Sunday, September 28th, 2008
Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report has some interesting data on the who, why and how of blogging. The analysis is based on a survey of 1290 bloggers from 66 countries, apart from their own index.
However, it was the data on brands in the blogosphere that I found most interesting.
The big revelation for me was that more than nine in ten bloggers blog about the brands that they love (or hate). I don’t remember seeing a similar statistic before (and I’ll be grateful if you share a link to a similar study with me) but this means that blogging about brands is more ubiquitous than most brand managers realize. Bloggers also write about a wide range of topics related to brands — from brand or product reviews to news or gossip about brands and their experience with store or customer support employees. It would have been interesting to get a sense of how many of these posts are positive, negative or neutral and how blogging about brands varies across geographies.
Thursday, September 25th, 2008
Pay It To Me is the perfect example of a good idea combined with bad design.
The idea itself is elegant. Users post pictures of the items they desire, along with their prices. Advertisers pay for the items in lieu of having their names and links posted on the front page of the website for a minimum of 15 days. The idea is that the advertisers who pay for the costlier items will attract more attention (but it isn’t clear why).
The execution isn’t as elegant. It’s basically a Blogger hosted blog (and not a very well-designed one at that). Clearly, 30 year old Belgian municipal worker Renaud’s creativity doesn’t extend to website design.
Still, Renaud has managed to get some serious coverage on popular tech blogs and even has a publicist e-mailing bloggers on his behalf. What Renaud needs now is a designer. In fact, I have e-mailed Renaud to check if I can submit a ‘wish’ to hire a professional designer to redo his website.
Saturday, September 20th, 2008
The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption had a busy week, thanks to my talk at Interesting NY.
First, Rob Walker, the author of Buying In, mentioned me in his shout-out for Interesting NY –
The one (speaker at Interesting NY) that caught my attention is The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption. That would be Gaurav Mishra, who writes: “On March 23, I decided to go off consumption for a year to understand an increasingly important subculture whose members refuse to define their identity by buying things.” Here is Mishra’s blog — which turns out to be a book in progress. I was a little surprised to see the top post is about “How to market to consumers who define themselves by their anti-consumerism.”
So I suppose he’s the marketer who went off consumption … in order to become a better marketer? I’m not sure how I feel about that.
But … there’s some other interesting stuff in the blog, which I’ll have to examine more closely a little later, and if you live in New York and want to pay $35 to hear from him and the other presenters at this event, I’d be curious to hear what you think.
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
I spoke at the Interesting New York conference yesterday and I totally loved it.
Here’s the final version of the slides I used for my talk –
– and here’s a transcript of my talk –
[SLIDE 1] Good afternoon! My name is Gaurav Mishra and I’m the marketer who went off consumption. I know… I know… it’s weird enough to say “off” and “consumption” in the same sentence and if you add “marketer” to the mix, it become so strange that it’s almost sublime.
Well, I found myself in the unenviable position of having to explain it all to a twelve year old girl the other day and I all I could do was to talk about dolls.
[SLIDE 2] So, let’s start with a story about dolls. But, first, let me ask all the lovely women in the audience: how many of you have owned a doll? [most women raise their hands] Great! How many of you have owned a hundred dolls? [one or two giggles] Come on, don’t be shy, raise your hand. [one woman raises her hand] Great! Wow! A hundred dolls!
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Tagged Aaron Dignan, Conference, Dallas Penn, David Art Wales, David Nottoli, Faris Yakob, Grant-McCracken, Interesting New York, Jinal Shah, Morgan Friedman, Off-Consumption, Rick Leibling, Scott Ballum
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Friday, September 12th, 2008
I’m speaking at the Interesting New York conference on September 13 about my off-consumption experiment.
I had earlier decided to speak without any visual aids, but finally succumbed to the temptation of using slides. Clearly, the marketer who went off consumption still hasn’t gone off Powerpoint.
Here are the slides I’ll be using for my talk at Interesting New York –
If you are in New York on 13th, do come (tickets are $35 only). Some of the other speakers at Interesting New York are really interesting.
Thursday, September 11th, 2008
I’ll be speaking about my off consumption experiment at the Interesting New York conference on September 13.
I’m looking forward to meet a bunch of really interesting fellow speakers at the conference.
Here’s the final schedule of the three sessions. For some reason, I am bunched with some serious heavyweights like Faris Yakob, Noah Brier, Nick Parish and Grant McCraken and I’m suddenly afraid that I’ll totally underwhelm the audience.
Confirmed Speakers
10:00 - 12:30
Mark Baltazar: How to get run over by a Metro North Train and Live
Aaron Dignan: The game of life. How a generation approaches nearly every aspect of life as a game.
Alex Rosu: Credo Quia Absurdum Est. Romanian Political Street Art (webcast from Romania)
Allan Benamer & Jeff Tuller: Valuing Social Change: Towards a Better World With Numbers
Irving Slesar: Understanding Dreams
Amber Finlay & Bud Melman: Embracing Bastardization: what your reaction to Fan Fiction culture says about you
Joel Johnson: I am my own Grandpa! The good, the bad and the ugly in reclaiming family history online.
Dipti Bramhandkar: Is Reader’s Digest right? Is laughter really the best medicine?
Hillel Cooperman: Cheese, wine, and software? How software is crossing the artisanal divide
Kevin Slavin: Dollhouse Earth - A survey of building on Earth as if someone?s watching from space.
Friday, September 5th, 2008
In a guest post on Drew McLellan’s blog The Marketing Minute, I talk about marketing to consumers who define themselves by their anti-consumerism –
An increasing number of consumers are rejecting their roles as consumers and refusing to define themselves by the things they buy. Instead, they are choosing to define their identities from the experiences they have, the relationships they build, and the meaning they create by expressing themselves creatively.
If you are a marketer, you can react to these trends in two ways. You can ignore them until they hit you, or you can immerse yourself in them, like I have chosen to.
After studying these trends for almost six months, I see that there is a way for brands to stay relevant, even if the seven social trends I talked about move closer to the mainstream.
Simplicity, authenticity and community are the three themes that run through the seven social trends that are changing consumption. Brands that help us clear the clutter in our lives, or enable us to have authentic experiences, or assist us in forming and connecting with communities will become the most important necessities, the only things we can’t do without.
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
When Seth Godin called ads “the new online tip jar” –
If every time you read a blog post or bit of online content you enjoyed you clicked on an ad to say thanks, the economics of the web would change immediately. You don’t have to buy anything (though it’s fine if you do). You just have to honor the writer by giving them a click. You still get what you pay for, even if you pay with attention.
– hell broke loose in internet marketing circles –
That’s all fine and good, except that it screws the advertisers who end up paying for empty clicks and get a poor ROI. Ultimately, those advertisers get priced out of PPC advertising and there is less demand to run ads on the sites with great content that are getting all the thank you clicks. Yes, “the economics of the web would change immediately,” as Godin states. We’d go from a system that works to one where everybody would lose. (Shawn Collins)
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Tagged Chris Kieff, Clickthrough Fraud, Controversy, Online-Ads, Patrick Altoft, Search Engine Marketing, SEM, Seth-Godin, Shawn Collins, The HR Guy, Tip Jar
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Thursday, August 21st, 2008
Saurabh Garg sent me an e-mail today to share his experience with the Nokia blogger review program.
Saurabh has some interesting thoughts on the why and how of blogger review programs, including why Nokia might want to ship out Euro 500 phones to little read bloggers halfway across the world.
I wrote a how-to guide to blogger review programs sometime back and included Nokia as one of the case studies (see Nokia N Series blogger review program). Although Nokia seems to have changed their PR agency since then (why?), the new Nokia blogger review program is essentially the same as the N Series blogger review program.
While Nokia’s blogger review program is great, it would become even better if the website becomes the hub for all social media conversation about Nokia. For instance, I own a Nokia E71, have written a (positive) review on it, and even started a daily vidcast using it. A little link love from Nokia might encourage me to continue to blog about my Nokia E71.
What do you think? Should blogger review programs be ‘push only’ programs or use a mix of both ‘pull and push’ tactics?
Neil Howe — who has co-authored several books about the cyclic nature of American generations — shares some contrarian views about the millenials in an interesting interview with Brandweek (via Murketing). Millenials, by the way, are Americans born after the early eighties.
- Millenials do use social media to express themselves creatively, but their overarching objective is to form new connections and communities –
Millennials are changing information technology. Instant messaging, chat rooms, texting and, above all, social networking. It’s a return to community, but in virtual space. It’s surprising how they are recreating community within the context of a new technology.
It’s easy for millennials to express themselves today, but it’s done within the context of a generation that enjoys being with each other and enjoys customization as a novel way of forming friendships and forming groups. The social-networking phenomenon is taking place within the context of this incredibly vast and intense and unremitting social immersion experience. This is the most connected generation in world history.