For the love of gmail

I remember when gmail launched a few years ago and people were begging those in the loop for a gmail invite. 3 years on most of us in IT land have a few gmail addresses and despite the occasional spam that gets though the filter its an amazingly good service. So it comes as no suprise that when the folks at google asked people to make a short clip involving the gmail envelope image for the purpose of creating a mashup video they sure came out of the woodwork to help. You can check out the video below (its kinda cool):-



After watching it I found myself wondering why google has so many people so prepared to get involved despite the fact there is no prize or any real recognition for their efforts and I think its actually pretty simple.

Google offer free products (for the most part) and they really do come across as the type of company that will make something cool, give it away and ask for nothing in return. Many of the Web 2.0 companies have cottoned on to this now and it seems to be working. Advertising revenue follows the most visited sites and google realised eirly on that free services are undoubtedly the best way to make this happen. So google keeps giving and users keep loving them for it.

Telstra's Handle on Truth in Advertising

Telstra, Telstra, Telstra. Can nothing go right for Telstra? Today a report in The Age, that Telstra pulled a series of advertisements about its Next G mobile telephone network after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) raised concerns regarding the validity of particular statements. The statements in question – “Everywhere you need it" and "Get the coverage you need" were of particular interest to the ACCC.

When the ACCC head, Graeme Samuel, says "when the whole of Australia is not covered and coverage is not always available where consumers need it" – it comes across not only as a critic of Telstra’s advertising, its a damning critic of Telstra’s services and products.

No matter what you are selling, a product, service or yourself - you have to be careful in what you promise that you can deliver. Nothing is worse than a “let down”, and nothing destroys integrity and authenticity like false claims and incorrect brand positioning.

On the whole “truth in advertising” topic just a couple of random points:

1. Your Consumers can handle the truth. In fact we crave it and when we don't get we are disappointed.

2. Consumers are great at taking the piss out of you brand - and in the process redefines your brands image...FOR THE WORSE! Check out these good examples from valley of the geeks…

3. The Heart Foundation Tick of approval. A friend of mine worked one of the campaigns for the Heart Foundation Tick. The original copy for the ad was "the Heart Foundation Tick - the label that can't be bought". After some due diligence, the lawyers worked out that they couldn't say this, because companies do have to purchase the right to have the tick displayed on their products packaging, even though the food also has to meet other nutritional requirements. That is the label can be bought, and in fact, is bought. So they had to revise to the new tagline: “the tick that can't just be bought". I thought this is good anecdote that highlights sometimes how fickle all this truth in advertising can be. I am sure Telstra will live and learn…well at least live!

Has Adwords already ruined Youtube overlay advertising?

There was once a time in Youtube's life where industry luminaries questioned how a startup that burnt millions each month in bandwidth costs could be financially viable. This was before Google jumped in with their $1.65bil life raft and set the company on the its current path of world domination. The questions went away after this happened and since then very few have given much thought to the problem but undoubtedly it was consistently appearing on agendas in the Googleplex boardroom meetings. Last week google announced they will be offering overlay ads on Youtube videos and more than a few in the advertising world started to wonder if this could be the next Adwords, the next great revolution in online advertising.

There is no doubt that Youtube gets a lot of traffic. This time last year Youtube were serving up 100mil videos each day but taking a closer look at the figures, overlay ads may not be the great white hope they would like it to be. In fact Adwords may just be the reason this never takes off.

The new system charges advertisers $20 per 1000 views and Youtube say they are likely to get between 2.5% and 5% click though on the overlay ad. In the old world of pre-Adwords advertising that would have been fine but thanks to Googles pay-per-click system of advertising advertisers have become accustom to only paying for what they can measure. They like it this way. They can now finally justify their marketing spend.

Of course the 95% of viewers that don't click though are still registering an impression and from a branding point of view that might be all well and good. The problem is advertisers are being asked to go back to the old model of "pay for something you don't see a tangible result from" and this will undoubtedly be a tough pill to swallow.

If you had spent the last few years only paying a spruker per person that enters your store then all of a sudden they said "but I deserve to be paid for the people that will come back another time" would you do it?

Gen Y Marketing Podcast - Episode 4

Yes its another installment of the Gen Y Marketing Podcast, episode 4 in fact. A big thank you to Glenn Rogers for dropping by for a chat and of course our usual run down of marketing news.

And check out the Gen Y Marketing Podcast blog, Jake installed a new feed player on the blog so now you can listen to the podcast on the blog. If you like what you hear, subscribe to it in itunes or your other favourite podcatchers.

Cheers

Ninemsn Cutting Into Video Sharing

So I was playing around on yourcut the other night, just checking out new videos, how you get paid, how videos are hosted…what’s that, you don’t know what I am talking about? Yourcut? Never heard of it? Don’t worry, most people haven’t.
Yourcut is an online video-sharing site that allows people to make money from putting their videos online. Users share revenue with yourcut 50/50. Sounds a little like revver? Well that’s because it essentially is. Revver released their API, and ninemsn used that to develop this site. For a review of the aesthetics of the site, check out online marketing stuff’s review here.

My main problems with yourcut is that ninemsn have kept the ninemsm branding at the top of the page. Apart from looking a little untidy, I don’t want to be reminded that this is ninemsn. They are daggy. Makes it feel like a forty-year-old man dressed up in skate-gear trying to look young. These are vastly conflicting messages being sent out to the user. Ninemsm is a stale brand for young people – the majority of users for video-sharing sites. Having the ninemsn presence on the site will make it seem not fresh and a little too corporate. I can’t see why ninemsn could not create this as a stand alone site, keep their Australian focus, and drive traffic to it from the ninemsn landing page they way they are attempting to do now.

Given the nature for online business these days is that there is very little, or no, prize for being second – ninemes’s reason for undertaking this project surely could not have been to rival youtube. Perhaps ninemsn, with its history and competence is selling ad space through television and print media, are attempting to turn these skills to online videos. It will be interesting to see how well they will do at this. My opinion at this stage is that a 15 second ad for a 30 second clip is too long and a waste of my time.

Hoyts Red Carpet.

Over the weekend I went to Hoyts Cinema with a friend of mine. We saw the new Michael Moore documentary, Sicko, and despite not hating the film as much as I thought I would, there was something else I found altogether more interesting.

So we waited in line for 15 minutes (50 people, 2 cashiers) to buy our tickets. This was at 7:30pm on a Friday night – so healthy crowds should be expected by Hoyts – surely more than 2 cashiers would help things along. But I will give Hoyts a free pass on that one…

Next, the pre-screening ads and coming attractions. The final ad to screen was an ad for a Hoyts service called Hoyts Red Carpet – their new exciting new concept for online ticket collection. The ad basically consisted of an animation (the pic show on this post) which explained that if you booked your tickets online, you would go to the very top of the queue and never have to wait to purchase tickets. Excellent. Pre-booking can be easy and save time and money its…Hang on! Hang on just a god damn minute!

Lets just stop and consider what this advertisement is really saying. If you purchase tickets the new way, the way Hoyts wants you to, life is sweet and you never have to wait. Super! However, if you book tickets the ‘old’ way, the way you have always purchased tickets – it will be like queuing for bread in Soviet Russia – Hoyts will punish you! (Notice the crowd in the picture – I can’t even see a Cashier attempting to service them).

I am all for organisations trying to reduce cost, improve service delivery and get customers to self-select the most convenient and least costly way of doing business. But punishing people for doing business with you the way they always have, really shows a disdain for the customers.

Does anybody remember when banks went on their crazy cost-cutting bonanza where they closed branches, charged customers for over-the-counter and face-to-face transaction to push customers to use cheaper, less personal transaction methods (like atms and internet banking)? The banks certainly remember. The effect on the banks was to alienate retail banking customers to such an extent that it severely restricted the banks ability to up-sell and cross-sell to higher profit services such as loans and insurance.

The banks eventually came to their senses and stoped punishing customers. Now we see branches re-opening, more managers in branches and a higher level of personalisation for customer service. (I even work for a bank whose new goal is "to be Australia's finest financial services organisation through excelling in customer service"). Perhaps Hoyts will come to their senses too - otherwise we may just all stay at home, download the bit-torrent and watch it on the plasma!

Diet Coke Films goes ABC Sunday Arts

So I promised I would do a follow up on the Diet Coke Films site to see how they had progressed and to be honest if I hadn't said I would do this chances are I would have never revisited the site (it doesn't quite make it to my top 10 favourite web pages).

Diet Coke know their customer pretty well and at the risk of pigeon holing them its 30+ females working in a corporate environment, so it makes me wonder why today's movie got a look in. "Wally the Rainbow Serpent" is a well produced movie don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure that it really suits Diet Cokes core demographic more suited to a 3min break between Robert Hughes review of 20th century American sculptors and a piece on the Western Australia Ballet Company on ABC's Sunday afternoon programming. According to the site this is the second time Diet Coke have run the film (for those who missed it the first time) and has a total 1572 views, a little short of the 162,228 views of a cat rubbing its face on youtube.

So it seems as though the site isn't doing as well as they would have hoped. Hats off to coke for trying the idea, but I get the feeling that they would have been better off employing some true online video content consumers to consult on the project rather than going down the slick marketing path. Deciding to sacrifice usability for the sake of pretty backgrounds and flash animations are unacceptable in my opinion. Youtube is a great site cause its simple and the videos load quickly (and really that's why I'm there to watch the videos) where as the coke site makes me wait for ages for the video to load.. not cool.