Posts Tagged ‘advertising’
On Westfield’s Gift Card
Posted by Damian Damjanovski | Filed under Advertising, Marketing & Strategy, Web2.0 & Social Media
Okay, so first off, I have to admit, I was actually quite peeved about how all this panned out, so yes, this post will be slightly biased due to my anger towards Westfield about how they conducted this campaign.
There’s been a lot of back and forthing on the internets about whether this campaign was total spam, or whether it was just so awesomely virally successful, that none of us want to admit it.
I’ll try and cover this off as logically as I can in my furore.
1. Is the idea bad?
No. Hell no. The idea is great, I mean, who wouldn’t want to win a $10,000 shopping spree at the expense of Westfield! To enter all I need to do is click a button?!?! EVEN BETTER. I have to admit, I was tempted to click on the button to, you gotta be in it to win it and all that jazz. The campaign idea is a great one, it’s using a widely accessible platform, at the right timing, with some good media spend behind it.
2. Is the execution bad?
No. Well, ‘no’ except for one thing. You see, the execution on a whole is fantastic. The app is built well, the competition mechanism seems pretty solid, it all fits together quite nicely and everyone involved should pat themselves on the back for a job well done.
Except for one thing.
Why, oh why on god’s earth did you have to make the entry requirement a pro-forma status update? Yes, it does contravene the Facebook policy, but the real question is why is it against the Facebook policy.
Here’s my thoughts (Facebook hasn’t commented on any of this, so this is all my assumptions based on my knowledge of Facebook functions).
Most competitions of this nature (the ones that convene to the Terms of Service that have been put in place for a reason) require you as the user, to become a Fan of their Page. Becoming a fan of a page puts you within the FacebookDM reach of the brand’s page (i.e. they can message you through Facebook whenever they like) and allows the brand to go through the demographics of their fans, as well as specifically target Facebook ads to not only fans, but friends of fans.
So there’s heaps of benefits to the brand involved, yeah?
From the user perspective, if a hundred of your mates decide to all become fans of a particular page, then Facebook does you a solid and aggregates that information into a single Newsfeed line item.
The same happens for Events (so if 10 of your friends are going to a party, it’ll say “Damian, and 10 other friends are attending blah blah”).
Same happens if y’all join a group.
You know when it doesn’t happen. When you update your status, Making a Wall Post, or Uploading Photos. Unsurprisingly, these are all activities which are specifically sighted in the Facebook Terms of Service for competition mechanisms.
In the rules of the promotion, or otherwise, you will not condition entry to the promotion upon taking any action on Facebook, for example, updating a status, posting on a profile or Page, or uploading a photo.
View the full guidelines on Promotions here
http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php
The point I’m getting to here, is that there is NO reason that Westfield and M&C Saatchi/Mark couldn’t have run the same campaign, with all elements the same, but made the condition of entry not a status update, but rather becoming a Fan on the Page.
If Westfield have (as they’ve stated) “worked closely with Facebook” on this Application, then Facebook needs to be much clearer to users (who helped guide much of the new Terms of Service) about when Facebook will happily break the rules for advertisers. And if they haven’t, then Westfield needs to fess up that it may have made a mistake, and may need to revisit how the entry mechanism works.
For what it’s worth, I think the campaign is a great idea, and was executed well, with a very good promotional incentive. I just think it would have succeeded just as much (if not perhaps more) if it didn’t use Status Updates to enter, and didn’t piss off so many people by doing so.
Cheers.
Note: Yes, I realise I am a marketer, and that much of this may seem “ironic” coming from somebody working in this industry, but I definitely think we as marketers needs to understand that there are lines that we’re not supposed to cross. Social media is still developing, and doesn’t have the legislative framework that surrounds SMS or email marketing, but we do have a very clear set of Terms by which we’re asked to adhere. We should try not to cross those lines.
Making money off your content
Posted by Damian Damjanovski | Filed under Advertising, Marketing & Strategy
Thanks to the democratisation of technology, the abundance of free online services, and the instant ability to promote and share your creations on the internet, more and more people are creating, remixing, and venturing into content creation in the digital realm. The question is, how do you make money off it?
I’ve had a few conversation over the past few months, with different people who’ve found themselves in the same predicament. They’ve created content (whether through blog, YouTube, twitter) and now they’re looking to make some money off it, after all shouldn’t their work be valued? In most cases, the work is valued, as is demonstrated by the following their content develops, sometimes tens of thousands of users, with hundreds of regular committed users.
So what’s the right way to start turning views into money?
This question starts with looking at the wrong way to make money, and most frequently I’ve seen this with those who’ve developed their career in the traditional mainstream media forms (TV, Radio, Print) who’ve embraced the internets, and have a blog/channel/podcast with a need to make money off it. Most times, their thoughts regress back to the ways they know, and the model they know best. Subscription.
Now, subscription isn’t an inherently bad model, in fact, it’s a great model, and is a great way to generate ongoing revenue as part of a consumer transaction where a user decides to pay you (on an ongoing basis) for the value they see in your content. The problem is, no matter what your mother told you when you were young, no matter how special and unique you believe your content is, chances are that there is something extraordinarily similar to it out there on the web. And of course, this is the flip side to the democratisation of technology, not only is it universally available from a production standpoint, but also from a consumption one.
So, in short, trying to charge your users for something, and locking down the content behind a walled garden, will often infuriate some users, and the others will just go elsewhere. You’ll find that the number of folk willing to stick around and pay is negligible, and certainly not enough to make a living off.
Usually, up there with subscription, people talk about advertising. Google AdSense will be their saviour, dreaming of cheques rolling into their mailbox, adoring a colourful Google logo, and more zeros than you know what to do with. Truth is, you need to be getting some serious eyeballs for AdSense to make any kind of impact to your wallet. We’re talking in the hundreds of thousands of hits daily, not monthly. Chances are, you don’t have that. To demonstrate where you potentially fit on the “content food pyramid” I’ve drawn this small diagram, demostrating Chris Andersons long-tail, with some examples of content plotted along it.
The Longtail of Product (i.e. Your Content)
Now, when you look at your blog or venture objectively, you should already know this. You probably don’t sit at the head of this diagram, and in fact, you’re probably quite far down the chain when you look at overall internet consumption. But that’s not to say that there isn’t a way for revenue to be made off your content, it simply means that you may need to look beyond the traditional sources.
There are many ways to make revenue off your content. To demonstrate, here’s a small (not to scale, or necessarily entirely accurate) chart, demonstrating revenue streams that are open to users, and how effective they potentially are at generating revenue.
The Longtail of Revenue streams
So, the point I’m trying to get to here, is that display advertising (whether banners or adsense) and subscription, whilst may be great at generating heaps of revenue, generally require more eyeballs than you necessarily have. There are other revenue streams available down ‘the tail’ which don’t necessarily generate as much revenue as those at the head, infact nowhere near that amount of revenue. But you can combine and use several revenue streams to create a model that works for you and quite possibly, without ever needing to resort to locking down your content from users for a fee.
As much of a cop-out this may seem like, the answer in short is, there is no “right” way of monetising your content. There is though, many many ways to create small revenue streams from your content, and even more ways are being created constantly on the internet, and as a creator, you need to be experimenting with as many as you think you (and your users) can handle, without becoming over-burdened with money-making widgets.
Don’t be scared, try out a few things or better yet talk to your users and see what they’re happy with or willing to try, and do it. Subscription and Ads aren’t the only options out there.
