Author Archives: ghotchkiss

Hyperlinking Reality

First published January 29, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Fellow Search Insider David Berkowitz (David, it’s been too long since we riffed on each other’s columns!) allowed his curiosity to wander down some fascinating potential directions search may evolve in a couple of recent columns, first looking at Ford’s plans for integrating GPS-enabled voice search  in all its  vehicles, and then speculating how one search could be launched in 17 different ways, both today and in the future. One of his speculations is what I wanted to explore further today:

“Instead of entering a query, Penny may be able to put on a special set of glasses and scan her surroundings for store names and reviews. The headsets and eyewear from Vuzix now link up to other portable devices such as iPods and camcorders, but they keep including more functionality within the gadgets themselves.”

Picture This…

Sound far-fetched? Not according to the MOBVIS (Mobile Attentive Interfaces in Urban Scenarios)  project in Europe. In a nutshell, the MOBVIS technology allows you to take a picture of your surroundings with your camera-equipped mobile device, then MOBVIS recognizes aspects of your environment and places hyperlinks on the items where it has relevant information. So, if you take a picture of a bus stop, MOBVIS can retrieve what buses stop there and what the schedule is. Assuming city buses are equipped with GPS and telemetric units, it could also tell you how long you have to wait for the next bus.

Currently, the MOBVIS project is visually mapping and testing in three European cities; Graz, Austria; Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Darmstadt, Germany). Geo-referenced imagery tied to streetscapes from these three centers is online and available to the scientific community. One has to imagine that Google would be paying particular attention to this, as it’s a natural tie-in with its Street View project.

Say Cheese and Search…

So, let’s imagine what MOBVIS could do. First of all, it could be an incredible interactive guide, bringing mountains of information about your surroundings to just one click away on your mobile device. Dining reviews, items on sale in local stores, entertainment schedules and reviews, transit schedules, self-guided tours, could all live on the other side of the MOBVIS linking icon. Now, all that is theoretically available through GPS positioning, but in urban pedestrian applications, GPS has some functional limitations. It’s difficult to get an accurate enough fix to narrow your location to even a half block radius, especially in the downtown “urban valley” core. MOBVIS allows you to restrict your information quest to exactly what you want to include in your viewfinder, making it a much more specific query tool. Also, MOBVIS could be tremendously useful for the visually impaired, allowing them to scan their surroundings and retrieve information.

Making Reality More Useful

What MOBVIS does, along with all the other search permutations mentioned by David, is point the way of search’s future. I’ve always said that search is not about the destination, whether it’s Google, Yahoo or Live. It’s about the functional engine that sits behind the portal. It’s about the ability to link people with relevant information and, more importantly, timely functionality. Search is about letting people do what they have to do. MOBVIS is just one more way to establish the link. It’s a pretty amazing way that opens up some intriguing possibilities, but what makes MOBVIS exciting is its potential for helping us navigate our current reality. David’s 17 ways to search, Aaron Goldman’s past speculations about ambient findability, and my ongoing exploration of search as an expression of us reaching for our goals all share a common theme: search enhances our ability to do things.

In a recent post, Silicon Valley writer Sarah Lacy speculated that Google might be nearing the end of its reign as online’s Golden Child. She used some dubious logic about usage and traffic to posit that the mantle is ready to be passed to Twitter or Facebook. What she missed is the central premise of Google’s mission. It’s not about driving traffic to Google.com. It’s about connecting us with what we’re looking for. What Google has been doing through Google Maps, Street View, Universal Search, personalization, Google Mobile and yes, even the lowly but ubiquitous Google Toolbar, is weaving together the functionality needed to deliver on that mission. It remains to be seen whether Google will be successful in doing so, but it’s certainly well in the lead. And that’s the power of Google’s potential. It’s about providing the infrastructure to connect all the dots, both online and in the real world. It’s not about being one of the dots.

Your Brain on Google Update

I had a chance to read through the fMRI study from UCLA, Your Brain on Google, on a plane ride down to visit with..you guessed it..Google. Pretty interesting stuff…here are a few quick highlights:

  • In the Internet Naive group..there was little difference in brain activity between searching on Google and reading text. The reason, I suspect, was that the group was just reading the search results.
  • But in the Internet Savvy group..a totally different story. Suddenly, many more parts of the brain started lighting up, including the parts governing decision making and the visual cortex. What this shows is that these users were using the results to help make decisions. They were fluent in search.
  • One other interesting note. The increased activation in the visual cortex may indicate that searchers see the information differently. The information presented was exactly the same, with the same stimuli, but in the search savvy group, when they were scanning the visual stimuli as search results, they seemed to be more visually rich. I suspect that as we get more savvy with results, we scan more and read less, treating the results more like a picture.

Just a few tidbits for now. I’m setting up an interview with researcher Teena Moody to dive deeper, which will probably become a Just Behave column. Also, don’t be surprised if it’s what I talk about at SMX West in Santa Clara.

Google Evolves Back to its Core

First published January 22, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, I talked about how the economy will sort out winners and losers even faster. This week, a trio of news releases seems to confirm that search, and Google, in particular, will be a winner. Unfortunately, almost no one will recognize that they’ve won.

Reports out of AdGooroo and Covario show that search is still ticking along better than ever. AdGooroo has Google and Microsoft on track for the best Q4 in history. Apparently, despite the gathering storm, people still search and still click on ads. And, relatively speaking, there’s been minimal impact on search ad budgets. We saw a lot of advertising budgets hold the course for 2009. This was a good news/bad news scenario. The good news was, budgets weren’t cut. The bad news was that planned increases, in some cases aggressive increases, were put on the shelf.

So, are there smiles in Mountain View? Not according to a MediaPost  article from yesterday. Google is jettisoning every piece of financial baggage it can, drastically cutting costs to keep the financial boat upright in advance of the earnings report (due out today). The latest cut? Google’s newspaper business.

What Does It All Mean?

By any sane analysis, Google is doing very nicely, thank you. Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst quoted in the MediaPost article, expects to see 23% year over year revenue growth, with 14.3% growth expected for 2009. In the rational world, that would be cause for popping Champagne corks and backs bruised from vigorous patting. Given the performance of every other company on the planet, double-digit growth is nothing short of miraculous. But in Google world, it’s an “all-hands-on-deck” disaster. True, Google’s stock price has retreated to levels not seen since 2005 (Psst.. stock tip: Buy!), but the financial engine is ticking along very nicely, thank you.

What is happening is a bit of natural selection and forced evolution at the Googleplex, and although this will be painful, it will be very healthy in the long term. Google is picking its winners and culling the losers. At the same time, its strategists are redefining themselves into a sustainable business model. I suspect Eric Schmidt and CFO Patrick Pichette have stolen a page from Rahm Emanuel’s book: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” The economic freefall and irrational pessimism of analysts gives them the opportunity to impose some logical constraint on the overexuberance we saw from Google in days gone past. Google was going to reinvent everything, from advertising to telecommunications to sustainable energy. Now, it appears Google realized there’s more than enough in its core mission (organizing the world’s information) to keep it busy for the foreseeable future. I always thought that the starry-eyed idealism was commendable but not sustainable. Google is growing up.

Think Search is Strong Now? Just Wait…

In the meantime, think for a moment how search has positioned itself. Despite one of the worst economic years in recent memory, Google showed 23% growth in revenues. During the same time period, every other economic metric went into free-fall. Consumer confidence plunged to its lowest levels ever. Retails sales and online sales both hit the skids. Let’s not even talk about home sales. The Dow Jones is down 40% in the past year. The economy didn’t just slow down. It screeched to a halt. But in this same time, search kept plugging through without a hiccup. Did the astronomical growth continue? No, but 23% is pretty damn good in anyone’s books.

People kept searching and clicking on ads. In fact, according to AdGooroo and Covario, they did so more than ever. The only thing impacting search right now is the sheer fear of advertisers who are being assailed on all fronts.

Understandable? Yes. Rational? No.

So, when we hit bottom and start climbing out of this economic black hole, search will have consolidated its position as the most accountable of marketing channels. It will form the basis of a new marketing model: consumer-driven, immediate, measurable, effective, interactive. And Google will be the most powerful player on the block. Best of all, the company can do it without worrying about selling newspaper ads, redefining America’s power grid or colonizing space. All Google has to do is focus on helping people find what they’re looking for.

 

Got the UCLA Googlized Brain Study!

Thanks to UCLA, I just got a copy of the UCLA fMRI study of what happens to people’s brains when they use Google. This is fascinating..well..it is if you live in my skull.

The study was done by Dr. Gary Small, Dr. Susan Bookheimer and Dr. Teena Moody. Just got it so I haven’t had a chance to read through it, but I’m looking forward to it. As chance would have it, I just finished Gary Small’s book – iBrain – last night. The most interesting part of the book was references to several fMRI studies done around the world, showing what parts of the brain fire in given situations and while we’re undertaking different tasks. When it comes to searching, I have my own theories..which I talked about here and in my Search Insider Column. I’d like to see if the UCLA results match up.

Small’s discussion of Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants is really interesting as well, and something I want to take a much deeper dive on in future posts and articles. Briefly, natives grew up with technology, so their brain basically molded itself with hard wired capabilities, while immigrants learned their tech skills after the brain had largely formed itself. Think of the difference between growing up with a language and learning it as an adult. Digital natives are fluent in technology..for the rest of us, it will never be our native tongue. Small does make one serious transgression in the discussion which drove me nuts. He keeps swapping out neuroplasticity for the word “evolution”, giving the impression (which he never bothers to clear up) that genetic evolution can happen in one generation. It just doesn’t work that way.

That said, it’s pretty fascinating research and a question that seems to be of interest to many. I did a Search Engine Land article on it called “Are Our Brains Becoming Googlized” which picked up a healthy number of Diggs and became one of Search Engine Land’s most read articles. I’m trying to land an interview with one of the researchers. If successful, I’ll let you know how to access.

I’m very happy in my own nerdy little neuro-world!

Apple Should Build a Search Engine

As I mentioned..got my iPhone late last week. What’s amazed me most is the attention to detail in the user experience. Every little thing has been thought through and integrated into the experience. As opposed to Windows Mobile..where every little thing seems to be developed seperately and then the whole ungainly mess is bound together with chewing gum and scotch tape. Can’t speak to the other mobile OS’s..but the iPhone amazes me.

There’s a philosophy here that seems to be recurring. You can throw brute force innovation at a problem, trying to overwhelm it by a sheer show of power. Or, you can create innovation around the needs of the user, making sure your solutions contribute to an amazing user experience. Microsoft seems to be in the first camp (where much of the ad hoc innovation ends up being dropped, just because it can’t be integrated in a useful manner) and Apple is in the second camp. You’ll see this in other industries. I’m thinking GM and Toyota’s approach to the driver experience.  I don’t think anyone on the planet has more respect for the user than Apple.

This is the thinking that’s desperately needed in Search. Google comes the closest, but even they don’t have the Zen-like holistic user experience that Apple seems to bring. It would be amazing to see these two colloborate on next generation search..with Google’s immense respect for relevant information, defined by the user, and Apple’s ability to weave it into a seamless and amazing experience.

Were the Good Old Days Really So Good?

Why are we in such a rush to return to the way things were?

Most reports I’m reading say that it will take years for the economy to recover to where it was. Why have we set this as our baseline for success? Who says the way we’ve behaved in the past 5 decades (especially the last 15 to 20 years) is the way we should behave in the future? Certainly not the rest of the world. Certainly not the environment.

I was reading an article in Adweek that said Boomers are now saving rather than spending, and it was put across as bad news (at least for marketers). Isn’t it about frigging time we started doing that?

I think we have to accept that as much fun as the party has been, it can’t keep going on. Urging us to get back to where we were is like curing a hangover with another drink. We’ve been irresponsible, greedy, short sighted and consumed by consumption. And what we’re going through is directly attributable to that behavior. A change in behavior is absolutely essential for survival. It won’t be fun, but a future, any future, is a lot more likely if we go through the pain now than if we continue to get back on what Michael Eysenck calls the hedonic treadmill, chasing some misbegotten ideal of happiness.

Thank goodness Boomers are saving. Thank goodness Detroit is seriously looking at more environmental vehicles. Thank goodness we’re starting to realize there’s more to life than a big screen TV. It’s about time.

The Importance of Touchpoints – every Touchpoint

I got an iPhone on Thursday.

This post has nothing to do with the iPhone..everything to do with where I got it. Being in Canada, Roger’s is the only carrier that has the iPhone. Roger’s is particularly clueless when it comes to brand integrity (perhaps rivaled only by Air Canada in my home and native land). And this was made abundantly clear to me.

I went to a local mobile store. While the store is run by a licensee, the branding is all Roger’s. For all intents and purposes, it’s a Roger’s store. I walked up to the counter and what appeared to be a 13 year old with a five o’clock shadow who managed the store siddled over to wait on me. His assistant, a petulant female, rolled her eyes and went in the back.

I currently have a Roger’s plan, put in place almost 4 years ago. At the time, I put a plan in place that would cover my somewhat limited data needs. To be honest, I don’t really monitor the bills and my assistant finally showed me one. I hit the roof. Because my device now syncs with our mail server while I’m in Canada (I’m on another plan when I’m in the US) my data traffic has increased substantially. Here’s the details of the plan I was on..get this..25 Megs per month for $25 bucks..and 5 cents a kilobyte for overages! 5 cents a kilobyte! My relatively modest data needs were racking up hundreds of dollars in charges. Was I stupid for letting it go? Absolutely. But obviously Roger’s was perfectly happy to leave me on the stupidest plan in the world and rake in the money. That’s their bad.

So, after hitting the roof, I decided to change the plan. Roger’s plans are still highway robbery, but at least Apple forced them to ease the data plan usury in order to get exclusives on the iPhone. Now..I could get 1 GB of data monthly, plus a limited voice plan, for about $70 a month..all in. I could get an iPhone (which I’ve been salivating over for some time) and still save hundreds a month. I still had to deal with Roger’s, but to be honest, their competition is no better (Twitter recently had to discontinue SMS notifications in Canada because our mobile carriers are uniformly stupid). So, hence my visit to the local store.

I informed Skippy, the wonder manager, of all this and he said, “Well, I can get you set up with the iPhone dude, but I can’t change your plan. You need to call Roger’s to do that”.

“Why?”

The answer was painfully incoherent, but it came down to Roger’s not trusting their licensees (remember, this is Skippy’s take on the situation) and trying to lock me into a package that maximized profit for them and minimized usability for me. Skippy walked me through the routine (with many interjections of “Sorry dude, Roger’s makes us do this”) and, as we were wrapping up, pulled out the check lists to make sure he had done all the things he was supposed to. By this time, I was looking for the nearest exit to escape. Yes..you had shown me how the iPhone works. Yes, you explained all the nickle and dime charges imposed on me. Yes, you explained how Roger’s repossesses my home if I cancel early. Yes, you explained why the writing on the contract might not be what I actually get. Just let me go home.

And then, the final straw.

“Okay..you’re probably going to get a call from Roger’s to make sure I did my job right. I only get my points if you answer that you were ‘definitely satisfied'”

“Sure”

“No..I mean it. That’s the only answer that will give me the score I need. Will you answer that.” At this point, I swear to God, he gives me a photocopied sheet of paper with the right answer printed on it, circled with a check mark beside, just to jog my memory for the call. “You will say ‘Definitely Satisfied’, right?”

At this point, I was either ready to beat my self to death with my shiny new iPhone, or burst out laughing. Skippy was on the verge of tears. I could have launched into an explanation of how this was not the way to ensure customer satisfaction (but the irony is, he does this with every customer and it probably works most of the time. Whoever thought up this approach had done their psychological homework) but that would have cost me more precious hours of my life. I smiled my best paternal, sympathetic older dude to younger dude smile and said, “Sure man.”

Obviously, Roger’s is trying to police the quality of these licensee touchpoints through these ridiculous QA checklists and follow up phone calls, but it made the entire experience bizarre. I think a better approach would be to create reasonable plans, be proactive with existing customers in moving them into the right plans, be more transparent and fair with promotional deals, insist on better hiring practices and provide more value to customers. If they did all these things, their brand integrity could survive the odd fumble in the hands of a Skippy.

Entertainment vs Usefulness – Which Builds More Loyalty?

On Wednesday, I talked about how digital marketers always tend to jump on fads, assuming they’ll become trends. I called it digital fluff. My position was that something has to become useful before it will have staying power. And our judgement of usefulness takes time. We have to get beyond the initial obsession with novelty. Marketers jump on channels when they’re still a novelty, which creates churn when the majority of these channels die away because they’re just not useful to the average person.

Lance Loveday posted a great comment and in it he brought up another potential factor of audience longevity and loyalty: entertainment value:

I’d add “entertaining” to usefulness as a requirement for achieving sustained behavior. TV and video games aren’t very useful, but they’ve definitely made sustained behavior status. I can only assume it’s because they’re entertaining.

Hmmm…the Psychology of Entertainment. Sounds like a good topic for a further post. In fact, I’m thinking a series of posts: How Our Brain responds to Entertainment.

After Lance’s post, I started doing some digging. In short time, I dug up a fairly rich vein of research into how our brain responds to entertainment. My goal is to find out why some types of entertainment have more staying power than other types. And then, once we discover the psychological underpinnings of entertainment, lets look at how that applies to some of the digital trends I disparaged: things like social networks, microblogging, mobile apps and online video. What role does entertainment play in online loyalty? How does it overlap with usefulness? How can digital entertainment fads survive the novelty curse and jump the chasm to a mainstream trends with legs? Why are we continually attracted to bright shiny objects to begin with? And is that trait universal or is it just a function of the early adopter tendencies of the current online audience?

I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to go through the research, but already, some interesting titbits have come to the top that present some compelling questions:

Why Does Fiction Typically Outsell Non Fiction?

If you look at the best selling books of 2009, or any year for that matter, you’ll almost always find that fiction tops the list. And, when you do get down to the fiction books, you’ll probably find that close to the top is a book by Malcolm Gladwell. Why? Well, in both instances, we’re suckers for the appeal of a story. We enjoy narratives much more so than rhetoric. Gladwell is a master of this. He wraps his points (and he always has a point) in a rich tapestry of anecdotes and stories.

Why do humans love stories? Well, it appears it’s a hardwired trait. Research seems to indicate our brains process narrative differently than rhetoric. This is one area I’ll be diving deeper into.

What Makes some TV Shows Great and Some Flashes in the Pan?

Lance brought up the example of TV as a bed for sustained behaviour. There is probably no source of sociological data richer in the past half century than our TV viewing habits. I’ll be taking a look at what separates a one season wonder from a multi season success story.

What is the Appeal of a Video Game anyway?

Lance’s other example was video games. Here there’s a psychological buffet of hardwired enticements. In fact, some psychologists are worried that the jolt received from video games may be addictive – a mainline hit of dopamine producing stimuli wired directly to our pleasure centres.

Why Do Boys play Video Games Much more often than Girls?

Video games may be addictive, but the danger seems to be much greater with males than females. We’ll explore why.

What is the Entertainment Value of Social Networks?

Of all the trends playing out currently online, that of social networks seems to be the most prevalent. Are social networks useful, or simply entertaining? Are they in transition from entertainment to usefulness? What is the future of social networking?

Can Online Compete with TV for Entertainment Value?

When we look at where our entertainment comes from, we’re definitely a culture in transition. Increasingly, more and more of our video consumption is online. So, if we find that entertainment and usefulness are both factors in online audience loyalty, what does this mean for future marketing?

The Difference Between Entertainment and Usefulness in Targeting Strategies?

At some point, I’ll have to address the fundamental question raised by Lance: If entertainment is also important, what are the implications for marketers? What mental modes are in place in both instances? This gets to some of the fundamental questions I’ve been wrestling with in marketing – the nature of engagement, the role of intent, the question of attribution. What is the difference in a strategy for search (usefulness) vs a strategy for Hulu (entertainment). And, does online bring about a significant paradigm shift as the worlds of usefulness and entertainment come closer to merging?

Lance..you got me thinking. Stay tuned!

Evolution in the Face of Adversity

First published January 15, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I am an unrepentant Darwinist, which probably doesn’t surprise anyone who reads my columns on a regular basis. The whole topic of evolution and emergent behaviors in complex systems constantly fascinates me. As Steven Johnson pointed out in his recent book, “Emergence,”  the theme of patterns rising from complexity is  ubiquitous and could well define the 21st century.

The World is a Cruel Place – Get Over It!

One of the most interesting things about evolution is that the pace of evolutionary change picks up in the face of adversity. The more hostile the environment, the faster the wheels of evolution roll and the quicker we adapt. Of course, we do so in a pretty ruthless way. The weak get culled faster. There are no consolation prizes in this lottery. Winner takes all. Richard Dawkins didn’t call genes “selfish” for nothing.

Which led me to apply the rules of biology to our current marketplace. We are going into what may be the most hostile environment for marketers in recent memory. Expect losers to die faster and winners to adapt quicker. But it’s just such an adverse environment that ultimately decides the survival of the fittest. After all, our marketplace is just one more complex system where emergence again plays out.

When the Going Gets Tough

We’ve seen the groundswell of change wash over marketing in the last decade or so. Inexorably, the digital sea change has already started to determine winners and losers, but when ad budgets were fatter, there was more room for everyone. Now, as those budgets are dramatically scaled down, advertisers are forced to make tough decisions.  Channels have to prove themselves against tougher standards. There will be fewer winners and more losers and the evolution of the marketplace will pick up dramatically.

In the end, this will be good for most of the digital marketplace, especially search. Already with our client list, we’ve seen tough budgeting decisions dramatically impact more traditional channels but leave search relatively unscathed.

Scarcity Eliminates Stupidity

Another outcome of the financial meltdown will be that only the smartest marketers will survive. A few years ago, I remember someone from one of the largest advertisers in North America once saying to me, out of frustration with  their marketing program, “We’re so big we can afford to be stupid.”  No more. Today, only the smartest will survive. Size is no longer a guarantee of survival, nor a justification for stupidity, as we’ve seen in a number of particularly painful examples.

Smarter marketers will make smarter decisions, including the painful ones.  They will be ruthless about culling out the losers. Which means chronic mediocrity will become acute failure;  the mortality rate will rise substantially. This will drive our marketing models into the future much faster.

Strategies for Survival

How do you emerge on the winning side of the Darwinian lottery? Based on what I’ve seen, you won’t go far wrong if you concentrate on the following:
–    Accountability for and transparency in delivering on advertising objectives.
–    Understanding the intent and behavior of your target market.
–    A ruthless focus on efficiency in getting the right message to the right person at the right time.
–    Effectively leveraging a fundamental understanding of how the marketplace is shifting due to technology.
–    The ability to map out the most effective prospect touch points, and strong integration between all the channels found at these touch points.
–    The ability to collect and utilize all possible intelligence sources.
–    An ability to brutally assess the reality of the environment and execute quickly and effectively against these realities.

It’s the last of these factors I’d like to focus on for my final thoughts on this topic. In a hostile environment, negativity comes with the territory. The winners will seek out negativity as an important indicator of the true situation and will use it to adapt. In this case, the fittest will see things as they are, not as they wish they would be. In coming months and years, the difference between these two viewpoints will be critical.

Chasing Digital Fluff – Who Cares about What’s Hot?

Marketers are falling over themselves in their rush to the digital landscape. Social media is SO hot! But not as hot as behavioral targeting. And if you think that’s hot, wait till you see what you can do with mobile!

The Digital Dogpile

blow-dandelionMarketers desperately scramble over each other, grasping for a tenuous handhold on some emerging tactic that gives them, however briefly, a fraction of an inch advantage over the competition. New digital marketing directors prove their worth through their savvy of online technology. They cut their teeth on Facebook advertising and put Powerpoints (or, because they’re uber-cool – Keynote presentations) together on the immense potential of the social graph.

Churn is the norm in digital marketing. And marketers are the worst, whipping the industry into a froth because they get all breathless about the latest thing. My inbox gets a hundred emails every single day talking about how freaking cool everything is and how we’re stumbling to figure out the importance of everything. If you’re not an early adopter…scratch that…if you’re not a bleeding edge pioneer, you’re a hopeless loser. The pace of marketing testing and adoptions just keeps spinning faster and faster.

Step Away from the iPhone

Stop! Take a breath. Relax for a few minutes. Get outside and breath some honest to God fresh air. And don’t take your iPhone with you. Because here’s the scoop Kemosabe, all the technology in the world is useless until your audience figures out how to use it. And here’s the nasty little secret. Humans love bright shiny objects but we’re pretty slow when it comes to figuring out how to jam it into our already busy lives. Until that happens, your nifty online strategies will never be anymore than a pointless treadmill jammed on overdrive. You can run as fast as you want, but you’ll never get anywhere.

I do financial analyst calls every quarter and the last question on the call is always the same: anything else we should be looking at? Apparently, technologiosis (or technitis, or technophilia, take your pick) is contagious. My answer is usually the same..wait till people figure out how to use it.

Think about the buzz that’s been devoted to social networks and, more recently, real time search, in the last 2 years. That’s 2 years of foaming-at-the-mouth marketing buzz about how this channel is:

A) the savior of marketing
B) most effective connection with consumers
C) coolest technology without an identifiable purpose
D) biggest waste of time on God’s green earth
E) all of the above

The Geekiest Guy on my Block

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have a clue how to use social media in a meaningful way in my life. I have a Facebook page, I tweet, I have a Linked In profile, a Trip-It network, just to name a few, making me the geekiest guy I know. Maybe not at an online marketing show, but if you ever visit Kelowna, take a walk with me down my block and I’ll prove my techno-geek status is several Trekkie parsecs ahead of anyone else. I suspect the same is true for you. And you know what? I have no frigging idea why Facebook is important or why I should log into my profile today. It’s cool, but it’s not useful in an every day kind of way. And if I, who spend over 10 hours a day online and have a network of friends and colleagues that span the globe, can’t jam Facebook into my life in a useful way, how is the average techno-pleb going to?

As far as I can see, most of things marketers salivate over fall into the same category..digital candy that tweaks our dopamine supplying pleasure centre but serves no real, sustainable purpose in our lives. This puts it in the same category as 95% of my iPhone apps, 99% of the computer games on my laptop and the Wii my nephew got last Christmas – an obsession for approximately 27 hours, an occasional pastime for another 36 hours, then something we ignore for the rest of our lives.

The one difference, at least in my experience, seems to be teenagers. Most of things that seem to be passing fancies to us do seem to become useful in the lives of the average 15 – 23 year old. But, as I said in a previous post, when you look at what the live of a high school or university student looks like and what they want to do, a Facebook suddenly makes sense. For me, not so much.

An Eyeball is an Eyeball, Right?

So, even given this notorious degree of fickleness, why should marketer’s care? Eyeballs are still eyeballs, right? Even if the eyeballs we’re capturing this week will be completely different than the eyeballs we capture next week. This approach only works if you consider your market a faceless blob of unleashed consumer potential. If you actually want to get relevant messages to real people with real needs, the logic starts to break down immediately.

Effective marketing depends on reliable targeting. And reliable targeting depends on established patterns. And established patterns depend on sustained behaviors. And sustained behaviors depend on things we find useful. Otherwise, we’re marketing via fad, condemning ourselves to spending our professional lives and our client’s ad dollars chasing fluff in a hurricane. Our audience will always be “just passing through” on the way to the next thing.

I Miss Frank Cannon, PI

movies_070708_cannonMarkets have to stabilize in order for us to understand the individuals that make up that market. Also, brand relationships need a stable environment, allowing them to germinate and flourish.

When I was a kid, Kraft always sponsored Cannon. When you tuned in to see William Conrad somehow roll his fat old carcass out of his Lincoln Continental and pick off a sniper 3 miles away on a mountain top with his trusty .38 revolver, you could depend on Kraft telling you how to cook Mac & Cheese in every commercial break. Much as the entertainment value may have sucked (beggars with 2 channels in the Canadian prairies can’t be choosers) you knew Kraft would be there and Kraft knew who they were talking to. The audience had stabilized.

Until things pass through the temporary obsession phase to something that adds real value to our lives, we can’t consider advertising on these channels as anything more than an experiment. The trick in picking the right digital channels is not to look at the eyeballs they’re attracting today, but in how these things might be used in real, practical ways. That will give you an idea of how real people might be using these things next week or next month, when the technoratti have moved on to the latest bright shiny object.