Media Week

Just got a mail from those folks at Wolfram Alpha who've been causing a bit of a stir talking about the launch of a new search engine.

The mail offers a sneek peek tonight at 8pm GMT during a webcast filmed at Harvard University.

Participants will include Wolfram|Alpha founder Stephen Wolfram and Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law and they will discuss the underlying technology and implications of the so-called "computational knowledge engine."

Is it too late for yet another search engine to capture the imagination of the internet-using population? Will it be another Cuil.com?

Reserve judgement till after this evening because you never know.........

I’m not really surprised that Hitwise, via the fabulous Robin Goad, have reported that clicks to retailers from paid search have declined slightly over the last year.

While search volumes are growing year on year because of the usual reasons – more time spent online, broadband penetration, better devices and offline marketing campaigns driving people online, the economic situation is obviously to blame for consumers not leaping online to buy stuff like they used to before all this mess.

In a piece I wrote yesterday entitled US Consumer Research Says Keep Investing in Search – Just Be Smarter! the research from comScore in the US says that people are still searching and some are surfing to just combat the stress brought on by the financial crisis!

67% of US consumers say search engines are important when they are shopping as that’s how they are navigating to brands’ products and services. However, as Carol Bartz from Yahoo! said recently - "Search is the equivalent of online window shopping right now. People are browsing around, and not clicking through to buy."

So with some advertisers a tad reticent to invest as much as they did maybe last year, it’s not difficult to see that there may be fewer clicks on those more commercial ads.

Last week Search Engine Land quoted Efficient Frontier’s latest research – “The drop in CPCs indicates a deflation in the marketplace. Thus we find ourselves at an interesting cross-road. On the one hand, advertisers are cutting budgets resulting in cheaper clicks, on the other hand more users are searching online.”

All the conversations I’ve had with other search engines, analysts and marketing professionals this year have rendered one common theme, and that is that those advertisers that continue to invest, recognise the positive branding effect search can have on their campaigns, pay for some decent analytics data and are willing to train their teams to think a new way during this economic re-calibration will emerge during the upturn as leaders in their space.

Holding your nerve in a channel that has proven to return and then some, will pay even better dividends in the long run!

Anyone who saw The Apprentice last night will be jangling two keywords around in their head today - Ben & Sandhurst :-)

I actually only caught the last 20 or so minutes but now know our friends at The Beeb and Surallan probably kept the bullish Belfast upstart Ben in the show because of his gargantuanly arrogant assumption that having a scholarship to Sandhurst was somehow a pre-requisite for being chosen as Surallan's apprentice, and because we can probably expect to hear more equally moronic statements from the young man in episodes to come!

In order to gauge if the nation's appetite for someone that cites Hugh Heffner as his most admired business figure was as meagre as mine, I turned to Twitter Search:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=sandhurst

A selection of Tweets:

bendymixer: @gracedent His Sandhurst remarks were classic - he is def in show to annoy us!!

MarcusJIP: Feel tired today, it must be because of the Apprentice last night. The wrong person has been fired! Thank god he didn't go to Sandhurst?

hattiehattie: "I got a scholarship to Sandhurst!" Urgh, still can't believe the Apprentice result.

Caz81: Is still thinking about the injustice of last night - surey 'I was offered a scholarship to Sandhurst' Ben, should have gone?

Quaristice: @bec76 "I've also got a scholarship to Sandhurst if you're talking about leadership". Argh :/ Fire him first, then Debra

Just goes to show in this brave new world of real-time search, if you want a snapshot of the mood of the country, Twitter is your latest port of call!

Tonight, I fly back to Blighty having spent over 3 weeks in North America.

5 days in New York for Search Engine Strategies, a weekend in Boston with friends, 3 days in Toronto doing some press and 10 days in Seattle having a ton of meetings and planning sessions for our next fiscal year which starts in July.

That’s a lot of time away from home but a fascinating trip from the point of view seeing if there’s any difference between approaches to the economic difficulties we’re all experiencing.

And really, there isn’t much of a difference!

Over here you hear on the radio that millions of people have lost their jobs. The head of tax returns in the US was saying this morning that they have a whole load of measures in place to help people who are going to have difficulty paying the government what they owe.

Things seem much more expensive too, even when you include the drop in exchange rate from $2 to $1.40 to the pound. I don’t spend as much time in Gap and American eagle when I’m in town now!

All the talk at the conferences and internal meetings I had was about how to survive the downturn. The advice was good. Very solid. But a constant theme was that online advertising would pull many brands though the next couple of years. The optimism is palpable which is great news.

One of the best presentations I saw at SES in New York was by Jack Flanagan, Executive Vice President  at comScore

His last slide had the following tips for online marketers to survive the choppy economic waters:

- Know your customer and their mindset
- Know the market
- Don’t under estimate the power of paid search
- Powerful combo with display advertising
- Be consistent
- Be patient

All but 3 and 4 are common sense no? Why does it need to be re-iterated time and time again?

We’re going through a massive re-calibration at the moment both in our personal and professional lives and it ain’t just the UK – we’re all in it together!

PS: Any one want any gummy bears bringing back?

What does TMW do?

TMW, part of the Creston communications and insight group, is a leading integrated marketing agency with a client list that includes Nissan, T-Mobile, Unilever and Diageo.

What was the background for the research?

The failure of a sizeable chunk of campaigns to gain any traction in Social Media highlights our continuing struggle in this (formerly) new frontier.  Our biggest challenge - how to ingratiate brands to audiences in a media where the risk of being an unwelcomed intruder looms large. The answer lies not in what we can build in terms of techno-wizardry, but in what we should build according to good old fashioned user mindsets and needs in this space.

Already, much is known about what people do in social media and what roles they play. Much less is known of the underlying reasons why.  If we know the answer to that, we can understand how we can introduce enduring value and make the contact with our brand far more rewarding. 

The Study

To answer this question we identified 16 reasons why people might use the various Social Media channels (from networks to online gaming) grouped into 6 key themes:

DISCOVERY – for self-development or to learn from others
ALTRUISM – to help others make the right decision or become involved in the brand’s product decision
SOCIAL – to connect to the like minded, reinforce tribal identity or gain a sense of belonging
FAME – for personal notoriety or to challenge their ability against others
ESCAPISM – for entertainment and an escape from the daily routine
EXPRESSION – as an outlet for their imagination or expression of personal identity

We then posed the question on ICM Research’s omnibus panel.

In essence what did you learn?

The study suggests the strongest motivator to spend time in Social Media comes from DISCOVERY and in particular the ability to learn other people’s point of view (true for 70% of active users).  However the ego-centric FAME drivers cannot be ignored, with 31% admitting a degree of enjoyment from being seen to be doing well in life by others – explaining the breed of aggressive network builders on Facebook.

Perhaps the most encouraging finding for brands is that 60% enjoy the opportunity to input into companies about their products or services. This is an open invite from nearly two-thirds of users to involve them in your brand decisions through the likes of community forums and FAQs.

Is there any difference between a male or female approach to social media?

The least surprising finding was that men think differently from women.  For women the strongest value seems to come from SOCIAL factors (especially staying in touch with existing friends). For men it’s more about DISCOVERY.  FAME and the ability to get their opinion heard by a wider audience is a greater motivator for men, EXPRESSION and having an outlet for their imagination more so for women.

Does age play a part?

Those who have grown up with Social Media (18-24 year olds) gain greater pleasure from expressing their individuality and building their notoriety (FAME) than their older peers.  Brands should therefore look to provide the platform for them to be heard and to compete, just as Adidas achieved with their 2007 Predator and Tunit Myspace campaign.

Whereas, for 35-44 year olds ALTRUISM and DISCOVERY motivations are particularly strong.  The clearest opportunity for brands is therefore to provide the tools to help them learn and allow them to help others make the right choice.  

What are your recommendations for brands?

Firstly, understanding what drives your particular audience to create, contribute or spectate should inspire every strategy and is the key to unlocking the value exchange in Social Media.  Ask the question of your customers or target audience and build a solution around the answer.

Secondly, explore the full spectrum of ways to deliver value according to identified user needs.  It seems all brands are looking to either entertain or to connect audiences in Social Media.  If everyone is doing the same it becomes very difficult for any single brand to be heard amongst the noise.

Thirdly, get in touch dsnatchfold@tmw.co.uk to find out more about the findings and their implications for today’s marketers.