Apple: turning 'cool' into dollars

Apple is not the biggest maker of computers in the US. In figures just released by IDC, Apple Macintosh (Mac) sales grew 11.8% in the 3rd quarter of 2009, as Apple took a 9.4% U.S. market share, maintaining its position as the fourth-largest U.S. PC manufacturer. Apple sold an estimated 1.64 million Macs in the US over that period, up 11.8 percent from 1.47 million in the same period a year ago. Although it’s not the biggest, Apple may well be the coolest. And remember Apple also invented the iPod, iTunes and the iPhone.

This post is about Apple; the first 33 years. Many would describe Apple as currently the "coolest tech brand on the planet". To understand this achievement we must of course consider the contribution of Steven P “Steve” Jobs; co-founder, CEO, charismatic leader, presenter and front-man; a key part of the Apple brand for most, but not all, of this period. Such is the strength of his personality and his powers of persuasion that he has been described as being endowed with a “reality distortion field”. In a land that famously values salesmanship (and to be fair, all around the world) he has many fanatical fans. A recent leave of absence, while he had a liver transplant, following his earlier pancreatic cancer, sent the Apple Inc share price plummeting. Now he's back. A survey by Junior Achievement, an organization that educates students on matters related to future employment, found that the Apple boss is the most admired entrepreneur among teenagers.

With Jobs at the helm, its range of desirable gadgets and its (in recent years) booming stock price, Apple has accumulated an army of passionate supporters among both consumers and investors. Most would agree it has earned the epithet ‘cool’.

What makes a brand cool? Well it helps if it looks good. And works reliably. And consistently spending millions on clever, creative advertising also has an effect. Of course there are no guarantees. As my old Maths teacher might have said, these are ‘necessary but not sufficient conditions’ for coolness…People have to deem your brand to be cool and it’s important not to appear to be trying too hard. Andrew Keller, co-executive Creative Director of Miami Ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky recently said : “to try to be cool is not to be cool.” He should know - he’s recently had a hand in creative work for Mini, Virgin Atlantic, VW, Burger King and, most recently, err… Microsoft.

CoolBrands is an annual initiative to identify the UK's ‘coolest brands’. The list has been compiled by Superbrands annually since 2001; the 2009 results were recently published. The survey seeks the opinion of independent experts and thousands of consumers. They claim the coolest brands of 2009/10 are:

1.iPhone
2.Aston Martin
3.Apple
4.iPod
5.Nintendo
6.YouTube
7.Blackberry
8.Google
9.Bang & Olufsen
10.Playstation

Notice Apple has 3 out of the top 4 'cool' brands.

Now let’s look instead at the 2009 Interbrand annual survey of the world’s most valuable brands...This is the list of the ‘best’ global brands based on estimated financial value. It looks a little different. Tech brands again feature but not in the same order:

1.   Coca-Cola
2.   IBM
3.   Microsoft
4.   GE
5.   Nokia
6.   McDonald's
7.   Google
8.   Toyota
9.   Intel
10. Disney
11. HP
12. Mercedes-Benz
13. Gillette
14. Cisco
15. BMW
16. YSL
17. Marlboro
18. Honda
19. Samsung
20. Apple

Notice that in this list, Apple just makes it into the top 20, well behind the (these days) rather less ‘cool’ IBM (No. 2) and Microsoft (No. 3). Several other tech brands feature above Apple.

Clearly, ‘cool’ is not just another word for ‘profitable’ or ‘successful’.

So what exactly is this thing called ‘cool’?

Dr. Carl C.Rohde (‘worldwide reputed trend watcher’), claims that what makes something cool is its ability to impart "confidence on a physical and psychological level".

Rohde has identified 'seven themes of cool empowerment' to categorize cool objects and cool people:

• Wellness -- Chai lattes, yoga classes and charitable activities ... anything that makes you feel healthy and happy as an individual and a member of society.

• Masculinity for confused males -- Fashion, sports-related products, grooming materials ... any product that can help men overcome their confusion about how to be a domesticated partner while still being a virile man.

• Femininity for women on the rise -- Any image or product that acknowledges a woman's femininity while recognizing that she's also claiming her place as a power player in society.

• Celebrities -- Anyone with a story to tell while still being extraordinary in a way. Examples: Nicole Kidman's tale of divorce, 50 Cent's hard-knocks life, Susan Boyle .
  

• Cool personalization – In any form, be it a service, a brand or something done on an individual level to make a person feel unique by "putting their own imprint" on objects.

• Technology -- Mobile phones, high-tech outdoor gear, gadgets ... things that help you navigate your life better. (see where this is going yet?)

• Cool branding -- Products that make consumers believe that their lives are better for using them. Examples: Nokia, Puma and yes, iPhone.

Let’s take a look at how Apple got where it is today.

It started out as a rather quirky Silicon Valley tech firm but has risen to its greatest heights in the years since Steve Jobs returned as CEO and took it to places beyond the desktop. Apple Computer was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. It was one of a number of tech firms - including Atari, Radio Shack and Texas Instruments – who sought to transform the digital computer into a home appliance. Alone of that first personal computing generation, Apple and the charismatic Steve Jobs have consistently found a way to ‘touch the Zeitgeist’.

In 1979, Jobs made a now legendary visit to Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, where he viewed a prototype personal computer - the Alto. This inspired a range of ideas about computer design and graphical user interface (GUI) which led Apple to develop two families of computers, the Lisa and the Macintosh. Steve Jobs aimed to make Apple’s products “insanely great,” and he was convinced that they could create ‘personal computing’ and so change the world.

Although the Lisa failed commercially, the Macintosh succeeded, reshaping the computer industry over the next decade. The Apple Macintosh (complete with an impressive 128K of memory and price tag of $2,495 ) was introduced on January 24 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI) rather than a command-line interface. It is hard for us to understand today what a breakthrough this was. The ‘Mac’ rapidly became the industry standard for typesetting and design (try asking a creative e.g. an advertising Art Director to use a Windows PC).

In 1985, before Mac had really taken off, Steve Jobs, was forced out of the company by his appointed chief executive, John Sculley, whom he had poached from Pepsi. Apple struggled in the late 80s and early 90s as Microsoft's Windows operating system became the desktop computing standard. Things really began to unravel when Apple placed a large bet on the arrival of the hand-held computing market. When Apple’s Newton failed commercially, Sculley was himself forced out in 1993.

In 1997, Apple’s current era dawned as Steve Jobs returned after more than a decade away. At that time, many analysts gave him little chance of resurrecting the company, which had largely been written off by the computer industry and analysts (Michael S. Dell, who had by this time built his own PC empire, was even quoted as suggesting that Apple’s smartest move would be to “shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”) Starting with the title of Interim Chief Executive, however, Jobs systematically rebuilt the company’s Macintosh franchise by adding an operating system he had developed while ‘in exile’. And then there were the new products…

In 2001, Jobs introduced the iPod music player, to an unsuspecting world. offering '1,000 songs in your pocket'.  And the size of a deck of cards. (thanks to its 5 GB ‘ultra slim’ hard-drive). This was a stunning proposition at the time and it set the company on its current course as a major player in consumer electronics.

Other iPods followed the ‘Classic’ (Mini, Nano, Touch, Shuffle). Apple has sold over 220,000,000 iPods worldwide. There is no competitor in sight. The iTunes Music Store, created to enable users to fill the device with audio and video content, has made Apple an important force in the music industry.

Then, in 2007 Apple did it again as Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, a convergence of entertainment, computing and communications that has stirred up the entire telecoms industry. To be fair, the Apple TV set-top box has had less impact, but it signals the firm’s continuing interest in the living room.

For now at least, Apple appears to have a comfortable lead in the simmering smartphone battle. Since 2007 it has sold more than 37 million iPhones and iPod Touches, and these devices have become its most profitable product category.

On June 8, 2009, Apple offered its devoted fans a new version of the iPhone, the iPhone 3G S. This third model iPhone looks physically identical to the last version but includes internal hardware and software improvements. Among the changes, the iPhone 3G S has a three-megapixel camera which also records video, an internal digital compass and voice-control features that let owners use spoken commands to make calls and play music.

Advertising has always been a key component of the ‘coolness’ of the Apple brand and its sub-brands. Under Steve Jobs, Apple has consistently launched ‘game-changing’ products with ad campaigns to match.

Jobs and the LA agency TBWA\Chiat\Day go back almost right to the beginning. In fact it is rumoured that every Wednesday, Lee Clow, the creative director of TBWA\Chiat\Day, travels from Los Angeles to Cupertino, Calif., for his weekly meeting with Steve Jobs . They started doing this years ago and have created ads that are both stylish and indeed ‘cool’. In the early 1980s, Clow helped to create Apple’s ‘game changing’ '1984' television commercial introducing the Macintosh. The ad’s simple message was that buyers of the new machine would be striking against the ‘evil’ IBM, portrayed as Apple’s Orwellian foe. Jobs allegedly struggled to persuade Apple’s board to run the ad, which was directed by Ridley Scott (who had released Blade Runner the previous year without box office success!). Lee Clow was similarly adamant when his boss, the late Jay Chiat, tried to shelve it. The ad was unveiled during a time-out in the 3rd quarter of Super Bowl XVIII.

More recently, in a battle reminiscent of Coke Vs. Pepsi, Avis Vs. Hertz or American Express Vs. Visa, Apple took on Microsoft head-on. The 'Get A Mac' campaign ('Mac Vs. PC'), again by TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles, depicted PC users as sad, unattractive nerds, compared with the ‘cool’ (but interestingly never cruel) Mac. Jobs and Clow have substituted Microsoft for IBM as the ‘Evil Empire’ in these Mac ads. And there were even several tailored to the UK sense of humour.

In 2008 arch-rivals Microsoft, to the surprise of many, appointed uber-cool Miami ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky and hit back with their own campaign: 'I'm a PC'. The series first appeared in September, 2008. They followed up with ‘cute’ Kylie and ‘laptop hunters’.

However many commentators, techies and consumers felt that Microsoft was unconvincingly trying to prove it had a sense of humour; clever, ‘cool’ ads just didn't suit it. Apple already owned ‘cool’. So: bad luck CP+B!

Right from the launch in 2001, the iPod was an adman’s dream: a product with a genuine competitive advantage which was beautiful, simple and, well, ‘cool’. TBWA\Chiat\Day didn't disappoint: the advertising fitted it perfectly.

Also check out:

iPod Classic commercial
iPod walkie-talkie man
iPod technologic
iTunes now for Windows

The original iPhone was introduced in the US on June 29, 2007 followed by 3G and 3G S versions .

With  this product, Jobs and his agency seem to have concluded that the device is so beautiful and pleasing to use that it is sufficient just to demonstrate it close up in order for it to sell. So far 21 million people appear to agree.

So what makes Apple so cool? In my opinion four things:

Original ideas - not stolen (or ‘borrowed’)
Good product design/ packaging
User interfaces which are well thought-through and easy to use
Control of hardware manufacturing

Well-designed products are a pleasure to use and enhance the user’s life. Apple makes products that both work well and look good. At a price most (OK not all) can afford.

Apple has always been rooted in Design. Indeed Jobs famously accused Microsoft of ‘having no taste’ (i.e. of being clumsy unattractive nerds as opposed to Apple’s 'Designer chic geeks').

But can Apple remain cool? Over recent years, Apple has created sky-high and possibly unrealistic expectations from enthusiasts and analysts. It has set the bar high. Apple's strategy – epitomized in the iPhone -- has come to depend on a steady stream of hit devices that are viewed by consumers as being so far ahead of the competition that they are worth paying extra for. (Note that Macs have always been more expensive than PCs). How long can this go on? The reality is: not everyone loves Apple .The company has been satirized and criticised for high prices, for tying iPod users into iTunes and even for being ‘elitist design snobs’. In many of its markets, the competition is now catching up and it will be fascinating to see whether Apple can continue to innovate so effectively and thus keep on selling units and increasing its stock price. After all it’s not cool to be a loser; as Jobs himself has said, ‘real artists ship’. We can’t wait to see what Steve has up the sleeve of that black mock turtle-neck next time he gets up on stage to the rapturous applause of the assembled Apple Worshippers.

But whatever the future holds, no-one can deny Apple’s success over the last 33 years. They have made technology stylish. Apple products are admired for their form as well as their function. The combination has enriched many lives. As a result they have made a lot of money.

As the Man says (frequently): "Pretty cool, huh?"

The tech company we love to hate

Remember that company from the last century whom many consider to be the inventors of personal computing? Older than Google, and even older than Apple (just). To jog your memory, here are some of their products:Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Office, Explorer, MSN (bit of a give-away there), Encarta, Live Messenger, Xbox 360, Age of Empires, Halo, Zune (OK maybe you haven’t heard of that one), Bing. Most of us grew up with some of these (sub)brands.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (for it is they) has created four $billionaires and some 12,000 $millionaires from Microsoft employees. Today Microsoft employs some 95,000 people worldwide, of whom 56,000 are based in the USA. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009, Microsoft reported revenue of $58.44 billion, a 3% decline from the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the year were $20.36 billion, $14.57 billion and $1.62, which represented declines of 9%, 18% and 13% respectively. In January this year, Microsoft announced plans to cut 5,000 jobs by the middle of next year. These cuts are now well underway. CEO Steve Ballmer hasn’t ruled out more. We are living in extraordinary times.

Always controversial, Microsoft seems to have acquired a serious image problem in recent years. Compared with Google and especially Apple, it’s just not regarded as ‘cool’. Some have even suggested that Microsoft will turn out to have been “a 20th Century company” and that it is now being forced to pass the baton on (to Google/ Apple/ Dell presumably?). Ballmer is said to have ‘bet the ranch’ on Windows 7 (which launches next month) being a big success.

Microsoft has consistently attracted much criticism. In particular Microsoft, and William Henry “Bill” Gates III, as its very visible (and until June 2008 very hands-on) leader, have been accused of choking competition by bundling its products; especially Internet Explorer shipped with Windows PCs as a pre-emptive strike against Netscape (anyone remember them?). As for desktop applications, Word ‘killed’ Novell’s WordPerfect and Excel ‘saw off’ Lotus 1-2-3. Many have questioned Microsoft’s bullish tactics which have leveraged the dominance of Windows as ‘the’ PC Operating System. Indeed Microsoft has contested several lawsuits and paid heavy fines for ‘anti-competitive’ practices especially in Europe.

Steve Jobs

A world without Microsoft?

Damaging legacy of I.E.6

Steve Ballmer is the larger-than-life successor to Bill Gates; he certainly loves his company but he’s facing an uncertain future.

Here is the viewpoint of a tech-savvy friend:
“Ever since IBM first agreed to ship Microsoft software with their PCs, Microsoft has been charging us for providing an operating system for our computers. The frequent complaints of bloat, backwards-incompatibility and bug-ridden releases (infuriating for PC owners) are frankly justified. If you have been saddled with Vista on a newly-bought computer, it is reasonable to feel defrauded if you have to pay at least $120 to buy what is in effect a bugfix in Windows 7 - just as the poor saps who bought Windows 95 had to pay to get a usable system in Windows 98 a few years ago.”

Strong stuff. And this far from being an isolated case of an informed anti-Microsoft opinion. Vista has been widely criticised (especially when it first came out) by IT professionals and users for being released before it was ready; many claimed it was inferior to Windows XP which preceded it. People won’t forget these bad experiences. The web age is increasingly offering us more choices about technology. So what does the future hold for the nerds from Redmond, WA?

If you want to find true innovation at the moment, and a rapidly growing market, look at netbooks and nettops. These are small, inexpensive, low-power consumption desktop computers designed for basic tasks such as surfing the Internet, accessing web-based applications document processing, and audio/video playback. Originally the netbook market was dominated by Linux. When it emerges, Chrome OS (operating system) will be a big player, although it is in early development at the moment. Also operating in the Cloud will be other players including Jolly Cloud and Ubuntu. Microsoft has established a foothold by offering Microsoft XP as a very low price, but it will be interesting to see if they can compete as the netbook market grows.

Internet Explorer is, in any case, only available for Windows, and so if the operating system of choice is not Windows in this, the fastest growing area of the hardware market, that could have big implications for the future. Currently, IE is at the top of the heap, chiefly (as critics say), because it has for years been bundled in with other products including the various Windows operating systems. Firefox has gained ground in second place.

You work quite differently with a netbook than with a full laptop, and you may not need Windows if all you are doing is email and surfing. The crossovers are also beginning to be interesting... even for a full size laptop, manufacturers are starting to experiment with hardware with low power consumption to get some of the benefits of a netbook.

Currently, cloud computing comes with a price: you give up control over your assets by putting them in the cloud; if a piece of the cloud goes down and it happens to contain your data, it’s bad news. Cloud computing as a concept is itself still under development... there's a lot of work to be done to put regulation, privacy and protection in place. The interesting question is, what is Microsoft going to do in that market? Their corporate style has been very bottom-line driven, and seen by many as aggressive and protectionist. How will they fare when users have a free choice between their products and the competition?

Microsoft is still struggling to adjust to the web, and the choices that it gives people. Bing 2.0 is rumoured for release in the next couple of weeks, but it is still bumping along in third place with less than 10% market share, far behind Google. Google is successful because it works, not because they have monopolised search or hypnotised web surfers; users simply see no reason to go elsewhere. Microsoft haven't made something that really catches on as a choice in the web sphere...yet. People mainly get their products by default when they buy hardware. Yes, there is Linux for geeks with a technical bent and the additional cost of Apple for those with deep pockets, but basically, if you're buying a PC it is still a ‘no-choice’ choice of one OS...currently.

Even before Google’s Chrome OS hits, it is possible to see the potential impact of consumer choice on the market. And more and more power is being handed to the people: the introduction of Google Wave allows individuals to participate in the Cloud without handing over control of their assets to a third party. Wave will merge IM, email, document editing and Twitter functionalities, while giving you control of your data and who is allowed to access it. Instead of subscribing to Flickr or Picasa you will allow them access to your data stream, and control where you store backups, who gets access to your stuff, and where.

The future isn't going to be about bigger, better hardware, it will be about convenient/ appropriate hardware for a specific situation and having an OS which can morph into a lot of things so it can do specific jobs very well, whether on your phone, netbook or nettop.

Google has moved into the mobile phone market with Android, a Linux variant for mobile devices. Geeks are very excited about Android, which is Linux, open-source and has great apps. The word is that Netbook makers are already preparing versions running Android, even though it wasn't intended for netbooks. Who knows what will happen when Google releases their product actually intended for those pieces of hardware?

Most innovations in Microsoft come from the purely technical side of things... and they are not very exciting. The .NET framework has gained some traction on the server side of things. They have been steadily improving their server products. Microsoft certainly excels in creating developer communities and developer tools... they offer a fully integrated suite of tools for .NET programming. (The JAVA world is a lot more fragmented). BUT: these initiatives are hardly likely to set the average consumer on fire; the user’s opinion of Microsoft won’t be improved by having to purchase Windows 7 to replace the much criticised Windows Vista.

There is already an open-sourced alternative to Office in Open Office, which is a useable alternative, and must be considered a real threat to the upcoming Office 2010. Open-sourced alternatives to most graphics programs are already available (e.g. Paint.net, Blender and Gimp). In many fields open-sourced software is no longer the territory of the geek and nerd, but a viable alternative to expensive proprietary software. The world is changing.

Whether or not Microsoft deserves all its negative publicity, it will increasingly be operating in a world in which computer users (and IT managers) are in a position to make genuine choices, in which open-sourcing and crowd-sourcing create viable alternatives to each of those previously dominant Microsoft products. Bluntly, it needs to adapt or face decline and ultimately extinction.

It will be interesting to see what 'Microsoft 2.0' looks like…

Online display: SORRY TO INTERRUPT!

“I find those ads on the internet really annoying; I never look at them.”

Anon. (OK it was one of my teenage daughters)

As you may be aware, those strips at the bottom or up the side of your web page are called banners and ‘skyscrapers’. Increasingly, you can ‘mouse over’ them to expand them and/or click to play a video. All (tell me if you know an exception) will take you through to a landing page on another website, generally owned by the advertiser. You will also have encountered films that play before the video you wanted to see (AKA pre-roll) and ads that pop-up and block the page just when you’re trying to read the content. (AKA the work of Satan). Collectively these ads
are called online display as a convenient term to distinguish them from paid search ads (e.g. Google AdWords). The term was borrowed from ‘display’ press ads; they’re the ones that aren’t the classifieds (small ads).

There is a lot of talk currently about ‘persistent’ online advertising. Two online ad networks, VideoEgg and Meebo, have recently started offering persistent ad formats . Unlike standard banner ads (which users can zoom by as they scroll down the page or move on to the next), these units stay on the screen, occupying a border at the top or bottom.

The idea is that the basic principles of TV advertising work online: show an ad to someone for long enough and it is likely to penetrate their consciousness. Sounds irritating though, huh?

There is a new piece of research by comScore/OPA into the efficiency of online display. At the risk of over-simplification, it concludes that online advertising often contributes to purchases in an way that is rarely tracked by web analytics (often fixated on the ‘last click’). In other words, Search often gets all the credit for online clicks and sales, while online display operates at an awareness level above the ‘purchase funnel’...This is surely what image (‘above the line’) advertising has always done.

Creative isn’t the only way to get attention and engagement for online display ads; the ad format can play a vital role; if the ad does something astonishing (or even just different), it can be impossible to ignore. Broadband connections, rich media and online video have certainly made online display advertising more dynamic. To see just a few of the formats available today, check these out: (suggest you use Internet Explorer with the pop-up blocker turned off, or alternatively skip them).

Snickers

Walk The Line

Ice Age

Hyundai


Today’s digital agencies can offer a bewildering range of online display ad formats including: Expandable Banners, Polite Banners, Sidekick Ads, Homepage Takeovers, Floating Ads, Full Screen Video, Synchronized Ads In Stream, Pre Roll, Page Peel Back (page curl), VideoStrip Minisite Ads +++.

However there’s a fine line between engaging and infuriating; online advertising has just as much power to annoy the audience as outbound telephone marketing (or indeed aggressive door-to-door canvassing). What looks new and cool to the creatives/techies/suits/client (no favourites here!) can rapidly become irritating to the time (and patience) poor consumer.

So are online display ads basically just press ads on a screen? OR Is this an example of a totally new marketing channel (perhaps with more in common with traditional direct response ads where the coupon or phone response was all-important)? This is quite an important question, because if it’s the former, to create effective online ads we just do what the press ad people have always done. i.e. we should draw on the received wisdom of the Age of Press Ads, before what Rory Sutherland, Executive Creative Director of OgilvyOne London, calls the TV Age (presumably roughly 1960-1995) temporarily(?) distracted marketers. If not, we conclude that online display is something new and different so that new lessons must be learned and new wisdom accumulated.

A key question is: should online display advertising be ‘interruptive’ or based on gaining the user’s ‘permission’? It is an inescapable truth that any Advertising must achieve cut-through, ignore this, and our online ads become wallpaper. (Which would be bad; after all, do you remember what your desktop background looks like?).

“You can't save souls in an empty church," said David Ogilvy .

"And you can't bore people into buying your product."

Indeed not; today more than ever, you need to engage them. To grab their attention, sure, but then to reward them by providing interest, amusement, entertainment or promise of gain/reward. In this respect, online advertisers face exactly the same challenges as Ogilvy and his ‘Mad Men’.

It used to be simple. In the old ‘Press Age’ days, the idea was to find a consumer reading a magazine say, which indicated they fell into your target audience. Then, just when they were enjoying it, you hit them with your ad. You distracted them from the editorial, gripped their attention and froze their hand before they turned the page. The picture attracts them, the headline flags them down and then the (long) copy completes the sell. (except they then need to go to a retailer or mail a coupon to close the loop!). When it arrived in the late ‘40s (US) and ‘50s (UK), TV advertising operated in pretty much the same way. The TV ‘commercials’ ambushed viewers who had tuned in to watch their favourite programme. The target housewife was just taking a few minutes off from her chores, to sit down with a cup of coffee, having made and served the kids tea (supper) when she sat in front of the TV and saw:


Fairy Liquid

Heinz

The viewer wasn’t looking for these ads, but generally speaking she was charmed by them, happy to watch; she felt good about herself, her family and of course the brand. (and she imagined her hands were very soft and her kids well nourished). This was the interruptive format at its 1960s peak (helped undoubtedly by the paucity of TV channels and the lack of a remote control). And so things continued in Adland, right through the ‘70s, ‘80s and even after the invention of the world wide web around 1989…

Then in 1999, Seth Godin, in his book Permission Marketing: turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers introduced a new view of marketing: the emergence of the internet had broken the old model and marketers needed to change their approach. The new way is to cut a deal with the ad-savvy consumer; they know what’s going on and they value their time, so you must, in effect, reward them for their attention- you are bribing them to engage with your ad. If you get it right, they will share their good brand experience with their friends/family/colleagues (via Facebook, MySpace or Twitter) and act as unpaid brand ambassadors for you. If you get it wrong they will also share and you deserve everything (bad) you get, so the theory goes. Godin argues that marketers should obtain permission at each stage in the purchasing process and that this is a more efficient use of resources because communications are only sent to people who have specifically requested them. Indeed, UK marketers must abide by the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 , but companies who espouse permission marketing generally go further than the letter of the law in seeking the customer’s agreement for each stage of their sales/ Customer Relationship management (CRM) process.

However, distinguished British Creative Director Steve Harrison, author of How To Do Better Creative Work eloquently expresses an alternative point of view.

While acknowledging the transforming effect digital has had on the world of marketing, Harrison disagrees with Godin on 'permission'; he argues that in today’s cluttered online world ads need, more than ever, to cut through; advertisers need to create intelligent, relevant, surprising messages that stop the consumer in their tracks and engage them, just as Ogilvy sought to do. He suggests that Godin’s dogma of Permission has been accepted without question, resulting in mediocrity; and specifically in bland, unconfident (especially online) advertising which is largely devoid of big ideas; the danger being that a) the ads don’t work and b) the brand itself acquires these same ‘boring’ characteristics. As 21st century marketers, he argues, we’re fixated with the idea of getting permission to do anything; this is the enemy of great creative work; after all, the great admen including Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach and Raymond Rubicam never asked permission; they believed in their clients’ products and offered them with confidence to the mass market, employing powerful ‘big ideas’ based on single-minded ‘unique selling propositions’ (USPs). Harrison argues that interruptive techniques, far from being and outmoded and irrelevant, are as vitally important to today’s digital advertising as they have always been to offline communications.

So what are we to make of all this? I believe the point is that online display advertising should be ‘interruptive’ as opposed to being boring. It should have the confidence of a successful market trader who knows his product is good but also that not everyone will buy from him every time. He sets out his stall, positions himself somewhere prominent so he’s visible but not blocking the road, and offers to engage with the consumer; if they decline he smiles and looks forward to next time. Some online consumers will be on a mission; paying their credit card, checking their Facebook or booking a holiday. They won’t expand our banner. They won’t click. In the same way, consumers are often too busy to notice our poster or press ads; that comes with the territory. Online ads are still ads; inertia is the enemy, the challenge to be overcome by the skills of the Creative guys. You can’t (ever) win 'em all.

Web advertisers (like website designers) must at all times think about the user experience. So: be interruptive in creative, but not in format. Ads that pop-up and/or take over the page, forcing the user to search for a close button while they are involuntarily subjected to your message, i.e. interrupting the web user’s journey AGAINST THEIR WILL, will turn people off, be blocked by the user via their browser, will increasingly not be accepted by publishers and are just plain stupid - i.e. bad advertising. However, if our ad is attractive, sucking the user in with magnetic force (i.e. the promise of value), but not intrusive then it will succeed.

Today’s consumer undoubtedly expects respect from brands; they will engage, but only on their terms. I’m with Seth on that one. The technology has advanced to make new formats viable; some are desirable improvements. Expandable (streaming video) banners are a smart innovation; those consumers who want to engage can do so while the others are not disturbed (or indeed interrupted!). TV ads were a 'killer app' because they offered moving colour images and sound (the closest thing to the salesman selling face-to-face). How much better if the consumers can choose to engage with the brand by playing the film at a time to suit them (and not when it doesn’t). They don’t have to ‘switch our ad off’; they can simply decline to engage.

The great advantage of online advertising is that you can hedge your bets. Online ads can be ‘double-duty advertising’, as Chris Barraclough, the irrepressible Founder and Creative Partner of Barraclough Edwards Chamberlain, calls it, i.e. your awareness ad can also be a direct response ad.

But don’t be too ambitious. When your banner is a small part of a large and busy web page, you can’t afford to be too clever; attempts to intrigue may well be ignored. At the very least you must pass the ‘glance test’; your corporate logo, colour and (space permitting) advertising strapline should be 100% on-brand. Allow for slow connections, old computers and small screens. You can’t guarantee that your ad’s creative will attract every reader/ user but do your best; some consumers will click, some of these will buy; others will choose not to and if they only take out some awareness then that’s still helping the brand. In fact it’s working just like good old (awareness) advertising. So please read those Analytics reports with care.

I hope the ads on this Blog engaged you. Without interrupting you…

PPC: how much will you pay per click? It's all about Quality.

If you know all about Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) you might want to sit this post out (or better, please read and comment; this is Web 2.0 after all.)

Today's big news in the world of tech/digital marketing is the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal, which sees Microsoft become Yahoo's search provider while Yahoo's sales team will sell advertising on behalf of both companies. This will, subject to regulatory approval, create a serious rival to Google in the world of search and specifically in the world of PPC.

A random sample of advertised jobs from this week’s UK (digital) marketing press (online and offline) includes the following:

Head of Search Marketing - Top 5 Media Agency
This is a senior management role for a talented SEM professional. It's one at a top 5 media agency, and is responsible for one of the biggest spending Search accounts in the UK. With a focus on PPC, you will also be able to devise strategy across all SEM activity and provide continuity and integration. For this a deep knowledge of Search media will be required, along with vast experience (7 years plus), preferably agency side.

PPC Account Manager - Top Digital Agency
A rare opportunity to join what is widely regarded as the best digital media agency in the UK has arisen - and as such we require a skilled search expert (PPC) to work in an AM role with financial & automotive clients. You will need to have at least 2 years working in a search-focussed role, preferably within a media or search agency working on big budget clients, managing their PPC campaigns on a daily basis.

PPC Manager - Integrated Agency
You will manage all elements of Paid Search, with an objective of enhancing our current client's marketing campaigns to encourage more PPC spend and gain new business for the agency. Responsibilities: Taking campaign briefings from clients Producing paid-search strategy and integrating it with other media activity. Preparation of copy strategy Building of PPC campaigns in Excel. Management of the trafficing process. Ongoing analysis of campaign performance.

(btw if you successfully apply for any of these jobs, you owe me a drink at the next Digital Lounge event in London. Cheers.)

None of these jobs existed ten years ago. It is estimated that PPC now accounts for 60% of total online spend (Revolution, July 2009).

So where did this PPC business spring from? I thought it might be interesting and useful to define exactly what were talking about, to summarize how we got where we are today and then speculate as to what might happen next.

• What is PPC?

To clarify: we are not talking about natural (organic) search (=Search Engine Optimization=SEO) i.e. making our website easy to find by Google/ Yahoo/ Bing. We are talking about paying for a ‘sponsored link’ i.e. a short (normally) text ad looking like a traditional classified ad in a newspaper except it can be clicked on. On the Google results page, it appears either above the search results or down the right hand side, in the section marked 'sponsored links'. When it is clicked on, you (the advertiser) pay Google for each clickthrough to your site.

Google AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for both text and banner ads. (with local, national, and international distribution). Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line plus two content text lines. Image ads can be in one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) defined standard sizes.

So: you’re effectively buying space, but in a different way from the old offline newspaper/ magazine model. For each keyword you select (which you judge to be relevant to your website), exactly where your ad appears depends on the result of an auction, in which all qualifying ads compete for the best places on the Google results page/s. (The amount that you have ‘bid’ is the maximum you are prepared to pay, per click, to get your ad displayed in the best possible position). And you pay £cost per click x number of clicks i.e. you literally PAY PER CLICK. (you can set a maximum total payment after which your ad will not be displayed - or if it is, you won’t pay).

• How exactly does it work?

Google wants:

(a) The user to have the best possible experience. If the user searches for a given keyword (a single word or phrase) they expect to see a series of results, the natural listings and the sponsored links (= paid-for ads), each of which indicates exactly what they will get when they click on it. Followed, after a click, by a website delivering EXACTLY what they are looking for. In this scenario, the user is happy and Google remains their automatic choice for future searches. So Google is happy.

(b) To make money. Google has created this amazingly complex and successful search engine which currently dominates the web and has become synonymous with search, which is itself growing as more and more users spend more and more time online, searching for more and more information, products and services. As a commercial company, Google expects a reward; it has done extremely well out of selling PPC advertising and intends to continue to do so. Indeed Google makes c.95% of its revenues from Search. (i.e. selling ad space on its results pages, and also on Blogs and Google mail/ Gmail). This helps to fund its various other ventures (eg.Google Wave, Maps, Street View, Latitude, YouTube, Android, Chrome, +++) some of which are currently net costs to the organisation i.e. ‘awaiting monetization’…

Google is adamant that (b) doesn’t get in the way of (a).

“We have a fundamental philosophy with which we push these projects-we really want to improve life for people.”

Sergey Brin, co-founder, Google.


But exactly what factors influence where AdWords places your ad?. Where your ad appears and how much you end up paying depends on the result of what has been called a “Generalized second-price auction”. Let’s have a look at the AdWords auction in detail.
Every time a user does a search, the auction is conducted and competing ads allocated to appropriate spots, all before the user sees the results pages. (Yeah. Amazing, I know.)

Your ad will be at the top or down the right-hand-side of the search results.
Google is trying to deliver the best experience for users so they want your site to be relevant to users who are attracted by your ad; they will tend to promote you in position (i.e. higher up) if they believe this is the case.

Crudely: Position = winning bid amount* x quality score#

*How much you bid per click. (the more you are prepared to pay, the higher position your ad will be shown in, starting with the top of results and working down the right hand side from page 1 and then onto the subsequent pages of results.)

#QUALITY SCORE: How relevant/ useful Google perceives your ad/ your site to be.

Note Google doesn't fully reveal how QS is calculated; expert commentators believe QS consists of:
• Historical click-through rate of this ad (and your others, if any!)
• Ad Copy Relevance (to the keyword i.e. how well the ad matches the user’s query)
• Landing Page Quality (loading time, relevant and original content and ease of the navigation of your site).
Note you can specify that you only want traffic from particular countries (e.g. those visiting the .fr or .co.uk or .de site/s) and/ or day/ time of day.

So working on improving your ‘Google quality score’ means you will pay less per click for better positions (getting you cheaper clickthroughs, from people who are specifically looking for your product/ service, which must be good business). Effectively Google is rewarding you for being a good advertiser, which some might find patronising. But hey, remember these guys have 65%+ of all search traffic(!) which some might also say explains a certain bullishness, sometimes bordering on arrogance…

Owing to the complexity of AdWords and other PPC products and the amount of money at stake, some advertisers hire a consultant or specialist agency to manage their PPC campaigns. (see job ads above). Indeed a whole industry has sprung up based on offering PPC expert advice. There are also various proprietary software products assisting with PPC Campaign Management, Bid Optimizing, Reporting and Analytics.

• History of PPC

In February 1998 Jeffrey Brewer of Goto.com, a 25-employee startup company (later Overture, now part of Yahoo!), presented a PPC search engine concept to the TED conference in California. Credit for the concept is generally given to the Idealab and Goto.com founder, Bill Gross (who allegedly ‘borrowed’ it from Yellow Pages).
Google started search engine advertising in December 1999. In October 2000 the AdWords system was introduced, allowing advertisers to create text ads for placement on the Google search engine. However, AdWords only introduced PPC in 2002; until then, ads were charged at ‘cost-per-thousand impressions’. Yahoo advertisements have been PPC-based since their introduction in 1998. So PPC is still a young industry.

• What’s going to happen?

Historically, Google hasn’t always got everything right. In November 2006, Google bought privately held YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock and still shows few signs of monetizing it. Remember Google Click-to-Call? It was a service provided by Google which allowed users to call advertisers from Google search results pages. Users entered their phone number, Google called them back and connected them to the advertiser, with call charges paid by Google. It was discontinued in 2007. There are ongoing challenges to Google in the areas of privacy/ consumer data retention. Street View has attracted significant opposition in this regard.

Google has, however carved out a massively powerful position in the world of search. Google can’t afford to lose this dominance; its business model is currently largely dependent on it. Indeed AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue (estimated at $21 billion in 2008). We may be assured that Messrs Schmidt, Page and Brin (the triumvirate running the company) are very interested in how well AdWords is doing.

Equally Microsoft will not accept its current small share of the lucrative search market. Its new search engine, Bing, and the much vaunted deal with Yahoo! (acquisition of the Yahoo! Search business would give Microsoft almost 30% of the US Search market) are evidence that Microsoft is going to take the fight to Google. Of course search advertising revenues depend primarily on where the users are searching and here Google currently has a position of massive strength. Even if Bing is a superior product (i.e. a true ‘discovery engine’) Google has strong user loyalty and inertia; suggesting that Bing needs to deliver a SIGNIFICANTLY better user experience to gain trial and change searchers’ habits.

Meanwhile Google is, understandably, not sitting idly by while Bing attacks its market share (after all “disloyalty is only one click away” as Google CEO Eric Schmidt is fond of saying). Google Squared is a response to the launch of Bing; Wolfram Alpha is positioning itself as ‘a computational knowledge engine that draws on multiple sources to answer user queries directly’ and Ask.com has rebranded itself (again). People are suggesting that Twitter's increasing use for ‘real time search’ is a threat to the search engines. Then there’s mobile search with its unique requirements and (currently) restrictions. Much is at stake here. Exciting times.

As with most things in digital marketing, we can measure what’s giving us best results and work to improve our overall ROI. You (or your PPC agency) should be asking: how much are we paying per click against which keyword and what do those clickers then go on to do i.e. how much is the click actually worth to us, the advertiser? Certain keywords will be very popular, (e.g. ‘lowest cost mobile phones’) so that bids required to get your ads shown in high ranking positions will need to be high. Maybe you can do better by bidding on niche keywords? What about your ad copy? Is it persuasive, descriptive and relevant to your site? And what happens after they click through? Test various landing pages, tracking the results. Measure and optimise your PPC ads. Continuous evaluation and improvement should be the strategy. TEST, TEST and TEST!

So if your boss asks you “how much do we pay per click?” the answer should probably be something like: “much less than we would be spending if we weren’t watching the metrics so closely and optimising every aspect of our campaigns so carefully, but still more than I would like.”

PPC will keep evolving. Specifically everyone involved with PPC should be watching Bing and the new Microsoft search partnership with Yahoo. Although the market shares of the various competing search engines are certain to change, the discipline of Pay per Click Advertising looks set to grow in importance within the world of digital marketing.

And oh yes; remember to work on that Quality Score...

Augmented Reality – because the world is not enough...

The British Science Fiction writer Arthur C Clarke once said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

In my opinion, one such technology is Augmented Reality. Or just ‘Augmented’ or even ‘AR’ to the cognoscenti.

I saw a powerful demonstration of AR (by Brand Attention) at the recent London Online Marketing Show. It reminded me how far AR has come.

The basic idea is to overlay something onto the real world (using a webcam) to provide more information than meets the eye. E.g. you walk down a street and view a building through your mobile device; you see a ‘heads-up display’ (or HUD, a term familiar to gamers who play First-Person Shooters) telling you the history of the building you are viewing, its current occupants, and even its price if it’s for sale. We’re talking about adding context to our physical environment. So: it’s reality, but augmented. You get the idea.

AR has been around a while but the technology is only now getting good enough to deliver the experience reliably and at a cost which makes it viable for a mass audience. A static webcam (e.g. the one built into most new PCs and laptops) is currently still best, but as we know mobile devices are getting more and more powerful and mobile will be the key driver for AR to take off.

AR has many applications beyond marketing (yes, there is more to the world!) e.g. museums/ galleries, medicine- for surgical operations, car mechanics/ engineers, tourism +++. Reassuring to know that an idiot-proof overlay will in future remind the car mechanic which tube is the brake fluid hose and the surgeon which is the pulmonary artery …

We, however, are looking at marketing applications of AR: e.g. you scan a printed marker using a static webcam or the one on your mobile device and you see something in ‘3D’ (and in some cases ‘animated’) which in some way enhances the image of the real thing you’re looking at; providing more information i.e. a richer experience. It can bring products, places, things to life which can make people buy. It’s really powerful in-store or at conferences /exhibitions to create compelling, engaging brand experiences. Increasingly, AR will be everywhere that we and our mobile device are; i.e. all around us.

This is a great demo from GE

Just print out the marker/image, switch on your webcam and follow the instructions...

This one is also good, but better if you understand German.

When I first read this article by Faris Yakob last year it really stopped me and made me think about AR and lots of other things (which I guess is the definition of good journalism and good strategic marketing thinking; i.e. have something to say and say it well).

To see AR in various situations, take a look at these:

Mini
Lego
On a mobile in Amsterdam

Damian Ryan, of Results International (a company which has bought and sold many marketing and digital companies), and co-author of the excellent book, Understanding Digital Marketing (Kogan Page) also delivered an interesting presentation at The Online Marketing Show entitled “Winning in the current climate”. When asked ‘what sort of digital business would you start right now? He replied without a second’s hesitation “Augmented Reality- it’s the next big thing.” And he should know.

So look out for Augmented Reality. It’s going to be big. Right now, it’s surprising. Soon it will be commonplace; then the challenge will be to write better software so that the effect is even more stunning.

My personal AR wishlist includes:

a) An instant translation of road signs and notices into the language of your choice (plus extra content, road safety permitting)

b) A clear 3D image of what my daughter’s self-assembly wardrobes might look like when I've finally finished with the drill and screwdriver

c) Meeting people at conferences and exhibitions. Visible Twitter Bubbles (last 3 tweets) plus LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. Instead of sending an IM, you could just walk up to them and…speak, with your mouth! (shocker).

(Unsurprisingly, I know the speed-dating industry is looking closely at AR for their live events; because we all have hidden talents...)

I’d welcome your thoughts on any more possible AR apps, and not just marketing; feel free to comment below, or follow me on Twitter and send me a direct message (DM).

Virals - Reach for the stars

"We don’t think The Beatles will do anything in this market…"

Capitol Records internal memo, 1963.


What makes a film 'go viral'?

A client asked me this the other day. I thought I would share the gist of what I told her…

Firstly I said: "I don’t know" which I thought was impressively honest of me. (Didn’t all those years working in agencies teach me anything?). I quickly went on to suggest that nobody else knows either. Indeed no-one, but no-one, can guarantee success in viral marketing. That’s part of the fun. You can pretty much guarantee failure if you don’t do the basics (see below). If you do everything right, you are likely to get a good number of views on YouTube and/or Metacafé (not to mention Google Video, Break and Dailymotion). But as to whether your film will 'take off' or 'go stratospheric', well that’s largely in the lap of the gods. Viral marketing is so named, because if you get it right, people forward your video to others in an ever-increasing circle via the wonder of the internet and it spreads like a virus (but in a good way) so that the number of views rises exponentially to a massive number approaching infinity (or something.) Of course just because it's easy to forward the link to your mates doesn't mean people are going to do so. Therein lies both the challenge and the unpredictability of this whole business.

In the same way that a music act or a movie can ‘capture the Zeitgeist’ and take off (in some cases against all the odds), so can a short promotional film (or a game). So read what follows, cross your fingers and hope you’re sitting on the next Beatles,
Slumdog Millionaire or Susan Boyle!

It’s worth clarifying that we’re not talking ‘You’ve Been Framed’ or roller-skating dogs here; except where they are used to promote a brand (e.g. Cadbury’s gorilla) i.e. we are talking about viral marketing. We need to get the brand name/ logo in somewhere. The media isn’t paid for, (it’s 'earned' as the PR people like to say) but in general the creative, production and seeding is.

A few basic principles:

1. Content is king (sorry to resort to cliché)

You must give people a reason to forward your film (which after all reflects on them for thinking the recipient would be interested in it) , so your film needs to be:

• Funny

• Interesting

• Violent

• Risqué

Or some combination of the above!

Of course you may upset some people with violent/ sexy content: be aware what you are doing and the risks attached (certain grannies will probably hate you and certain video sharing sites will probably ban you).

2. Get the length right: as a rough rule of thumb: more than 30 sec; less than 4 minutes

3. Experiment with executions; indeed consider a series with similar creative; awareness can build until you suddenly hit the jackpot

4. Don’t try too hard to sell: you can include your logo and brand name subtly; if the film is considered cool, the kudos will rub off on you

(By the way, branded viral games have their own set of rules; that could be a whole other blog post.)

There’s a another crucial ingredient of a successful viral campaign - seeding. In short, this means putting your film where it will be seen by people who will pass it on; they are the digerati, the movers and shakers (OK basically, cool people like us). It’s giving your viral film ‘critical mass’.

As with many branches of digital marketing, a whole mystique has grown up around ‘seeding strategy'. Specialist seeding agencies have sprung up, promising ‘to put your film where it will get the best possible start in life, at the heart of your target audience’. Needless to say these companies are rather tight-lipped about exactly how they will do this (well none of us likes to give away our intellectual property, after all!). To be serious, there is no doubt that very few films can go truly viral without at least a little judicious seeding but, as usual, there are no cast-iron guarantees.

Here are three virals that made it big- very big. Sure, all do the basics right but, beyond this, all of them just 'took off'; maybe yours will too!


• Will it blend? iPhone

• Transport for London Awareness test

• Honda Cogs

For this last, by Wieden + Kennedy (London), credit to: executive creative directors Tony Davidson and Kim Papworth, art director Matt Gooden, copywriter Ben Walker and agency producer Rob Steiner. OK it was shot (live) as a TV commercial, but it’s so good it works brilliantly as a viral film. Which all goes to prove that those old ‘traditional media’ skills are far from obsolete; increasingly we’re just going to be seeing the fruits of such creativity and production expertise in new and surprising places. Which is nice.

So go on; send your viral film out there into the big wide world. Reach for the stars. Good luck!

SEO: "seek, and ye shall find." (Luke 11)

Anyone remember WebCrawler? Infoseek? HotBot? AltaVista? Lycos? As long as we’ve had search engines, we’ve had SEO (= search engine optimisation). And as Microsoft announces a UK roadshow to launch its new search platform, Bing, as a serious rival to Google, SEO is firmly established as part of the digital marketing landscape.

Indeed SEO or 'natural search' is a whole separate industry these days. It can be defined as: helping site owners to optimise their ranking in Google and other search engines when users search by certain relevant “keywords”.

The evolving role of the practice of SEO is currently a hot topic in digital marketing circles. Some are even suggesting its days are numbered as the search engines (especially Google) get wise to sharp practices to manipulate rankings.

To clarify: we are not talking here about paid search (= pay per click) e.g. Google AdWords, where one ‘buys’ keywords (via a bidding process) and Google displays one’s clickable text-only ad as a sponsored link in the Google Results page. (see the results at the top and right hand side of the Google Results Page.) The 'opposite' of paid search is organic or natural search which is the subject of this post.

Why does SEO matter? Look at the facts: 90% of all web sessions start with a search engine (Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, Ask Jeeves etc.) This figure has been increasing year on year as more and more people give up on bookmarking sites (far less actually remembering urls!) and rely on Google to find the site for them. So if you have a website, and someone 'Googles' the thing you sell, you want to appear (or be ‘ranked’) near the top of the listings and certainly on the first page. If you are not, people may never find your site and you won’t be very successful. In fact you risk being invisible, lonely and broke (to misquote Cory Doctorow). Received wisdom is that 62% of searchers click on a result within the first page of results, and approx 28% of all searchers click on results within page 2 or 3. Readers of a mathematical bent will notice that this leaves only 10% i.e. hardly anyone looks beyond page 3. (This raises the question: how many pages of search results do users really require? - which could be the topic of another blog post or indeed a session at an SEO conference!)

One more fact: Google handles between 75% and 86% (UK: Hitwise April 2009) of all search traffic depending on which country you look at; so for the purposes of this post when we say “Google” we mean “Search Engine”. Unhealthy? Maybe, but realistic currently.

Suppose I have a website which sells Golf equipment. Keywords of interest to me might be: Golf equipment, Golf gear, Golf accessories, Golf clubs, Golf bags, Golf clothes, Golf apparel etc etc.

I might wish to consider optimising my site for any or all of these “keywords” (which are often than not more than one actual word). One can achieve high rankings more easily for niche keywords: If you search Google for “Golf Equipment” you will get about 37,700,000 results. (in 0.25 seconds!) At 10 results per page that gives us approx 3,770,000 pages of results. If however one lives in the West Midlands of England and is looking for a professional to stuff your dead cat, and you search by “Taxidermists in Wolverhampton” one gets only 16,900 results but this is still 1,690 pages. Only a few sites make it onto page 1 and many excellent sites languish invisibly on page 500+.

So SEO is, these days, a major digital marketing discipline; but is it legitimate? i.e. both ethical and good business?

Let’s just have a look at the agendas of the various parties involved:

• Google: wants its search engine to be good at its job; i.e. it wants as many users as possible to have the best possible experience; i.e. to find a selection of suitable sites as quickly and as painlessly as possible. It particularly wants to direct users to site/s with well written and presented content that best deliver what they were looking for; in pursuit of this it tries to interpret their intention (which is not always exactly what they type in to the Google search box). If it succeeds, it will attract more traffic and make more money out of AdWords (its pay- per-click product).

• The Site owner: wants high ranking in search results whenever a user types in a keyword which it deems relevant to its business; i.e. they want to maximize quality and quantity of traffic to their site.

• The SEO consultancy/ professional: wants to do a good job for the Site owner i.e. get the site up the Google rankings, driving more traffic, pleasing the client and thus getting more optimization briefs and making more money.

Good site design and legitimate SEO helps everyone: users who search by a given keyword find a relevant site which delivers what they were looking for and provides a good experience. The SEO professional and the design/build agency should work together to make the site visible to search engines which pleases them since they are helping their customers (=searchers). The Google spiders (or crawlers) look at millions of web pages and assess their relevance to a particular search (yes, it’s amazing I know). It’s absolutely OK to help them by a little judicious signposting (like putting up a sign in the street outside your shop; effectively the site is ‘putting its best foot forward’) . Also, if you can get plenty of inbound links (i.e. other sites publishing links to your site) Google likes this: it suggests your site must be of high quality. It’s OK to solicit these links (e.g. if you are a florist, you might ask local chocolate shops if they want to link to your site). So far so good.

The problems occur when SEO practitioners and/ or site owner Webmasters attempt to deceive the search engine spiders (and therefore ultimately the user) by employing a range of techniques to manipulate the Google rankings (including any or all of: spamdexing, cloaking, doorway pages, keyword stuffing, invisible text, deals with link farms +++).

Ever since Search was invented, unscrupulous SEO experts (known as ‘black hat’ operators) have been trying to manipulate it, i.e. to get people to visit sites under false pretences, taking them to sites which were not what they were looking for; the result being an unfair advantage to the site owner and/or confused/ dissatisfied visitors, a scenario which benefits no-one except the black hat guys! If they succeed, they achieve an inappropriately high Google ranking and ultimately can even take the user to a site that wasn’t what they were looking for. Of course it isn’t always as cut and dried as this: in many cases, the user would be equally satisfied by any one of a number of search results, and techniques may be used which give a good site a ‘helping hand’ in the listings. There are grey areas: like how many times can one legitimately include a given keyword in one’s content: 3 times in a page makes the site relevant, three times in a sentence looks sinister and may lead to Google penalizing or even delisting your site.

Of course, there is one obvious question which we haven’t addressed here (space doesn’t allow): who decides which SEO techniques are OK and which are ‘black hat’? which can get your site demoted in the listings or even banned? Of course currently it’s Google who decides. 'Baddies' clearly operate in this space so some sanctions are necessary; but should a single company (even our buddies at Google) be given so much power?

Effectively the black hat SEO specialists are engaged in an ever-shifting battle of wits with the search engines and the (secret) Google algorithm is certainly much more sophisticated at picking up dubious SEO techniques than it was 10 years ago. eg. stuffing in loads of invisible keywords used to be much more prevalent (and effective!). Even legitimate SEO has evolved with the Search Engines. Metatags (invisible to users but viewed by the spiders) used to be very important; less so today. Indeed, if you read a book on SEO dated before 2004 (say) I respectfully suggest you may be wasting your time!

As part of an ongoing mission to fight spam and improve user experience, Google is apparently implementing a series of changes to the algorithm (it doesn't announce these). In the future, as Google moves towards behaviour/ intent based search, it is possible that each person who conducts a search for a particular term will get different results based on their interests, search history and even their location. As a result, SEO will need to evolve. One possibility is that link building will become far less important in the future of SEO because Google will determine the ‘value’ (= relevance) of a website based on how visitors engage with it. This would imply that the ultimate goal of site owners should be to provide compelling content that entices visitors to read, share, bookmark, and so on.

Another possibility is that search engines will in future provide user-controlled rankings. Users might have the chance to vote for sites they like and sites will get ranked based on such votes. (The model would be similar to Digg and Reddit). Of course, search engines will need to ensure that votes are genuine in order to prevent black hat SEO specialists from manipulating the results.

Google and the other search engines are raising the bar in SEO. Initially, this will make it harder for SEO professionals but the end result must be good. Spammers and 'black hat's will have more difficulty succeeding in their unscrupulous efforts and search engine users will be provided with content that is more relevant.

As always, the aim of webmasters and SEO professionals should be to appeal to humans not machines. Your site should certainly be optimized (to give you a fighting chance in the competitive marketplace) but your priority should always be to meet human needs and provide solutions. Considering the direction that SEO is going, human actions and behaviour will ultimately determine rankings. Your SEO success will depend on your ability to engage people through great content and shrewd social media marketing. This is as it should be.

The internet has transformed our lives: at work, at home and increasingly on the move. The Web is becoming richer and more complex every day. To cope with the mind boggling amount of data it offers, we need increasingly sophisticated tools to make sense of it: to 'organise the world’s information'. Unscrupulous operators will always try to manipulate the search engine spiders (or crawlers) to gain a higher ranking but they must be prevented from doing this; it’s in the public interest, as well as that of Google, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, Live Search/ Bing and not least genuine SEO professionals, that the user can find the 'right' site as rapidly as possible every time.

If one believes that Advertising (assisted by agents as 'paid advocates') i.e. promoting the benefits of a product or service to the target audience by all appropriate media, is a legitimate activity in a free society, then it follows that SEO is OK and indeed desirable: it helps honest merchants reach their willing audiences. Indeed, Google doesn’t want to kill SEO; and even if it ceases to be such a dominant player in the search world, other search engines are likely to want to work with ‘honest’ SEO professionals rather than against them.

So current rumours of the imminent death of SEO are much exaggerated. As long as search engines publish free lists of ‘relevant’ sites, SEO will exist. Naturally (sorry) like everything in the digital world, SEO will need to evolve and adapt. It will do so. Intent and behaviour-based search will grow. Social search (e.g. via Twitter) will enable users to ask questions to aggregated groups of real people in real time. Not so easy for site owners to optimize! Watch this space.

Mobile: marketing on the fourth screen

"Mr. Watson - come here - I want to see you." (A G Bell 1876)

My family and I just saw Coraline in 3D at our local cinema – it was absolutely fantastic. (Yes, it’s reached Europe at last!). The sound was great; no interruptions; totally immersive and escapist. It wouldn’t have been half the experience on TV. That got me thinking about screens: big and small.

Apart from our wrist-watch (maybe another blog post!) the smallest screen most of us regularly look at is our mobile phone (=cellphone). Apparently 7 out of 10 people now sleep next to their mobile phone (not sure how many of these phones are turned on).

It is generally (although not universally) agreed that the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. He was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876. The Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877, and by 1886, over 150,000 people in the U.S. owned telephones. In 1879, the Bell company acquired Thomas Edison's patents for the carbon microphone from Western Union. This made the telephone practical for long distances; it was no longer necessary to shout to be heard on the receiving telephone. It’s hard for us to imagine today what a change in people’s lives that was: to actually hear someone’s voice when they were physically many miles away. Bell envisaged that the telephone would be used for important things (like fire alarms or by Heads of State to discuss whether they should go to war or not) rather than for trivial chatter. But hey, you can’t win ‘em all.

But that was of course only the beginning. Today we have the iPhone: Touch screen, Voice, Music, SMS, Mobile Internet plus upwards of 30,000 apps. To mis-quote Fatboy Slim (and before him Virginia Slims cigarettes) in terms of telephony, "We’ve come a long way baby".

Today there are 1.3 billion fixed landline phones in the world.

950 million mobile phones were sold last year alone.

There are an estimated 4.1bn mobile phone subscriptions.

It is estimated that 74% of all mobile phone subscribers send and receive text messages on their phones.

There are more mobile phones than registered automobiles in the world today.

Not only is the growth of mobiles changing society in developed countries, but it is also dramatically changing the lives of people in developing countries. For instance in Kenya 1 in 3 adults owns a mobile device.

Within the next 5 to 10 years it is predicted that as much as 90% of the Earth's population will be actively using mobiles.

***A LITTLE HISTORY***
(you can skip this bit if you don’t find it as fascinating as I do).

The first mobile ‘phones arrived in the early 80s and were the size of a large brick. Above you can see Martin Cooper of Motorola with the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X which was originally launched in 1983.

Despite the bulk, it was an incredible and liberating thing to be able to take your telephone with you; unfettered by fixed lines and cables and even by the need to connect to a car battery as with previous ‘car telephones’. At first these devices were purely telephones without wires and there were problems with battery life, signal and sound quality.

The mobile phone started life as the two-way radio (or mobile rig). These were installed in vehicles e.g. taxi cabs, police cars and ambulances, although were not strictly ‘mobile phones’ as they weren't normally connected to a phone ‘network’. Although the earliest ‘mobile’ phones were installed permanently in vehicles, later versions, e.g. the transportables (or bag phones) could also be carried and used as mobile or as portable two-way radios.

The earliest true mobile telephones were dubbed ‘first generation’ mobile telephones, also called 1G. These devices were also called cellular mobile radio telephones, and were based on analogue signals.

Second generation (2G) mobile telephones were introduced in the 1990s. 2G mobile phone systems were different because of their use of digital circuit switched transmission and the introduction of advanced mobile phone to network signaling.

The birth of 2G systems saw telephones move from bulky 1G telephones to smaller hand-held items, which were much more portable. This change was made possible through technological developments including more advanced batteries and energy-saving electronics.

2G phones offered text messaging, initially on GSM networks and eventually on most digital networks. The very first machine-sent SMS text message was sent in 1991 in the UK. The first person-to-person text message was sent in 1993 in Finland. SMS messaging has become the communication method of choice for millions and many people now prefer sending SMS messages to placing voice calls.

The invention of 3G (third generation) technologies permitted network operators (e.g. Vodafone) to offer their users a wider range of more advanced services. These included video calls and wireless internet. Handsets with larger screens (first mono then colour) were launched to handle these new functionalities.

3G networks enable network operators to offer users a wider range of more advanced services while achieving greater network capacity through improved spectral efficiency. Services include wide-area wireless voice telephone, video calls and broadband wireless data, all in a mobile environment. 3G networks are basically wide-area cellular telephone networks that evolved to incorporate high-speed Internet access and video telephony.

Ever since the birth of 3G mobile phone technology, people have been talking about 4G. This technology will point to the future of mobile phones, creating the most advanced handsets and services yet. Services to be developed include live streaming of radio and TV programmes to 3G handsets with content owners including Disney recently announcing that they'll be offering these services.
***END OF HISTORY BIT***

The iPhone, with its touch-screen functionality, has changed the game and set a new standard. Apple’s iPhone is an internet-connected multimedia Smartphone. Since its minimal hardware interface lacks a physical keyboard, the multi-touch screen provides a ‘virtual keyboard’ when necessary. The iPhone functions as a camera phone (also including text messaging and visual voicemail), a portable media player (equivalent to an iPod), and provides Internet connectivity (with email, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi). Apple announced the iPhone on January 9, 2007, after months of rumors and speculation. The iPhone was introduced in the US on June 29, 2007 before being marketed worldwide. Time magazine named it the "Invention of the Year" in 2007.

So where will the development of mobile telephony end? Of course it won’t; so maybe we should ask instead: in what direction should it go? And what are the implications for marketers?

Today, more and more people are performing a wide range of daily functionalities through their mobile phones. In major parts of Asia and Africa mobile phones have completely replaced landlines as the major form of communications, since they require less infrastructure investment and are cheaper to operate. In Scandinavia and Eastern Europe parking your car involves paying for the meter via a mobile phone. In Israel there are more mobile phones than people and in addition to texting and calling, people are using their mobiles to shop, search, pay, play as well as communicate with the rest of the world.

Mobile applications will take another major step forward with the recent introduction by Google of the Android mobile operating system. Open source functionalities will open the market up, in the same way that open source programming did a few years back for Content Management Systems, Design and programming functionalities. The inevitable proliferation of widgets, tools, functionalities and channels will drive the market for new and better handsets.

So what are the mobile phone designers aiming to achieve? I suggest a number of things:

To produce a device that feels good, and looks good
- in many parts of the world and in many consumer segments, the mobile is a status symbol which says something about the owner. Young people often define themselves by their Mobile brand and its (interchangeable) cover. The jury is out on how small handsets can (and should) be; there is a trade-off between functionality and size/weight. Full 'Qwerty' keyboards, predictive text, touch screen, flip up lids? Business or gaming? Individual consumers also have specific priorities/ requirements.

and delivers on functionality
- voice, text, camera and mobile internet. Coming soon: video/ movies. Also QR (quick response) or 2D codes (on printed items e.g. magazines, flyers, posters, even buildings) will allow us to click on the code (i.e. scan it using the phone’s camera) and go straight to a mobile website (this technique is already widespread in Japan and S. Korea).

We now await the iPhone 3.0…

For marketers, Mobile devices present new opportunities and challenges. The mobile device is ‘always on’ (albeit sometimes on silent) , and most of us carry it with us throughout our waking hours. We can receive calls, voicemail messages, SMSs, emails, Facebook updates and Twitter streams. It is a very personal device; it is shared with no-one and we normally access it “in private”. It is even more interactive than our PC (voice is a powerful functionality!). On the downside, screen and keyboard size are limited.

UK Mobile Ad Spending doubled in 2008 (IAB = UK Interactive Advertising Bureau). This has big implications for the media industries in general, and advertising in particular. The recent big growth opportunity in advertising has been ‘online’ i.e. internet advertising (which now accounts for about 10% of the total global ad spending) and which has recently been gaining share at the expense of traditional mass media ad spend, with TV and magazines hard hit and newspapers really struggling. Let’s remember though that mobile is still only a tiny sliver of all interactive ads and represented only about 1% of the total global ad spend last year.

We can expect the national mobile ad spending numbers in advanced European mobile markets to echo UK numbers (Spain, Italy, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Ireland etc) and the other European markets (Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland etc) to follow a little later.

There are markets where mobile advertising is far more advanced than in the UK both in the types of ads, as well as in the proportion of the national ad spend. Japan and South Korea are clear global leaders here; Spain is well ahead of the UK as Europe's most advanced mobile advertising market. There are also ‘unlikely’ countries where the proportion of national ad spending on mobile is far ahead of that in the US and UK - India for example. In India the reach of internet based interactive ads is very limited, so from very early on, the Indian ad industry has reached for the mobile as an interactive channel; India has been very successful in developing advergames for mobile.

Nokia has famously dubbed the mobile phone “the fourth screen”.

Should content providers and advertisers seek to replicate the internet experience we have at our desks for mobile users? I suggest not.

After all, why do we still go to the movies? Big screen, great sound. Great all-round experience (better 3D and tactile sensations may be next). We don’t, in general, eat our dinner in the cinema and we can’t pause the movie to go to the bathroom. Equally, our laptop can go with us on the train or to a client’s office. I suggest for the foreseeable future, there will be distinct roles for Cinema, TV, PC/laptop and cellphone.

In the future, these devices will no longer be called 'cellphones'; they will be 'handhelds' or even 'communicators' (well it was good enough for Captain Kirk). Of course they are already computers; indeed today's high-end Smartphone can surpass the performance of a mid-range laptop computer of only 5 years ago. 4G networks promise ubiquitous fast mobile broadband connections, opening up all kinds of new mobile experiences.

So let’s not force mobile into a box labelled 'mobile internet'. Mobile is different and should be approached differently: used for what it is good at. On a small screen, people don’t want to read large amounts of text and, for my money, they won’t want to watch movies. Quick clips and small chunks of text: news headlines, weather forecasts, sports scores and pop videos being typical items. And let's not forget LOCATION. By definition, these devices are used on the move; location dependent content is highly relevant.

Advertising on mobiles should also be different from TV or PC-web: consider the user experience and situation and don’t ask people to do anything fiddly or requiring a lot of reading; a short mini-clip or an ‘awareness banner’ with a single click response is about the limit. Mobile is good at short messages- chunks of content. ‘Click to call’ is very powerful. So is anything dependent on location (where are my friends? The nearest restaurant? Subway station?). Mobile is great at some things and less good at others; as marketers we need to understand this and work with it. There is room in most people's lives for a range of screen sizes; we expect something different from each. After all, if mobile devices could do everything, we wouldn’t need laptops. Or cinemas.

"If you had come to me a hundred years ago, do you think I should have dreamed of the telephone? Why, even now I cannot understand it! I use it every day, I transact half my correspondence by means of it, but I don’t understand it. Think of that little stretched disk of iron at the end of a wire repeating in your ear not only sounds, but words—not only words, but all the most delicate and elusive inflections and nuances of tone which separate one human voice from another! Is not that something of a miracle?" Sir William Crookes, 'Pall Mall' (Jan 1903)

In many ways the mobile phone is miraculous. However: (and you may call me a dinosaur if you wish) I'm not planning to watch Coraline on my iPhone any day soon; thanks anyway (and that's not just because the 3D glasses would be a pain to carry around with me).