You are reading our blog. Why? Because you know someone at Vert? Maybe you work in the digital marketing space, perhaps even here in Atlanta? Or maybe you just ran across one of our random, pithy and/or insightful comments across many of the other media properties across the web and decided to see what else we could crank out. Point being, right now you are consuming micro-media.
This isn’t micro-media because we are a smaller, startup agency or because we work in the mobile space – it’s micro because it is such a defined, niche piece of content for a defined niche audience. Congratulations, you are a very important part of our micro-audience!
I’ll give you another example… Recently Bravo (and several other media companies) struck a deal with FourSquare, the mobile + social media augmented reality game. When the news broke my gut reaction was ‘Why the hell would Bravo throw away good marketing dollars on such a small, new and unproven channel?’… Truth is – they are genius! (I think.) They did not strike the @FourSquare deal for mass notoriety (although the PR coverage is a perk) – Bravo created a partnership that speaks volumes to a very niche audience. A younger, tech-savvy, and urban audience that resonates perfectly with its media content and business plan. Brilliant!
Barriers, strongholds, and fortresses built by the Czars of old “macro-media” are being torn down everyday. New, vibrant villages of crowd-sourced connections built on creative technology solutions are taking their place – essentially leveling the playing field. The days of massive marketers shelling out millions to reach massive audiences are quickly fading. The good news is the massive marketers are still spending millions (or will be again soon…) – except now it is being fragmented and optimized down through many specific channels.
It is a very exciting time to be in the media and communications space… well, unless you are Rupert Murdoch. Here’s to the future of micro-media, and the hundreds of entrepreneurs, startups, and innovators that will power us into a new era of communications, media, and advertising.
We’ve experienced unprecedented growth in the mobile marketing industry since the Steelers hoisted the Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl XLIII. In the past year, all the major carriers have introduced smartphones with access to an application store, unlimited data plans, and connectivity into existing social networks like Twitter and Facebook. More importantly, every major mobile metric has experienced growth in the past year: smartphones sold, mobile web usage, text messages sent, applications downloaded, etc.
Now, pair this mobile explosion with the largest single advertising opportunity in the world and what do you get? Marketing Heaven? Advertising Bliss? Well, apparently not.
We did see the introduction of Qualcomm’s FLO TV which will bring live television to mobile devices. We eyed Megan Fox introducing Motorola’s new Devour phone, and we squirmed watching KGB’s latest sumo-infused spot. What we didn’t see was a traditional television spot capped with a mobile call to action.
Despite the advances of mobile marketing in the past year, no single advertiser was willing to utilize their precious Super Bowl ad time to focus on mobile. Where was my iPhone application download? Why couldn’t I use my phone to text-in to receive more information? Why wasn’t I prodded to vote on something using my phone? Why didn’t I get a mobile coupon from Denny’s?
Although disappointed in the lack of “mobility”, there are some clear reasons why we didn’t see more mobile involvement in this year’s Super Bowl ads:
1. Hard costs associated with SMS campaigns are difficult to project: Imagine budgeting for a campaign where the response rate could not be predicted within +/- 25% points. Now imagine deploying this message to hundreds of millions of people. The Super Bowl is not the best place to test your new mobile strategy as it should be done on a smaller scale with targeted audiences. Since SMS campaigns incur hard costs which are usually passed along to the client, I imagine most Super Bowl advertisers were hesitant to deploy their SMS strategy this year.
2. Limitations and fragmentation among devices: We’ve got iPhones, Android devices, Blackberries, and other feature phones. With an audience in the hundreds of millions, advertisers cannot risk ostracizing certain phone owners through their messaging. Essentially, this kills the notion of promoting any particular application or mobile web feature focused on a particular device.
3. Lack of vision to develop a business case for mobile: According to a recent eMarketer sutdy in January 2010, 32% of marketing professionals in North America do not know how to develop a business case for mobile advertising. This staggering figure cannot go unnoticed. The medium has established itself – it is the marketers falling behind.
4. The Super Bowl has historically worked best as a branding tool: If a brand is willing to invest millions in a single television ad, the return is usually measured in terms of brand awareness and not on a direct response. Since application downloads and SMS responses are the two biggest DR opportunities at a mobile marketer’s disposal, we’ve already discussed why these were not put into play in 2010.
As smartphone sales continue to surge and the mobile web becomes ubiquitous, I believe that 2011 will be THE year of Super Bowl Mobile Advertising. As a Saints fan would ask, “Who dat gonna agree with me?”
On January 27, 2010, Apple launched their newest addition to their “mobile” line, the iPad. If you’ve yet to catch any of the hype the Apple iPad is the latest version of an ebook reader or tablet pc…well realistically the iPad fits best in between. If you need more specifics check out Apple’s iPad website.
Since the iPad’s release the blogs have been hot with postings concerning the iPads failure to meet expectations. Well Vertmob is going to weed through all those blogs and tell you what is really important… from the future of mobile + social perspective
So at first glace the iPad looks like a neat piece of technology. It’s thin and light. It has a wonderfully large and colorful touch screen display. The UI seems to flow well without much delay (at least from what we can see from videos). The applications native to the device seem to be well thought out and function well. We all know Apple is a user experience design clearing house, no worries there… The problems come when you begin to look at what the iPad lacks.
Right when Steve unlocks the iPad you can immediately see it basically looks like a big iPhone or iPod Touch. It has the same homescreen layout, the icons look the same, ect. As he moves through each application, they look great, all catered to the iPad’s specs. The problem is, they really are the same as the iPhone/iPod Touch apps, and so is the OS, quite literally. This presents a number of problems for people that were hoping for an iTablet of sorts, something with more power, more like a mini laptop. Running the iPhone OS users are still restricted to running a single application at a time, no multitasking here. Additionally, just as with an iPhone there is no native way to drag and drop files. Moving files to your iPad, at this time, can only be done through sync. On the hardware side the iPad lacks an expansible SD card slot, USB ports, and doesn’t even include a camera.
With each feature the iPad lacked came more criticism from the online community following its announcement yesterday and then again today. Vert even spoke with a friend and associate editor of the immensely popular blog Engadget to gauge his reactions on the iPad release. Having been at the release event and getting a chance to “fondle” the iPad first hand, he mentioned he felt quite underwhelmed by the device. He noted it was a big iPhone without voice, that he couldn’t stick in his pocket. It seems many people really expected something more from Apple’s new “Tablet”. The problem is Apple didn’t release a tablet yesterday, they released something different. Apple released a device for consuming all different types of media inside a convenient form factor with all the normal Apple bells and whistles. The iPad will be great for looking at pictures, browsing the web, reading a book, watching a movie and maybe even for using a simple application or game. However, the iPad is not a tablet pc or laptop computer. It has to be more than an oversight that Apple left out items like a camera or USB port. They simply didn’t want them included on the device. We could speculate the reasons why, but one would assume it might be connected with Apple’s wonderfully booming and profitable laptop business. Maybe it’s possible Apple didn’t want to cannibalize their currently laptop product offering by creating another option for customers. Additionally, maybe thats why the price is fairly “affordable”, maybe Apple wants you to have both! Or maybe they truly weren’t shooting for anything more than a top of the line media consumption device. We’ll leave all those maybe’s up to you to decide…
Even with the iPad’s, yet so far, negative feedback, the Vert team and I still see quite a lot of hope for the device. The difference between this device and the iPhone is not everyone will need, want or even have any use for one. Everyone wants a killer phone, not everyone needs a fancy touch-screen media device. However, we see great potential for the iPad in education. Since the introduction of the first Kindle I’ve always wondered when 15 pound textbooks might meet their maker. The iPad pushes closer to that time. While some student already carry around editions on their textbooks on Kindles and other e-readers, those devices still lack where the iPad excels. Could you imagine carrying all your textbooks in one device that could still show you full color images or even video right on the page you were studying? Or could you imagine a chemistry book application that allowed students to build molecules by dragging, pinching and turning atoms? That’s just a start…
So we here at Vert are in the same boat as many other people, we wish there was more…however, we do not fail to recognize the iPad has its place and purpose and we think it will fulfill its role well.
If your interested in further info on the iPad check out some of the cool posts below:
- Interest in something other than the iPad, maybe more tablet like? Check this out.
- What did everyone say about the iPad on Twitter? Take a look.
Marketers have long praised Facebook for its granularity of targeting within the self-serve advertising platform. We’ve been able to laser target specific advertisements to distinct demographics down to age and gender, location by city, relationship status, music preference, and even users at a particular workplace. Couple this with the ability to reach fans of your current pages, users of your applications, and even members of your groups and you have the makings of a targeting party.
A lofty prediction? Perhaps not. Today, with a few swift changes, the Facebook self-serve advertising platform became even more powerful. Labeled “Friends of Connections”, marketers can now expand the audience reach by targeting ads to users whose friends are already connected to a given Page, Event, Group, or Application.
Let me explain.
As a connoisseur of pizza, I am naturally a fan of Pizza Hut on Facebook. If Pizza Hut wanted to promote their Facebook Page, they could now choose to target an advertisement to all of my friends. This in turn would display ads on my friends’ pages with a short snippet saying: “Michael is a fan of this page.”
With my privacy settings as a blessing, I’m basically endorsing Pizza Hut through a paid advertisement.
What does this mean for social advertising on Facebook? Higher conversion rates, increased chatter, and yet another powerful way to take on targeting like you’ve never targeted before. The Vert team is excited about putting this into practice for its social media clients. For more information, please see our social solutions capabilities.
So after all the hype, buzz, tweets, and ads – we had to at least go look at this thing hands-on this AM. Mike and I trekked up to the Verizon (reseller) store on Buford Highway around 11am, with ZERO wait… there wasn’t even another customer in the entire store and 3 clerks ready to help us sign a new 2-year contract and plunk down $199 for the almighty Droid.
Needless to say, we just wanted to play. After a bit of coercion we got our hands on the demo one that “Nakita” the clerk was playing with. It didn’t have a data connection, but we still got to tinker around… here is the video:
First quick impressions:
- It is well constructed, and weighty
- The screen is beautiful and very responsive
- It has force feedback when you touch a button
- Camera is stellar (5MP) and user friendly
- QWERTY keyword is a definite plus, and a great size
The real test will be to see how the battery life stands up to the power hungry Verizon network (there’s a map for that, remember)… Not to mention the uber-hyped navigation feature that caused Garmin stock to tank earlier this week.
When you are in the business of marketing and communications through mobile and social platforms, Apple is your best friend. Steve Jobs and his gaggle of geniuses have perfected the art of simplifying the complex. Which is why we have them to thank for the enormous market adoption of so many advanced technologies in the wider market. Here is a quick recap of yesterday’s recent works of magic, and how they will affect the worlds of social and mobile media marketing:
iPod Nanos that shoot video!?
While the ipod is best known for revolutionizing the music industry (along with a little help from iTunes), it just might be the next big player in digital pictures and video too… Everything has a camera these days – which is going to continue to revolutionize the way we view, experience and perceive the world. It is constantly getting smaller. Not to mention the new FM tuner you can pause in live stream (think TiVo for radio) – tell me that isn’t going to skew some Neilsen radio advertising figures… bottom line being that all media is now a product of the user, not of the producer – get used to it…
iTunes 9 + Social Media
Who knew that once what was primarily known as your regular run-of-the-mill desktop MP3 player would become one of the most robust tools enabling a generation to collaborate in the new spheres of social and mobile media. Honestly, iTunes is iTunes – but this latest iteration just makes your digital life that much easier by adding social sharing features for Facebook and Twitter as well as a more feature-rich interface for managing your media and apps on iPhones and iPod touches. All in all, nothing too earth-shattering, but a universal step in the right direction from Apple on all fronts in their commitment to making things seamless…
iPhone 3.1 Upgrades
Is it just me or does it only seem like a few days ago that we just upgraded to 3.0?!?? Alas, iPhone/iPod Touch OS 3.1 is up and running with a few new features that make us at Vert quite giddy. Ok, really just two that we are jumping in delight for. First and foremost is the new MMS capability – which means no more ridiculous external browser-based image downloading sites, now you can share digital media right in the chat feed. Second are the basic but continued improvements in the Safari browser.
Both of these upgrades are much needed as we move toward a more “open source” mobile web experience relying heavily on standards and universal device capabilities. We here at Vert firmly believe in the longevity of text messaging as an efficient messaging platform as well as the importance of fast, usable and stable mobile browsers to ensure a vibrant and rich ecosystem that thrives on digital media, communications, and networking anytime, anywhere…
So as you can see, Vert has every reason to love the heck out of Apple… and we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. If you share in our pro-social & pro-mobile Apple sentiments let us know your thoughts in the comments below or by responding to us on Twitter (@vertmobile) or on Facebook (www.facebook.com/vertmobile).
Freshens contacted Vert wanting to learn more about social media and how it could help their yogurt and smoothie business, and what we gave them is a world-class strategy, kicking off the start of the new school year on Facebook.
The college market is an integral target for the Freshens brand given their presence on-campus at roughly 400 schools nationwide, making Facebook the perfect place to start. The test campaign Vert put together, which kicked off this past Monday, August 24th, leverages highly-targeted Facebook ads (customized per school) driving to a fully-branded and shareable new fan page redesign.
“Freshens understands the increasing importance of focusing our marketing efforts at the various and evolving forms of social media. We have challenged the Vert Team to create innovative strategies for building brand loyalty and sales while keeping Freshens on the leading edge of this medium,” says Ed Redmond, Freshens Senior Vice President. Freshens already had a fan page presence, so it was up to Vert to outfit it with custom branded elements to boost engagement and ultimately drive fan adoption. Two main elements were added: Smoothie & Yogurt of the Month sidebar callouts highlighting a specific menu items that drive to their respective Smoothie & Yogurt Menu Tabs that include the full listing of Freshens products.
The shareable menu allows fans and users of the Freshens fan page to post the menu to their profile. This ultimately shows up in the news-feed of all of their Facebook friends, alerting them of their love of smoothies & yogurt!
Ultimately Freshens wanted a Facebook presence that blew away the competition, and by the looks of it – we delivered. In addition, the test campaign is assessing the value of highly targeted Facebook ads with campus-specific messaging to some of the top schools in the Freshens network. “With this two-pronged strategy we hope to grow and activate the Freshens fanbase quickly by leveraging high targetebility, and opt-in marketing tactics”, says Vert Principal Kevin Planovsky. Be sure to check it out for yourself and become a fan at http://www.facebook.com/freshens!
I think it is safe to say that the last 15 days have been by far the most active and interesting in the world of social media – at least since Iran took it over a few weeks ago… We have seen redesigns, major outages and digital attacks, buyouts, and proposed new upgrades. While many of the industry dailies, weeklies and even big shots like CNN & FOX have been covering this stuff – here is a nice little snapshot to boil it all down from a marketer’s perspective:
Twitter Homepage Redesign (7/28): Twitter officially revamped its homepage to focus on what it is known for – search. It appears they have finally realized that they own what is happening NOW on the web, the next step is finding a way to turn that into a viable monetization strategy. The rest of the site’s pages still retain the original design (which doesn’t quite match) – but I am sure that will change soon as well. Ultimately, they just need to buy HootSuite (@HootSuite) and be done with it, IMO.
Google Launches Facebook Page (7/31): This is HUGE! This is like Zeus coming to Cupid for dating advice… the crowned king of Web 2.0 bows down and sets up a fan page on the Prince’s social network. Aside from the fun analogies – their fan page and newsfeed are quite interesting and keep you up to date with the inner-workings of Google on a daily basis.
Attacks on Social Media (8/6-8/10): If this is the first time hearing about the massive attack and outage that Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal experienced last week, please keep your day job. The attack allegedly originated overseas as an attempt to take down a Georgian blogger’s website and supposedly spilled over onto his social media accounts and subsequently shut the whole thing down for hours with after-effects still being felt. This speaks volumes to the inter-connectivity of all these sites and the security and integrity concerns it poses… I predict this will not be the last time something like this happens…
New Facebook Policies & TOS: Over the last couple weeks Facebook has been cracking down – With the uber-success of the new fan pages, they are doing their best to find ways to be a place for all brands, but not cannibalize their own potential revenue streams. If you manage ay branded pages make sure you do not manage multiple ad campaigns from one personal account, do not run contests without Facebook approval, and no sponsored status updates – you have to earn your endorsements the old fashioned way…
FaceFeed – The Acquisition (8/10): Earlier this week Facebook nabbed up the more Twitter-like FriendFeed for an estimated $50 Million in cash and stock. Founders of FriendFeed said that discussions had been going on since they launched, but it took over 2 years to get the nice pay-day. Meanwhile FriendFeed users are a bit peeved, concerned that their social network of choice will simply be absorbed into Facebook, which is likely. Either way, this is a testament to the sheer influence and competition in the social space – it’s not going anywhere, get used to it.
New Facebook Tools and Plans: In addition to the policy updates, Facebook has launched (or teased about launching) a number of new platform features. As of late, developers can now tap into the Open Stream API which enables developers to pull out their status updates in real time (very Twitterish) as well as the Inbox API with which you can pull messages out from your fB mailbox (albeit one-way, so no outgoing spam blasts). There is also talk of a Live Search product coming out soon, as well as the most recent news of the Facebook Lite testing going on as we speak. Again, very Twitterish…
LinkedIn hits 45 Million Users (8/12): You think social media is just about friends, pictures, videos and FarmVille? Guess again – Linked in just hit 45,000,000 users. That combined with their recent self-serve advertising and polling features makes this a gigantic, yet still niche platform. Look for much more opportunity coming from these guys soon…
The fact of the matter is that this is a testament to the modern world of digital media… We always tell our clients – if we give you this presentation again in 30-days it is likely going to be completely different! Social media changes by-the-minute and if you aren’t investing some time or money into it at this point – you are going to spend a lot more of both in the coming months or years trying to catch-up. Hopefully, this post took care of the last 15-days – the next 15 are up to you.
With both Facebook AND Twitter down and/or acting a fool this morning it is making it tough to vent about one on the other, or vice versa and I am forced to blow off steam on the corporate Vert blog (which will subsequently be auto-posted to both Facebook and Twitter once they get their game faces on).
Which brings me to my next thought… what would we do if social networking was banned tomorrow? Perhaps Congress decides that Twitter and Facebook users get more opportunities in life because of their constant inter-connectedness and in an effort to level the playing field the “Federal Social Posting Ban Act” is signed into law. Now that we have a taste for the forbidden fruit of friends, fans, and followers (that’s alliteration) – are we addicted? When do the withdrawals start?
Apparently they set in immediately because I am already tweaking and Hootsuite just changed it’s business plan to be a chain of boutique hotels for travelers with pet owls. The point is that between international crises and the sharing of links, videos, pictures, and news – many of our lives can be defined by our news feeds. It is arguable that we can’t go back to “the old ways” of thinking and we have become desensitized to the 24/7, uber-connectedness of information and the ease of sharing ones thoughts and interests at anytime, anywhere.
Whatever the result, there would undoubtedly be hundreds of developers tirelessly coding to come up with the next big utility to take it’s place (without breaking the new legislation of course). Perhaps socially trained carrier pigeons that only deliver messages to our selected list of followers – brings a new meaning to the term “Tweet” doesn’t it?
Next time someone asks you why everyone is freaking out over social media – don’t tell them about the Iran crisis, clue them in on The Hangover…the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time. How did they achieve this feat? I would argue that social media (particularly the Facebook platform) had a little something to do with it. As you can see in the numbers below, the beginning of June started off typical with a little over 1,000 fan interactions per post, and ultimately sky-rocketed to over 40,000 fan interactions in a matter of 15 days! If that isn’t ROI, I don’t know what is…
This explosive growth can be directly attributed to two things: 1) The enormous media budget this movie had behind it, and 2) The exponential networking power of social media – specifically Facebook’s news feed. I guarantee you people were not seeing TV commercials for this movie and then rushing to their computers to hurry up and become fans of this movie… no, it was much more organic than that…
These fans (now approaching 2 million) were prompted by their friends, co-workers, family members, neighbors, and old high school friends. The Facebook Fan page for The Hangover did right what over fan pages do wrong – they enabled users to post their actions to their news feed… subsequently alerting their entire network of their actions. It is safe to argue that with this tactic alone The Hangover probably received well over 10,000,000 “free” digital impressions (or $10-20k in free digital media @ $1-2 CPMs) – and that is a safe guesstimate…
The moral of the story: Anyone can make a fan page – but is your brand man enough to leave the power of exponential sharing and growth in the hands of your humble fans? Only you can answer that…
I’ll give you another example… Recently Bravo (and several other media companies) struck a deal with FourSquare, the mobile + social media augmented reality game. When the news broke my gut reaction was ‘Why the hell would Bravo throw away good marketing dollars on such a small, new and unproven channel?’… Truth is – they are genius! (I think.) They did not strike the @FourSquare deal for mass notoriety (although the PR coverage is a perk) – Bravo created a partnership that speaks volumes to a very niche audience. A younger, tech-savvy, and urban audience that resonates perfectly with its media content and business plan. Brilliant!
3. Lack of vision to develop a business case for mobile: According to a 
display. The UI seems to flow well without much delay (at least from what we can see from videos). The applications native to the device seem to be well thought out and function well. We all know Apple is a user experience design clearing house, no worries there… The problems come when you begin to look at what the iPad lacks.
need, want or even have any use for one. Everyone wants a killer phone, not everyone needs a fancy touch-screen media device. However, we see great potential for the iPad in education. Since the introduction of the first Kindle I’ve always wondered when 15 pound textbooks might meet their maker. The iPad pushes closer to that time. While some student already carry around editions on their textbooks on Kindles and other e-readers, those devices still lack where the iPad excels. Could you imagine carrying all your textbooks in one device that could still show you full color images or even video right on the page you were studying? Or could you imagine a chemistry book application that allowed students to build molecules by dragging, pinching and turning atoms? That’s just a start…
With my 
Earlier this week Facebook nabbed up the more Twitter-like 
