Marketing Hipster

I have been meaning to post this video I saw a couple of weeks ago. Even though I am not a huge Microsoft fan, I believe over the last couple of years Sony has shown themselves to be the most arrogant company I have ever seen. They have been reckless with their products, their services and shown absolutely no consideration for the people most important to them, their customers. Sony, I believe that you have totally killed your brand.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Sony, brand

Has anyone heard that Google has removed or revised their motto of “Do No Evil”? The reason I am asking is it seems that there has been several news of note lately that would seem to go against their do no evil motto. For example, Google’s decision to censor content in China, the news that Google bullied NC officials to get unprecedented tax breaks for their new computer center and now that they will only be offering it’s new anti-piracy tools for YouTube to only companies that have distribution deals with the top online video-sharing service.

“One media industry source likened YouTube’s policy to a ‘mafia shakedown.’”

Doing no evil gets complicated when millions upon billions of dollars are on the line, eh there Sergey and Larry?

Technorati Tags: Google, YouTube

Brains on Fire, a company and a blog that I have a lot of respect for posted a great article summarizing this whole Aqua Teen Hunger Force fiasco that I just wanted to post here so everyone can have an opportunity to read.

Spike sums it perfectly:

“The rest of us that are out there in the trenches trying to educate and win business have to put up with this crap.”

“………..This was the very definition of interruptive marketing. It wasn’t a conversation. It wasn’t listening. It was yelling. Old school “look over here” yelling. And we will all feel the repercussions for some time.”

Technorati Tags: Aqua Teen Hunger Force

The Robert Scoble smack-a-thon continued on Friday when Robert posted a story that he is going to be speaking at a conference sponsored by PayPerPost and they were going to pay him for his travel and time expenses. This unleashed once again a huge amount of backlash on Robert where most people were calling him a sell-out. There have been several items recently that Robert has written that I have disagreed with and have said so in several posts. But this time folks, I have to say, I think people are overreacting and are just jumping on the ever present Scoble bashing bandwagon.

I am not a big fan of PayPerPost and I agree that when you pay people to write things, it brings up a number of ethical issues. But PPP are not writing Scoble’s speech nor are they telling him what to say. He is a well respected member of this community and if they want to pay for his travel and time to speak at their conference, I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. I also have to give Robert props for posting the disclosure online when he knew it would bring nothing but more negative feedback.

Paying someone to come and speak is nothing new. Some of our most respected and well liked people are being paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak at companies and conferences, i.e. Bill Clinton, Rudy Guiliani, etc. If Robert is going to take the time to travel to the conference and give a speech having his time and expenses paid for I think is expected.

What I will find interesting is exactly what Robert is going to say at the conference. This conference will be attended by PayPerPost fans and users. Will Robert take this opportunity to speak his mind and opinion which will be contrary to most people in attendance or will he take the easy way out? Based on the substance of his speech, I think will determine whether this is a real issue or not.

Technorati Tags: Robert Scoble, PayPerPost

In the latest ridiculous news coming from Sony Corporation, A leading porn director told German news site Heise that Blu-ray manufacturers in the U.S. had told him Sony would pull their Blu-ray licenses if they made porn films.

So let’s give a quick rundown on the life and times of good old Sony lately. First, they launched a blog and lied to everyone about it. Followed by getting caught, but still not realizing or admitting any kind of fault and now they plan on censoring people. Now I agree when it comes to pornography there can be differing opinions, but Sony if you take a look back at history, you will see that censoring people never ever ends up well. In regard to the Blu-ray, I have one word for you Sony – Betamax.

Technorati Tags: Sony, Blu-ray, porn, censoring

Recently I discovered this great blog through MyBlogLog called the The Art of Intimacy. It has nothing to do with marketing or the web. Jennifer, the author, just writes about life and love. What could me more important? I have always been under the mindset that it did not matter what the subject matter was when it comes to writing as long as it is well written and interesting; which this definitely is. I was reading this one post named “Be Tender with My Love” and a specific line really stayed with me. She wrote:

“For some there is a deep fear involved in loving, in sharing, in disclosing, and in intimacy.”

I was thinking that this quote could also be used when talking about marketing and advertising. People, especially these days, are cynical, just like when it comes to love. They have been hurt and annoyed and frustrated in the past with products and services they have purchased. Just like when your heart has been broken, you are more hesitant to jump into another situation that you are unfamiliar with and risk getting hurt again.

It seems that a lot of discussions both in the board rooms as well as the blogosphere is about how to get a target markets’ attention. Whether it be online or offline, how do we get people to come over to our store, web site, etc? I have come to believe that this kind of thinking is putting the cart before the horse. What should be discussed first is when we get potential clients or customers to check us out, how are we going to create a connection with these people? What is going to differentiate us from our competitors? In other words, how can we get them to trust us and hopefully love us?

There’s been a number of great articles out there on new and innovative ways to market to users. Though what I think is continually overlooked is what happens once we get the attention of those users? What is the customer experience? You can get all the attention in the world but if none of that attention turns into revenue, what was it all for?

Stay tuned for a follow-up on this.

Technorati Tags: MyBlogLog, marketing, advertising, love, potential clients, customer experience

I have to be honest usually by this time I would of dropped this whole Sony PSP thing, but after Sony posted that flippant response saying that they were “Too Funky Fresh”, my opinion is that they deserve everything they get. So the latest episode of Sony putting their proverbial foot in their mouth’s continues as a spoof site of the old, fake, terribly done ‘all I want for xmas is a psp site’ has just launched. It is very funny with some great artwork and pretty much the entire site is dedicated to bashing Sony and their marketing practices which by the past behavior I am all in favor of.
Dear Sony, here is a clue for you. This is not going to go away on it’s own. Your degrading remark admitting it was you just added more fuel to this already raging fire. Now it is time that you take your heads out of the sand and do what any 5 year old knows to do when he or she has made a mistake, APOLOGIZE! Just release a press release saying the following:

“We did not realize how this blog was going to be seen and we have now come to the realization that the last thing we as a company wants to do is alienate and lie to people most important to us, our customers. This will never happen again and we will begin working to regain your trust immediately.”

Technorati Tags: Sony, flippant, APOLOGIZE

After much discussion in the blogosphere including here, Sony released the following statement in regard to their fake blog:

“Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn’t a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP.

Sony Computer Entertainment America”

This could be the worst apology I have ever read in my entire life. Are they really trying to out due the atrocious way they handled their rootkit fiasco many months back? Are you actually serious with this apology Sony? Let me take a guess, Zipatoni wrote this apology for you? Well that makes all the sense in the world since they created this POS site for you in the first place, why not allow them to see just how far you could get that foot of yours down your throat?? I am real interested in hearing other people’s opinions as maybe I am just not thinking clearly on this issue, but here is my take.

Sony, let me try to paint a picture of where you are right now. You have been caught outright lying to the people you care about most, YOUR CUSTOMERS! The people who go out and sleep on the sidewalks overnight just so they can hand over $600 for your latest and greatest console. These are people who you should be courting, listening to and most importantly, respecting. Though instead you continually show that you have absolutely no regard whatsoever for your customers and more importantly this blog shows that you think of your customers as stupid to say the least.

But let me digress for a moment. I think we all would agree that you are not listening to your customers, but this apology shows that you are not listening to anyone. How many posts have their been in the blogosphere saying that the 3rd grade writing, misspelling, etc. that you had on your fake blog was once again demeaning to your customers? I read at least a half dozen. So what do you do, you come out with an apology with terms like “funky fresh” and “Busted. Nailed. Snagged”. What the hell are you thinking?

Bottom line Sony, you can pretend that you are the cool kid on the block, but it’s time you realize that you’re not. You need to come to the realization that we as consumers are smarter than you think and once you have lost the trust of your customers, it is a very long haul to try to get that back. Though to be honest, by your continued actions, I really don’t think you care. But I have absolutely no doubt that you will start caring very soon as you see your revenue decreasing and companies like Microsoft and Nintendo begin to eat away at your market share. Then when it starts to effect your bottom line, I have a feeling you will be paying much better attention. Unfortunately, that just may be a little too late.

Technorati Tags: Sony, worst apology, lying

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.