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For Apple, Marketing Is a Whole New Game | Advertising Age 

Joan Gillman

Heightened consumer awareness of data is eroding the trust they have with collecting companies, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, per a McCann survey.

Recently I've been doing a virtual internship with this guy out in California. It's been great! He asks for social media insight, I provide it and get paid. And the best thing is I know things now about social media and the possibilities they provide for businesses (especially start ups like his). 

However, recently I've been noticing that social media although it's great free marketing comes with a caveat my mother is always reminding me off. "Nothing good comes free"

The article lined to this entry talks about the fact that consumers are becoming more and more aware of the unbeknownst data collections that are occurring online with their social media sites There is an eroding the trust they have with collecting companies, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Now personally I don't care if Facebook tells NetApp I love Oreos, but clearly many do. But there is this looming paranoia that companies have to adjust and adapt for. That is why now more than ever, brand trust is important between consumers and companies. Companies cannot simply be omni-present on social media sites and build reliability with customers (as it somewhat was in the initial internet era. Think those "You won the sweepstakes" popups you fell for at first). They must instead work that much harder now to build up good old fashioned word of mouth. Consumer are what some would argue is overly conscious of their security and that translates over purchases. 

Social Media comes into this because the way many companies react to what they believe consumers want is via data collection through social media sites. So when those sites are not longer trusted, or even bigger than that the government puts into action privacy laws prevented browser tracking, what are the companies back up plans.  In this day and age is it realistic to go back to the majority of data collection into consumer preference to be done by focus groups and surveys. 

Stopped by Adweek, AdAge, and The Minneapolis Egotist this morning to see what piqued my interest.

As originally published in Ad Age (9/5/2013)

Kevin Spacey's lecture at the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival last month has topped one million YouTube views and is becoming the Gangnam Style of the media community.

The actor explained in the speech that only Netflix had the vision and confidence backed by data to green-light the making of "House of Cards," the series in which he stars, without making the investment conditional on the traditional pilot model of the U.S. TV industry. The "all-you-can-eat" strategy of releasing the entire series at once spoke to the needs of a generation of media consumers who don't want their appetites moderated by executives keen to build schedules around their hit shows, Spacey said. This generation wants "what they want, when they want it."

He contrasted the efficiency of "House of Cards" with the high failure rate of TV pilots. In baseball terms, the ratio of big hits to canceled shows gives a batting average that would never get a player to the major leagues. Spacey also pointed to the creative limitations of the pilot. Artistically, he argued, pilots by their very nature represent a compromised narrative. They create artificial cadence in storytelling, because they require the superficial development of too many characters and possible story arcs that act against the organic nature and pace of how great stories best unfold.

In the round, Spacey makes a compelling case, although I am sure he is glad that he and David Fincher had not conceived of "Pan Am" and produced 26 hours of that show, only to have it canceled mid season by ABC. Which brings us to the only flaw in the argument: It is an easier one to make in hindsight, and about one of the best 50 TV shows of the last 25 years. Can we necessarily extrapolate that experience to the whole universe of entertainment, with its need to produce a high volume and broad spectrum of ratings to satisfy viewers and advertisers alike?

The motion picture industry offers interesting parallels. Like TV, it has a significant failure rate and is kept in business by a mix of expensive and profitable franchises and inexpensive but profitable surprises whose revenues offset the average and the catastrophic. Films are made without pilots, with the only compromise being the time allowed for telling the story, which normally is restricted to 250 minutes rather than 13 hours.

It seems that the future model lies at the intersection of great storytelling and technology. One prescription could be as follows:

Make the pilot (or two or three episodes) to mitigate some risk

Make the pilot(s) the authentic first chapter(s) of the story, rather than 50-minute trailer(s); no compromise.

Use social media and YouTube as platforms to create layers of context, back story and future story, allowing the distributing platform and the producers deeper insight (through data) into the likely success or failure of the project and allowing the viewer to join the conversation earlier, which likely will increase tune in.

Clearly this does not resolve consumers' desire to binge-view all episodes in the first window of release, but it allows people who aren't available or prepared to DVR the show the opportunity to binge in the second window. It's also worth noting the source of all the other content on Netflix,Amazon and elsewhere. It's a blend of the successes and failures of content makers over generations -- the function of a model that tries, errs and sometimes succeeds hugely. Above all it's a function of the willingness and financial wherewithal of backers to take risks.

9 Examples of Brands Engaging in Social Media Banter

KFC vs. Cap'n Crunch; Old Spice vs. Taco Bell

As more CPGs invest in building out "owned" media to make the most of their CRM data, the competition for attention is growing. The result is a lot of branded content clutter. Engaging directly with consumers requires a combination of pushing messages to them while also creating the kind of content that pulls them in. Unfortunately, companies often get that latter bit wrong. Here are a few hints for what to do -- and what not to do -- when it comes to using data to personalize and target content: Data as personalization engine Continue reading at AdAge.com

Published by adage.com at 13/08/2013 2:45 AM EDT

As more CPGs invest in building out "owned" media to make the most of their CRM data, the competition for attention is growing. The result is a lot of branded content clutter. Engaging directly with consumers requires a combination of pushing messages to them while also creating the kind of content that pulls them in. Unfortunately, companies often get that latter bit wrong. Here are a few hints for what to do -- and what not to do -- when it comes to using data to personalize and target content: Data as personalization engine Continue reading at AdAge.com

Published by adage.com at 13/08/2013 2:45 AM EDT