Testing, testing social networks

You have to hand it to P&G; for most of the 15 years, or so, of the commercial Internet the company has been in a constant state of discovery in order to learn how to exploit online to its marketing advantage. Beginning with its Sunny Delight “Sun Bottle Hunt” web contest in the mid-90s and including the FAST Summit it sponsored in 1998, P&G has exerted its role as the world’s premier marketer in order to make sense of online advertising, for the benefit of all of us.

They were at it again yesterday according to a report picked-up by IAB’s Smartbrief on Cincinnati.com (which is part of the Enquirer - and which, by the way, does a nice job in its tag line of positioning Cincinnati.com as “Powered by you and the Enquirer and Community Press.” Good consumer-centric-media kind of stuff.) when they invited 40 leaders of social networking companies to headquarters to engage in a little experimenting.  Working with P&G marketing executives the test was to try and sell as many t-shirts as possible over four hours relying on social networking tools. The winner sold 600 shirts at $20 each.

Hmmm.

If they haven’t, I recommend P&G run another experiment - perhaps the same experiment - but with actual consumers, not social network executives. At last week’s 4As meeting in New Orleans there were three consumer panels, maybe 24 individuals in all, divided into demographic buckets – young adults, baby boomers and just women. It was a great initiative on the part of the 4As, long over-due. With so much lip service paid to consumer control it was the first major marketing conference I’d attended at which consumers actually got to speak, live.

The young adults panel was appropriately hip and conversant. The subsequent panels of boomers and women probably made the toes curl of most of the people in the room. In the advertising business, we get comfortable thinking about our target audiences as thin and attractive, with white teeth living in households over $75K. These panels will have disabused many of that notion. Which doesn’t reflect poorly on the panelists. To the contrary, they became more real - a fact that hopefully sank in with some of the marketers and media-types who smirked quietly and rolled their eyes during the sessions. Those panelists were at Wal-Mart later that day buying products.

But, with regards to reality, the one media behavior attribute each panel seemed to share was scepticism towards social networking. One person on the young adults panel when asked about Facebook even responded, “What’s that?” A “sweet” grandmother type on the boomers panel uses MySpace to track her grandchildren. I recall only one of the panelists across all three panels showing much affinity for advertising in a social context when he discussed picking-up on a recommendation for designer blue jeans with a price point of something like $200. And he acknowledged, sure, at $200 who isn’t going to speak-up about a pair of jeans. The simple truth is that newspapers had a better outing across the three panels that day than social networking. So, it might make sense for P&G to run the experiment again with a different control group.

Who’s for fighting?

I spent two and a half days at the 4As Media Conference in New Orleans and I’m trying to think how to summarize the event. For help I’ve wandered over to AdAge.com and checked the other usual industry news sources and, well, there’s nothing much being said. MediaPost has a report about the Social Networking panel. Jonah Bloom, Editor of Ad Age, wraps-up with a 3 minute Ad Age video that reports everyone who attended the Media Conference was anxious. The pervasive mood of the place was gloomy. Business is tough.

The mood came across while I was there. But, I’m trying to think of what happened at the event that tells me what, as an industry, we’re working on now that it’s over. No one seems to have much to say about that today.

What are we working on? Nothing about that anywhere, including the 4A’s web site, where I could find nary a scratch on the conference. The event itself has been purged from the list of events. It’s like it didn’t happen. If you dig around you can find a summary of last year’s conference, so perhaps this year’s summary is on its way.

I recall that Marc Goldstein, North American CEO of GroupM, told attendees that we must have hope. And, beyond that, he said we must take stock in our creative energy and ability to solve customers problems in new and important ways. He gave three pretty good examples of the sort of creative power he was talking about. Marc was clear, though, there are no easy answers and – worse – there is no one right now likely to lead us out of our problems. The advertising world does not have its version of Barack Obama to tell us, Yes We Can. Still, he points out, we must.

The wrap-up to the session on Friday featured a panel of principals from four leading media buying companies. Maria Luisa Francoli, global CEO of MPG, Irwin Gottlieb, global CEO of GroupM, Page Thompson, North American CEO of Omnicom and Jerry Buhlman, CEO of Aegis came on last to deliver the unvarnished view from the top. As it turns out, the unvarnished view from the top looks like it does from the bottom - i.e. more for less is required. More accountability, more measure-ability, more affordability. The view hasn’t really changed much since the economy was growing hand over wallet. Row harder. The Procurement Officer wants to go water skiing.

So, now what? Who was it that said we must endeavour to persevere? It wasn’t someone with a business plan. Media planners and buyers have been endeavouring furiously, nights and weekends, with tighter deadlines, less access to the strategic and creative vision of their clients and thanks to cable, satellite and the Internet more access to more media choices more beneficial to their customers than ever before. Under the circumstances, greater perseverance will lead them, and us, no where.

Only citizenry besieged by rockets from the sky can be called upon to persevere and, then, only if they know that someone, somewhere is fighting for them. And I don’t know…it’s awfully quiet out there.

Who’s for fighting?

Yes, the consumer is STILL in control

I was 10 minutes late to the General Session opening of the 4A’s Media Conference this morning. When I walked in Nancy Hill, 4A’s President & CEO, was talking about Ed Artz’s now famous presentation to the 4As in 1994 admonishing everyone to recognize that the consumer had assumed control in media world. The Internet, as Nancy noted, was never mentioned in his speech. Control had been won simply with the remote control, VCRs, Nintendo games and a few other primitive weapons.

Since Mr. Artz’s speech nearly every advertising trade show conference has put consumer control at the top of the agenda. This week’s 4A’s Media Show  is no different. The theme, “The Consumer Is…Watching…Listening…Clicking…Connecting”  is offered again as a reminder that the consumer is boss.

We are endlessly absorbed with this issue, though it finally strikes me as odd that 15 years later we are poking at it like it was just dropped on the table.

Arguably, in 1994 the advertising world was in a much bigger jam vis a vis consumer control than it is today. What passed for control back then was the ability to skip programming and commercials. It was an exercise in avoidance. The evolution of the Internet since Ed Artz’s speech has changed avoidance to engagement. The Internet lets consumer be builders. So, really, the issue of control should not be so fearsome today as we allow. Yes, consumers are in control. They have, in fact, completely made over the media landscape. But they are not hiding. They are making a huge racket re-engineering the media construct in order to customize and enlarge it.

Michael Mendenhall, CMO of Hewlett-Packard Company, seems to understand the way forward. Concluding his remarks to the 4A’s session he said it’s simple (well, he didn’t say it’s simple…but it is), we need to redefine what we mean by network, publisher and journalist in today’s media economy. This is exactly what is required, because for as long as we insist on old definitions of what constitutes network, publisher and journalist we’re going to keep addressing the question of consumer control as if the problem is about re-establishing ours.