong over recent days, prompted by cyberattacks that have come from within China. Moving to HK will allow Google to ‘uncensor’ itself. Yesterday Jonathan Zittrain, whom Zeitgeist have previously written about, spoke out via Skype on the issue and its ramifications (via TechCrunch). It makes for interesting watching.

These machinations raise questions about the ramifications of adjusted information, which people are all too willing to accept when it is “free” (financially speaking). It also might raise concern in a more general sense about how we go about using the Internet when one site acts as a veritable gateway.

In Search of Free

A friend of the Zeitgeist team often contributed to articles for Men’s Vogue, until it went under not long ago. As Le Monde reported earlier this week, it is masculine publications which are particularly suffering in the downturn.

In general (as Zeitgeist has already noted), people are not willing to pay for content online, especially when they might be able to access the very same content elsewhere for free. The New York Times recently announced its decision to resurrect its paywall, originally put in place with pathetic results back in 1996. Will things be different now? Platforms like Apple’s iPad may play a key part. Variety has more.

Sponsored WSJ tears down paywall for 24 hours

In previous articles, Zeitgeist have made reference to quantifying the value of content, especially when things are – ostensibly – “free”. The Wall Street Journal recently removed their paywall for the day, in lieu of Honda sponsoring the site and providing free access to all for a 24-hour period. The headline “Prius recall – brought to you by Honda” must make the schadenfreunde all the sweeter.

An interesting move. It encourages sampling and lowers barriers to entry for users not already signed up to the site; yet those already subscribed to the paper might have felt cheated for paying for content that for a time – albeit a brief one – was free for all.  PSFK has more.

Defining “Free”

From the October Zeitgeist…

Jean Baudrillard argues in his postmodern way that we live in a society devoid of absolutes. But what happens to an industry when values become arbitrary? Economic rationale suggests people would choose free as a price model. In a digital landscape, industries now find themselves trying to sell product the consumer expects to be free.

Napster and its revolutionary myrmidons made music freely available to users, with no barriers to entry. For music labels, this has led to a ‘tragedy of the commons’. When everyone has access to a commons – be it a park, or a lake for fishing – the economically rational thing to do is to maximise our own gain. The rest of the community suffers, ruining the parks; depleting the fish. This is ‘overgrazing’. The FT wrote recently on Elinor Ostrom’s winning of the Nobel Prize for Economics for her criticism “of the presumption that common property governance necessarily implies a ‘tragedy’”. Ostrom believes “regulations ought to be thought of as ‘experiments’” as their consequences are “hard to foresee”. Concerns over privacy and security clashing with a desire for increasingly tailored and relevant messaging represent such a challenge.

What does free mean today? Daniel McFadden, the 2000 Nobel Prize winner for Economics wrote, “The solutions that resolve the problem of the digital commons are likely to be ingenious ways to collect money from consumers with little noticeable pain… Just don’t expect it to be free.” Yet users currently live in a world where music, movies, books and access to social networks are all free. Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker reviews Chris Anderson’s “Free: The Future of a Radical Price”, which says it is futile “in the digital realm… to keep Free at bay with laws and locks”. He suggests musicians earn money through promotions such as apparel and gigs, giving their [subsidised] music away gratis. “There is a huge difference between cheap and free”, Anderson writes, playing on the notion, and advantages of, sampling. At a festival, a band’s music might be freely available for a ticket payer to sample and keep. Married with Radiohead’s ‘pay‐what‐you‐want’ model, it might encourage loyalty to both festival and band.

If product and distribution is free, why should we pay for it? The technical cost of intellectual property is zero, and Gladwell admits the “cost of the building blocks of all electronic activity… is now approaching zero”. YouTube is a classic example of why. Rampant video uploading is not only a “tragedy of the commons”, it reveals hidden infrastructure costs: “YouTube will lose close to half a billion dollars this year”, Gladwell notes.

Is there is a rising tide of recidivism? To encourage respect for IP, companies are once again creating scarcity, where none technically exists. Hulu, the FT, Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Twitter are all seeking remuneration models. So what does this mean for those who make and sell products to the masses? In truth, “Free” will probably forever remain as one of several possible operating models. Zeitgeist recently challenged the leader of the UK Pirate Party, Andrew Robinson, about whether all IP should be free, and even he conceded that a variety of payment models – including free – was the only viable route.