Say mediaaaaaahhhhh. Drug companies diagnose social networks
Up until now most pharmaceutical companies wouldn't dare touch social media. Too many questions, too many regulations, and too much at stake. Maybe, just maybe, that trend is about to change.
The change is evident in several new pharma corporation blogs. The newest is the obtusely named CNTO411 blog. It is a disguised name for Centocor, a Johnson & Johnson owned drug conglomerate that manufactures immune support drugs such as Ustekinumab. Not exactly a household word, but if you had psoriasis you'd know what it is. Another one comes from GlaxoSmithKline's Alli, which is a weight loss drug. Pfizer also has a blog on fibromyalgia
Salesforce gets its own Twitter app
In the on-demand version of Mothra meets Godzilla, CRM behemoth Salesforce.com has joined forces with...you guessed it. Twitter.
If its possible that a Twitter story has flown under the radar recently, this one has. Two social media analysts have now reported this alliance of biblical proportions. Twitter, is of course growing at a rate of 1,000 percent. Salesforce.com has a market share in the on-demand sales force automation business that grows at the rate of 50 percent.
Century 21, Avon ring up total digital makeovers
One rings doorbells for homeowners; another built a brand ringing doorbells to sell makeup. But by completely embracing digital marketing neither Century 21 or Avon is ringing many doorbells anymore. And key performance results have improved in their high-speed transitions.
It helps that both brands started their digital switch from a standpoint of 90 percent-plus brand awareness. And it helps that both brands start from a brand promise of personal customer relationships. But as detailed at today's Search Engine Strategies conference, the commitment to change and the pace of it was dramatic.
Kawasaki opens his bag of Twitter twicks
The Tweet was on at the Search Engine Strategies conference today as author and internet entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki unpacked a box of tricks, optimization sites, and a few controversial concepts to increase the business effectiveness of using Twitter. His most surprising advice: don't be too impressed with your amount of followers.
"I think the most important measure of success on Twitter is "retweets,'" he said in his conference keynote. "The number of people following you means less and less."
That comment contradicts some of Kawasaki's own recent writing, but a 1,000 percent growth rate will cause an expert to reconsider his thinking. Kawasaki listed some of the people and organizations that top the amount of followers to show that the average business person can't compete, and can't be relevant when Twitter followers are stacked up against CNN and Barack Obama. Kawasaki said he is able to attract followers because of the quality of the links he includes in Tweets. The quality then leads to retweets, which can be measured at ReTweet, and can mark a trail for interested customers.
Showtime premieres new ITV tech
Interactive TV is about to get a boost. Showtime Networks will unveil a new (ITV) application next week that uses remote control ordering to give consumers access to long form video, and free full-length episodes of Showtime programming. The technology will bring television commerce (tcommerce) and advertising that allows watchers to become customers a little closer.
Showtime and its two other channels, The Movie Channel and Flix, do not currently accept advertising. According to the company, which is pitching the technology as a Showtime Marketing Application, "the most valuable component is the ease with which a viewer can now order Showtime, and the upgrade can be processed and authorized within seconds." If that ease of ordering can be applied to other networks, and ad units within those networks, ITV is tied to the remote control.
Wharton professor: internet has shattered advertising
There's a nasty little blog debate in progress today between Wharton School of Business professor Eric Clemons and some industry analysts about whether internet advertising actually works. Before you draw a big breath, knit your brow and get ready to enter the debate, relax a bit. Of course it works. Clemons' missive provides an opportunity to restate the case for internet marketing.
Clemons, professor of operations and information management at The Wharton School ranted on TechCrunch today that the "internet is not replacing advertising but shattering it, and all the king’s horses, all the king’s men, and all the creative talent of Madison Avenue cannot put it together again."
WalMart, Best Buy shun social media
It would make perfect sense for some big box retailers to curl up, lick, their wounds from the devastation of the 2008 holiday season, and plan for the next move. After all, reports Retail Forward today, anything that resembles improvement at retail will wait until the fourth quarter of this year.
It would also make perfect sense to take this opportunity to step it up online. The good questions to ask would regard web site experience, email marketing, customer engagement via social networks, and online marketing plans for the fall. But what we see lately is a focus on public relations, a lot of spending on in-store technology, and mobile commerce.
Reading the tea leaves at TimeWarner
Let's not let Time Warner off the hook too easily on its semi-paid content experiment. Some of what EVP John Squires announced to the press last week made a lot of sense, some of it was purposefully vague, and some of it needs translation.
Let's get to the translation first. Squires said TW will start to experiment with paid content because there "was too much ad inventory online." Translation: "Yes, we have an ad network in-house (Platform A) but it is not able to provide the CPMs we're looking for. We're having a hard time finding advertisers who will pay a reasonable amount of money beyond the home pages and story starts for most of our brands."
Throw out your customer data. Really.
It may be antithetical or even sacrilegious to say so, but companies may have too much customer data for their own good. With internet marketing focused on generating even more of that data through behavioral targeting and social media, it may be time to consider a new theory out of Penn's Wharton School of Business. It's called "data minimization."
According to Wharton marketing professors Eric Bradlow and Peter Fader "data minimization" is a simple but radical concept: keep the customer data a company needs for competitive advantage, and purge the rest. "I think there is a fear and paranoia among companies that ... if they don't keep every little piece of information on a customer, they [can't function]," Bradlow told the Marketing @ Wharton newsletter. "Companies continue to squirrel away data for a rainy day. We're not saying throw data away meaninglessly, but use what you need for forecasting and get rid of the rest."
Twitter growth defies language barrier
It's getting hard to find adjectives to describe Twitter's growth. Nielsen reports today that unique visitors to Twitter increased 1,382 percent year-over-year, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to seven million in February 2009.
It is the fastest growing site in its member communities category, to say the least. Zimbio and Facebook followed at a paltry 240 percent and 228 percent, respectively. What to call that kind of growth? "Googletastic," anyone?
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Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
