Exploring Marketing Technology

Author: Jeff Larche

  • Could their cell phones have saved the Virginia Tech students?

    In a few weeks I’ll be giving a speech to a group of university and college marketing professionals. The topic: Our changing communication landscape. I plan to focus on that word — communication — instead of marketing. Modern marketing is increasingly about simple, authentic communication. Especially when your audience is part of the Facebook and AIM generation. What follows is the introduction I am considering for my talk.

    Just as ClickZ Experts columnist Sean Carton did in his blog entry on this topic, let me begin with a disclaimer. No blame for the Virginia Tech tragedy should be laid at the feet of the school’s administration. None. It is clear they did everything by the book, following the existing protocols pretty much to the letter.

    Events played a horrific trick on these school and law enforcement officials. Once they realized that the shooter in the first pair of murders was on a rampage, the challenge of alerting students was daunting. Alerts were sent by email. Most went unread when they could have done the most good — immediately upon sending.

    Cell phone SMS – also known as text messages — would have better matched the message with the audience.

    Choosing the right medium for your message is really Communications 101. But habitual thinking can blind us to the newest, best ways to communicate. Then something terrible comes along to wake us up.

    I’m using the example of Virginia Tech to remind us all that we need to forge new habits if we want to succeed, whether our job is to keep students safe, or attract them to our schools in the first place.

    In a recent blog entry about Twitter, which is a way to push messages en mass to friends’ cell phones, I had mentioned that some of the last messages passed between loved ones during the fires of 9/11 were via SMS. Even when the electricity and land lines were down and cell phone circuits were jammed by too much traffic, the thin pipeline of SMS over cell phones and PDAs remained clear. Messages continued to pass in and out of the Twin Towers, in 160-character packets, presumably until the heat and smoke was too great.

    I suggested in that post that had Twitter existed then, its SMS abilities might have passed emergency information to a critical mass of people on the imperiled floors, informing them that help was not on the way and the stairways were the last, best chance at survival.

    Similarly, text messages to the students at Virginia Tech could have instantly carried enough information to enough students to help them avoid or escape harm’s way.

    No company can say they are fortunate because of a terrible event, but the publicity from the shootings has boosted exposure for Rave Guardian, a technology by Rave Wireless that allows students to opt in for the sort of vigilant tab-keeping that was once the exclusive domain of worried parents.

    Rave Guardian allows students to set a timer — for perhaps 30 minutes — when they leave their friends’ dorm rooms to go back to their own. If they return safely they can simply turn off the alarm.

    “If something did happen, it would transmit their location every three minutes, including their profile, to campus safety,” reports Rodger Desai, president and CEO of the company.

    This is just one application. Rave, like many others, has recognized that although the web and email have their uses, modern students use their computers less often than their cell phones. They are field-testing a set of channels that students can set up to receive everything from bus schedules to campus news. A freshman at one of the pilot schools, Montclair State University, said that he gets a ton of value out of his cell phone by using these channels, including the following:

    • Checking out the menu of his dorm’s dining hall
    • Monitoring a continually updated map showing the progress of shuttle buses in their routes through campus

    “It’s pretty useful, and it’s going to get better and better,” this student reports.

    I agree. Now information coming to cell phones is but a trickle. But there will eventually be a potential torrent — one that is thankful regulated by a faucet we control at an individual level. This will happen. And in this country at least, it will happen first on our high school and college campuses.

    So let’s all of us vow now, as the parents, grandparents and stewards of the kids who will be blazing this trail, to do our best to at least watch where they are going. Lord knows we may not understand it all, but we could understand enough to help them become educated, productive citizens. We may even have a hand at saving someone’s life.

  • Ogilvy on web advertising

    My alternate headline for this post is: Winning web headlines can be long, but watch your column widths. Here’s why …

    Ogilvy On AdvertisingThe book that first inspired me to get into direct response — a move that led directly to my love of interactive marketing — was written by a famous ad man. Remarkably, David Ogilvy’s Ogilvy on Advertising is still in print. More remarkable is how much of his advice on successful direct marketing, print and television ads is still relevant. And directly transferable to the web.

    I was thinking of him again today when I was in a design meeting where one of our web designers was counseling against an overly wide column of text. He said, “We don’t want this column to span more that 400 characters. More than that fatigues the reader.” Wow, I thought. This advice is almost verbatim from a book that predates the web as we know it by at least 10 years.

    Headlines are another source of attention — and often misunderstanding. Although headlines linking to web pages can be short and still be effective, they should be long enough to get the job done. Abe Lincoln, when asked how long a soldier’s legs should be, was said to have answered, “Long enough to reach the ground.”

    I’ve learned a lot by following the advice of the excellent Brian Clark, in his CopyBlogger. He periodically singles out strong headlines, based on his experience in the business. (And thanks again, Brian, for citing one of mine). His criteria remind me a great deal of Ogilvy’s, which was based on some of the deepest readership research done at the time for advertising. Here is Ogilvy’s take on the headline:

    [Our research] reports that [print] headlines with more than 10 words get less readership than short headlines. On the other hand, a study of retail ads found that headlines of 10 words sell more than short headlines. Conclusion: If you need a long headline, go ahead and write one.

    Other tidbits of his that apply to online headlines and links include the following:

    • Headlines containing news are “surefire” — they are recalled by 22% more people than ads without news (and lots of pay-per-click research shows that they generate more clicks)
    • Never use all capital letters — they’re less readable in both print and online. And with the web, people may think you’re shouting, to cite the classic email netiquette tip
    • Whenever possible, promise a benefit

    So what is the longest character count we counsel for headlines? Keep them to 75. It’s the standard set by Digg for their listing’s headlines. And this number is just a few characters greater than the number that is indexed by Google (according to lore and legend) when Google’s spiders read a page’s Title tag.

    Which brings up an argument in favor of the longer headline that Ogilvy couldn’t have anticipated. Length improves the chances of including a keyword that will move your page higher in search engine results pages. That’s the sort of down-and-dirty selling tactic that the late Mr. Ogilvy would have loved.

  • Twitter sends flotsam and jetsam our way. Marketers: Take notice!

    It’s been called a micro-blogging platform, an electronic water cooler and a wonderful way to keep tabs on friends and family. It’s Twitter, and all I wanted to know is: Is this something marketers should be tracking? Here’s my answer.

    Yes.

    You should track Twitter. But do it on your own terms. Or simply keep tabs on someone who is on the Twitter network. This concept will definitely morph, but it is not going away.

    As promised in the footnote to my dismissive blog entry about this technology, I will recount my 14 days in Twitterland. For those who need a grounding in what Twitter is, I suggest you click on the link above. It loads in a new browser window, so you won’t lose your place. Are you back? Okay, let’s do this thing.

    The first thing I discovered was that the people who would never, ever get a blog, or comment on other people’s blogs, have willingly signed up for Twitter. They have eagerly posted their 140 characters of news, weather and sports. I joke, but these posts do often resemble what contemporary television news has devolved into: The most superficial look at important headlines, plus trivia and human interest. And in saying that, I do not mean to disparage, because, like local news, this is very addictive.

    Especially when you’re a friend or relative of the fellow “newscasters.”

    When you’re part of this micro-blogosphere, all other activity you’re engaged in at that moment comes to a brief halt while you check your computer screen, IM window, or cell phone text messages to learn such tidbits as: “Man, that soup was hot. It scalded my mouth!” I’m making this one up, but it’s the type of flotsam and jetsam that comes drifting your way when you dip your oar in the vast Twitter Ocean.

    Below is a sample I grabbed just now from the Twitter Public Timeline, a real-time stock ticker of global “Tweets” from those willing to share their tidbits with the world.

    A sample from the Twitter public timeline

    Again, I must assure you that I am not dismissing this type of information exchange. Just as the real definition of flotsam and jetsam is “potentially valuable goods jettisoned from a ship,” there are many gems that are shared with the friends, family and co-workers that one lets into one’s network. These gems slide into view suddenly and quietly, along with the detritus. It’s all disposable, but at the same time riveting.

    In my 14 days on a small Twitter network (less than 10 participants), I’ve learned things. Oh, yes. I’ve learned quite a bit.

    I’ve been sent links to interesting sites and videos. I’ve gotten to know more about distant friends’ lives. I’ve even discovered that I’ve missed an important appointment. And none of this was in my email box, which is crammed enough as it is. This is good on a micro level. And this is potentially important on a macro level.

    I suspect that when the next Twin Towers catastrophe occurs, those on a Twitter network will get important and potentially life-saving alerts (“A plane just hit the second tower!”). Remember: On 9/11/01, when the voice lines of cell phones were jammed and inaccessible, and the electricity was off, the last goodbyes were sent to loved ones via cell phone SMS text messages. Grimly, this form of communication was still available, for brief, real-time expressions of fear, resignation and undying love.

    If my suggestion of Twitter having that kind of utility shocks you, I must say it shocked me too. But it is also something that follows a clear path. Anthropologist Danah Boyd stated recently that initial web sites — we’ll call them Web 1.0 — were about ideas. With web sites and simple emails, people who didn’t know each other before became acquainted around shared interests and passions. Web 2.0 is all about people. Since the web has become ubiquitous (at least with the majority of the young, and 100% of the world’s information workers), you could keep connected with nearly everyone you know, and even have them broker introductions to those you don’t know (the magic of MySpace and Facebook “friends” and LinkedIn “connections”).

    So what is the coming Web 3.0 about? Place.

    Or, more importantly, place and time. Who is where I am right now? Other systems like Dodgeball hinted at this promise of a real-world / virtual network. Twitter expands on that promise. It is about place in a big way.

    If you want to spend some mindless computer time, check out this Google mash-up of the Twitter public timeline. That will remind you of how quickly this world is shrinking … and help to demonstrate the global, and univeral, appeal of Twitter.

    Finally, I offer this challenge. I want to see if Twitter can help me get acquainted with some interesting, like-minded marketing types. So I’m going to do a little experiment: I’m posting my Twitter posts to the world for the next week, and see who might want to add me to their Twitter Friends list. Specifically, I want to know how many people I could get to know. Can I connect with individuals whose flotsam and jetsam would make for an interesting and instructive complement to the Tweets I’m receiving now? And can some real business conversations come of it?

    I’ll let you know.

  • Two givens for all healthcare site upgrades: labor-savings and ease of use

    Content requirements for the web site of a healthcare system are formidable. Audiences include current and potential patients, as well as current and potential employees, physicians-with-privileges and donors. It’s no wonder that in their Ask the Experts piece, featured in a just-released Strategic Healthcare Communications newsletter, Dan Ansel and Susan Emerson recommend that the first step in planning site enhancements is to get a content management system. Their advice goes well beyond this tip, but two suggestions that I’ve never seen stated so bluntly are as follows:

    • Any enhancement should minimize the use of staff time, as this is often in short supply.
    • Any enhancement should be turnkey and simple to use. Simplicity and ease of use should apply to healthcare consumers and, just as important, to staff members who must administer the program.

    I can’t think of many categories of sites where so much service must be delivered by such a thin staff. Dan and Susan have acknowledged this throughout their excellent “how-to” article, reprinted on their Private Health News web site.

    NOTE: You may recall that I’ve talked about this company before, in a piece on generating ROI from your email newsletters.

  • New multitouch screens tickle the imagination

    We were born with sensitive fingertips and spent our first months experiencing our world primarily through touch. Fast-forward to later in our development. We learn about computers — one of the most important modern sources of communication, interaction and business. And what happens to tactile experience? Poof! Gone, or at least gone dormant. Instead, we risk carpal tunnel and terminal boredom (both meanings) as we literally beat out our thoughts into keyboards, one letter and mouse click at a time.

    It’s no wonder that a computing system designed to provide just a few scraps of visceral pleasure would generate a cult following. But even Apple’s desktop systems are limited by a keyboard and mouse as primary input devices. Bigger rewards can only come when we find better ways to receive our thoughts and intentions. The keyboard and mouse must go.

    Wired magazine knew this when one of its recent Expired/Wired triads was the following:

    Expired: Keypad

    Tired: Scroll Wheel

    Wired: Multitouch

    Although these blurbs never explain themselves, I’m fairly sure the editors of Wired were thinking about the work of Jefferson (Jeff) Han. His work in creating a multitouch monitor is old hat to a lot of tech people, but it’s still a miracle to the uninitiated. And it sure looks like the way we’re headed in computer interfaces. Han created a new way for touch screens to receive feedback from fingers and hands based on pressure and movement.

    Some of Han’s supporting software concepts have already been applied elsewhere, to smaller screens. For instance, the idea of two opposing fingers widening or coming together as a way to move or “flick” a virtual wheel is at play on the new Apple iPhone touch screen. But what is particularly exciting about Han’s creation is that, similar to the Nintendo Wii gaming device, his screen gets us up and moving. The Wii is even being used in retirement communities. And similar to the Wii, Han’s multitouch screen is an interface that meets our bodies and brains more than half way. Far more. Neither system requires an instruction manual.

    Here are two more reasons why I think this is taste of things to come for information workers everywhere:

    1. It is more natural — and I suspect far more productive — to think conceptually while manipulating ideas with a swipe of your hand rather than pinning them to a board like so many dead specimens, using words, paragraphs and tables. When we play games, do we scroll through a deck of cards? Do we type a ball into far left field?
    2. Human backs were not built for 90 degree angles. A recent study found the most comfortable sitting posture for your spine is 135 degrees. Which basically has you working from a fully-reclined dentist chair! Instead, why not stand? Notice in this YouTube video how Jeff Han shifts his feet in a subtle dance. Sign me up for that job!

    Voice recognition and multitouch screens are, in my humble opinion, a combination we’ll be seeing in offices sooner rather than later. Your thoughts?