Marketing Hipster

A blog I enjoy reading Viral Garden put together a great social media experiment called the Z-list. The goal is to help lesser known or newer blogs, like mine get some much needed and valuable links and hopefully pick up a new reader or two. The idea is that Mark started a list of some lesser known blogs that he liked followed by other blog owners copying and pasting his list to their own blogs while adding new links of blogs that they wanted to call attention to and liked. I think I am grabbing the latest list which was from ConverStations.

Shotgun Marketing Blog (via Mack)
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim

Two Hat Marketing (via Chris)
The Branding Blog

The Emerging Brand (via Mike)
CrapHammer
Drew’s Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
On Influence and Automation
Kinetic Ideas
MSCO
Buzzoodle
NewsPaperGrl

Marketing Hipster (via Cord)
Viralmeister
Trendwatching
Ben Wills

Give it a try and pass it on.

Technorati Tags: social media, Z-list

A good post on Digg about a blog that was made to look like it was two young guys who wanted a Sony PSP for Christmas from their parents. They made some cute videos, some interesting posts, etc. etc. Though very quickly it was revealed that the domain was registered by an ad agency and this was a poor attempt by both the ad agency as well as Sony to create some viral marketing buzz for the PSP during the holidays.I always wanted to be a fly on the wall during these marketing meetings when an agency is trying to plan out a campaign. I wonder if during this particular campaign meeting, anyone brought up the point that they are being dishonest to any and all people who will come to this blog? This site is being developed, written and launched by an ad agency and these guys in the blog are merely actors and what might the repercussions be if the public finds out for both the agency, but more importantly, our client?!?!?!?

When I was looking over this blog, there were several items that jumped out at me. First off, this agency wrote this focused on the lowest common denominator. I understand the target demographic for this site was probably boys 11-18, but did they assume their customers are stupid as well?

Look at the writing; misspelled words (Kids do know how to use the spell check feature), lower case letters like i (Yea, finding the shift key is tough) and then just total run-on sentences that my cousin who is 4 could of written better.

Many people believe that this campaign failed miserably because Sony and their agency got caught lying. Oh yea, by the way folks, if you are going to lie, don’t register the domain in your ad agencies name. Though the lying part just made this story bigger than it would of been. But no matter what, this campaign would of failed for one simple reason, it did not communicate well with the target audience. It demeaned them, it talked down to them and it offered them nothing of interest. I equate this web site to an accident you see on the side of the road. You know you should not look, but for that couple of seconds as you drive by it, you cannot help but stare at the horror of it all. Though two seconds after passing it, you have moved on to something else in your head never to return to the accident.

If you do not believe me, let’s look at some of the comments users are posting. These are the people Sony wants more than anything to buy their product.

• This site makes me want to get rid of my PSP.
• This is terrible. I mean really terrible. I don’t think anyone is fooled by this terrible, terr1ble ad.
• Things are going really bad for Sony if all they can afford to push one of their flagship products are you monkeys.
• Sony should be ashamed….
• What The Hell! Not only is this fraud of a joke site a simple paid for advertisement for Sony, but it also is horrendously awful! You spent how much on this absolute tripe?

Technorati Tags: Sony, PSP, dishonest, failed

A piece of paper flew my desk today that happened to catch my eye. It was a write up for a client where the author had pulled a stat that he got from McKinsey that said that an estimated 80-85% of the whole economy are influenced by someone they know or trust telling them about a product or service. While between 5-7% of these same people say they are NOT influenced by the commercials they see on TV, the ads they hear on radio or the advertisements they read in the newspaper or magazines. McKinsey goes on to say that 80% of the people surveyed believes this sort of advertising to be dishonest and untrustworthy.Dishonest and untrustworthy!

What happened? When did we make the wrong turn in marketing that a majority of people out there believe we are out right liars and cannot be trusted? I know this is a huge question and can be answered in one or many different ways, but I am going to discuss one area, if you don’t mind.

I think things went a rye when we as marketers as well as companies who want to market their goods and services stopped listening to their audience, their customers, the consumers. Whether it was because we got too big, too slow or just too lazy, we stopped hearing what the consumer had to say. We assumed we knew what they were looking for and just made the decisions for them. Well now that technology has given even the lowliest of persons a voice and a soap box to stand on, it is time to start listening again.

Now the question is how do you go about listening? How do we find the right people, to ask the right questions, to get the answers we need? And even more important, how we interpret the data once we get it and how do we figure out what to do once we have all this great information?

Yikes, my head is spinning… These are all real interesting questions with a number of even more interesting answers. Over the next couple of weeks, this is going to be one of my focuses here. Discuss how to best listen to our clients/customers and what and how to do with that information. And also hopefully listening to you on your thoughts and feedback.

One of my very good friends, Ben Wills has written a great article on social media marketing that I would recommend everyone to take a read. You can find it at:

The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing