OTOinsights

Tourist Versus Resident Research

I talk to a lot of business professionals and academics alike about Web 2.0, Second Life, and other emergent Web social spaces and phenomena. Many of the business folks have ideas about doing startups in this space; some of them have gotten some real money to do it. Academics are interested in practicing knowledge-production and teaching in these spaces. All these experts are ready to jump in and colonize these new spaces.

Yet many of these experts in the real world are naive n00bs in the Web 2.0 spaces they seek to colonize.

There are a few different reasons for this. One is that press accounts of these spaces are written by journalists who themselves have only superficial understandings of these spaces. Another is that many of these professionals are making good faith efforts to understand these phenomena, but are looking in the wrong places.

For example, when I talk to business professionals interested in Second Life, they tell me they've been to Reebok's and Pontiac's islands. Academics tell me they've been to look at new media consortium or the activities of such-and-such university. They've all visited IBM, and they're fired up to learn there is a highly active distribution list for Second Life educators. They've read about U2's Second Life concerts, and they know that some woman made, like, a LOT of money selling virtual real estate.

So what's wrong with that?

It's kind of like writing a literary critique of Jane Austen on the grounds of having seen Keira Knightley's Pride and Prejudice at the cinema. It's like an American going to Europe to visit Disneyland Paris. You're not experiencing the culture. You're seeing a cartoon picture of your navel. There's nothing wrong with it as far as it goes, but you don't want to base a startup or a dissertation on that alone.

If you want to understand Second Life, MySpace, Facebook, or whatever, don't be a tourist. Don't limit yourself to the spots Business Week and the New York Times bleat about.

Go live it.

Read blogs written by longtime residents, not scholars and professional marketers, and follow their URLs. Visit their spots in-world. Watch their "home movies" on YouTube. Completely fill in and regularly change/expand your profile. Dress up and make a killer avatar. Customize your user interface. Use new features. Upload your own pictures. Spend a little money. Ask someone you don't know for help. Learn who the famous residents and users are, read their profiles, and visit their del.icio.us pages. Develop online-only friendships that actually mean something to you. Organize a real-life event using a friends list on Facebook.

Nothing says it wouldn't be possible for a tourist to help develop a city, but a resident is in a better position to get it right the first time.

Forget The Risk. Let Your Customers Sell Your Products

In the past, generating word of mouth was a goal for every marketer but getting the buzz going was a huge challenge.  Today, on communities and in blogs, customers are talking about your product whether you want them to or not.

Earlier this month, Yahoo presented a research study on brand advocates with some interesting findings. Of course, the term “brand advocates” inherently implies that these folks are loyal.  Turns out they are also likely to generate twice as much revenue as non-brand advocates through their recommendations.  For example, in the auto industry, 38% of customers are advocates and 14% of them had at least one friend make the same purchase based on their advice.  Think about it…hundreds of thousands of friends buying new cars without additional marketing spend.

How are these advocates spreading the word?  They have broad social circles online.  On a weekly basis, brand advocates are three times more likely than non-advocates to communicate in an online community, read a blog, or post an opinion.   They like being “go-to” people and they have a built-in audience – 76% of consumers would rather turn to another consumer for information about a product or service than get an expert recommendation.

So…what does this mean for all those risk-adverse companies afraid to jump into social media? They need to stop trying to control the flow of information and meet it head on.  They should provide forums for conversation, take product suggestions from advocates seriously and contribute to the dialogue, even when it’s negative.   It's simple.  Companies need to keep their brand advocates happy and engaged.  The revenue is worth the risk.

OTOnetworks Officially Opens Office in Baltimore

OTOnetworks, One to One Interactive's performance based media company, recently moved into new office space located within Baltimore's Emerging Technology Center (ironically located on Boston St.).  Rob Rex, Managing Director of OTOnetworks, has started to staff the new space with both copywriter and marketing personnel. 

Address information provided below:

OTOnetworks
2400 Boston St. Suite 340
Baltimore, MD 21224

OTO Kickball - Game 1

Last night marked the debut of the first ever organized OTO athletic team... if by "organized" you mean a group of OTO employees running wildly around a field chasing a big yellow rubber ball.

Before a raucous crowd of five*, an energetic Team OTO jumped to an early 2-0 lead, before giving up 12 runs -- almost all of which were on errors.  Despite a late offensive surge, OTO fell 12-4, a loss which caused season ticket holder Howie The Dog to urinate on the field before walking off in disgust.

After the game, Coach Lodge, sporting a ripped grey hoodie, was quick to praise the hard work and sportsmanship of his team:

"Seriously, how much did these guys drink at the Warren Tavern?  Honestly?  Four, five beers apiece?  It's a wonder they were able to tie their sneakers. And that Lodge kid, 0 for 3 on the day?  He’s heading back to second grade if he keeps that up"

General Manager Jim Casale also sought to put a positive spin on the loss:

"This Silvia kid is killing us out there.  KILLING us."

There were several bright spots during the game:  Pitcher Kitty Kat Obas, who remained on the mound for the entire game, was well on her way to a perfect game - until the second at-bat of the first inning.  Brian “BeerKart” Assmus booted a home run that landed somewhere in Chelsea (No evidence, though, that his kick broke a window in the old AdTools office).  That kid from the Search team finally caught a ball that came his way. And Casale showed poise, athleticism, and the enduring spirit of a true champion, and needs only to learn obscure rules like running back to first if there's someone already on second. “What?  Doesn’t 2B mean you can have 2 people on it? So, 3B means your can’t have 3 people on it?  What type of sport is this?"

Team OTO aims to improve their record to .500 next Tuesday. 

*thanks Yavuz, Howie, Catherine, Katie J and that new guy who lives in the Cave with Brian!

One to One Launches New Quantemo Website

One to One Interactive has recently launched an updated Quantemo.com website to support customer education and marketing regarding its most recent acquisition.  Quantemo is OTOi's NeuroMarketing Research Lab that offers a scientific approach to measuring a target audience’s emotional reactions to digital media (web sites, online advertising, streaming video, virtual worlds, etc.).  One to One  announced its purchase of Quantemo on April 17th, 2007.

Dissecting Numa Numa | A Critical Analysis of Viral Video Content

On April 26th, 2007 I had the pleasure of presenting along side with Dr. Jeffery Bardzel (PH.D. Assistant Professor of HCI/Design and new media at the School of Informatics in Indiana University) and Dr. Carl Marci (Chief Science officer Innerscope Research) One to One's first MITX digital marketing series event titled "Dissecting Numa Numa | A Critical Analysis of Viral Video Content". 

Our presentation peeled away the layers of the now world famous Numa Numa video footage, to help uncover the underpinnings of a successful word-of-mouth execution.   The session specifically explored the footage's origins, aesthetics, cultural references, neurological engagement metrics, and overall buzz metrics to help identify if there is a specific signature to architecting content that is best suited for viral distribution.

You may download a PDF of the presentation here or by clicking on the picture above.

Link here to read a rather thorough write up on the event by Cesar Brea, Global Practice Leader in Monitor Group's Marketspace Advisory Unit.

Note: Special thanks goes to John Paolillo, Ph.D. and Jefferey Bardzel, Ph.D. and the Indiana University School of Informatics for their initial work that made up a good portion of this presentation titled "Humor, Multimedia, and the Internet: The “Numa Numa” Phenomenon".

Jeremi Karnell-President, One to One Interactive

Search Engines Moving Too Fast?

In the race to the top, it appears that the search engines may be innovating too fast for their own good. It seems that these days, each engine is frantically rushing to add features, improve current operations or even completely re-invent itself. The updates are frequent, and often come at the cost of one of the most important aspects of search – real time access to data. Last week there was a day when I was unable to pull up-to-date reports from MSN, and could not log into Google AdWords.

The competition among the engines is fierce, both in terms of gaining share of searches and advertiser approval. This competition has driven a healthy environment that embraces updates and improvement of features and service. This is great for the advertisers and the consumer as it allows for better experience for both. However, the speed at which these features are being sent into the marketplace is a bit too fast for even the engines that are releasing the features to handle, leading to unnecessary problems.

MSN was set to release what was supposed to be a much more user friendly adCenter. It boasted of an easier to use interface and the ability to bulk download. However, when I logged in on Monday morning and it took an hour and a half to pull a simple week report. We were informed that there was a slight delay in the reporting, but it was expected to be repaired by the afternoon. It was not fully resolved until Thursday of that week. This was not the first major issue however, a few months earlier the engine had dropped all of the DMA-targeting for one of our accounts. Needless to say, this was quite a large issue, but was luckily caught and resolved quickly.

MSN is not the only engine experiencing difficulties, however.  It seems that Google has been subject to a number of bugs recently as well. Last week I was unable to use the keyword tool, reports would not run, and all of AdWords moved at a snail’s pace. Earlier a bug between our bid tool and the AdWords Editor resulted in URL updates to actually post as additional creatives. Big Problem. We are told that the problem should be resolved with the next release of AdWords.

It’s not only the Tier 1’s that are affected either. We launched a campaign on a Tier 2 last week only to find that the engine also did a complete site re-launch on the same day. A bug resulted in a user clicking on an ad only to have it appear in a pop-up window with no navigation. Again, we were told that the bug would be resolved shortly.

In the end, the enhanced features and the new marketing opportunities that the engines offer are greatly appreciated. However, it seems that as the engines are caught up in the race to ever improve, they may be losing sight of one of the more important feature of search – the opportunity to understand how the market is moving in real time. For large customers, these periods without access to that valuable data can cost thousands of dollars an hour.

Massively Amateur Culture

Last week I gave three different presentations at three very different venues. The venues were Internet2, which is the next generation network that runs 100 times faster than the present Internet; MITX (Massachusetts Innovation and Technology eXchange), which had a special panel on digital marketing; and finally the conference Media in Transition at MIT. My topics included amateur education online, viral videos, and fashion in Second Life.

Underlying all three topics is my primary research interest, which I'll call for lack of a better term, "massively amateur culture." I look at ways that massive numbers of amateurs--65,000 videos uploaded to YouTube everyday; half a million animations at NewGrounds; and Second Life, a 3D virtual world created by its user-players, having virtual acreage equivalent to the area of Singapore--produce works of culture. As my presentation titles suggest, these cover an enormous range, from virtual educational institutions; to compelling 90-second video serials; to a thriving, for-profit virtual fashion industry in massively multiplayer worlds.

One interesting result is that these cultures are robust enough that they begin to compete with mainstream culture. There are many implications of this, but here are two interesting ones.

First, how does "mainstream culture" (e.g., large corporations, media conglomerates, political parties) make use of these new media as platforms to support their endeavors? This is a hot question in many circles, but it is not the only question we should be considering.

Second, and much more interesting to me, is to what extent do amateur cultures and mainstream cultures threaten each other, and what might their peaceful coexistence look like? Right now they have an uneasy coexistence in large part because whole populations still watch TV.

• How will this balance play out as a generation of MMOG players and MySpace users stop watching cable TV?


• Will the "corporate invasion" ruin, save, or barely affect a place like Second Life?


• What happens to politics when some of the most careful research and analysis comes from explicitly one-sided sources, rather than professional journalists?
  

It will be interesting to see where these trains are really going, but without a doubt massive groups of collaborating amateurs are threatening the territory of smaller numbers of trained professionals ensconced in traditional media.