Marketing

Coldplay demonstrate the problem with the music industry

June 23, 2008 By Dan Thornton

It’s not a surprise that Coldplay are top of the UK singles chart (along with the album chart as well). Whatever you think of their music, they’ve got the fanbase and the following to make it as close to a sure thing as could be – despite the fact they got beaten by the Crazy Frog ringtone in 2005!

But what is very interesting is the fact that the official single to be released, Violet Hill, is only at number 11 on the charts. The song at number 1, Viva La Vida, was actually only made available as a download to fans who had pre-ordered the new album, just three days before the singles chart was compiled.

So the track available as a bonus download for pre-ordered albums beats out a physical copy costing £1.99 by the same band.

For me, this is another sure sign that the singles chart should become purely about downloaded tracks, and that increasing numbers of bands and people are understanding that downloadable music is something which can be enjoyed as an incentive, or as promotional, or a taster – and not necessarily as the end product which supports the music industry.

For a more groundbreaking example, just take a look at what Nine Inch Nails did…

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Consumers and bosses…

June 12, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Apologies for the slightly cryptic and unexplored post yesterday – a reminder that sometimes an idea needs a bit more fleshing out before clicking the Publish button!

What was foremost in my mind is something that is vitally important to my current role, and social media/community as a whole. And that’s the fact that, despite the growth in Web 2.0 technology, and adoption of community techniques – it isn’t half as widespread as you might assume from within the tech/blogging bubble. Plenty of people, even within the digital world, find it hard to see the reason for investing time in social networking and how it applies to them – and outside that area or department, it’s even more of a leap.

And what has come out of my work, attending valuable gatherings like Measurementcamp, and reading great blogs such as Web Strategy by Forrester Senior Analyst Jeremiah Owyang, or KD Paine’s PR Measurement blog, is that it’s the reporting, measurement, and justification of any community work is as vitally important as doing it in the first place.

And being able to show the measurable aspects of community/social media work, and explaining the direct and indirect effects on the bottom line is absolutely essential in changing the way companies think – particularly the larger, more institutional companies.

If you need a refreshing reminder about making things clearer for the rest of your company, and particularly more senior management, bosses, and CEOs, Avinash Kaushik has some good posts on Occam’s Razor which can feel like they pour a bit of cold water on the evangelical aspects of community and social media – but actually really help clarify the most useful methods of making things simple and effective – rather than relying on enthusiasm, buzzwords, and what it’s easy to assume is the inescapable logic of enagaging communities. Particularly this one, and this one!

I certainly don’t have all the answers – although the benefit of facing these challenges to varying extents in my day job means I’m slowly understanding more of the solutions – but what really interests me is how other people are tackling the challenges, what case studies people are willing to share, where people have found value, and what levels of commitment companies, particularly larger institutions, are actually committing to community engagement – is anyone finding the returns and solutions that make community pervasive through their company – or are large companies forever destined to limit it to experimenting via the fringes of what they do? And how much real effect does that have? And is technology – targeting adverts, engaging via Twitter etc, actually moving further ahead of where the biggest value is?

Personally, I think there’s a balance between using the tool of community marketing, and traditional digital and offline marketing. And that the trick is to be ahead of the mainstream by a small amount in order to establish and experiment in a space to ensure you’re on the right track before the crowds turn up – but what views have you got?

So are you in a large or small company? Or working as an individual?

Are you attempting to convince others – particularly management of the value of community and social media?

And are you targeting the early adopter communities right now? (e.g. Twitter, Plurk, Seesmic etc), or are you going with more mainstream efforts? (Facebook, Myspace, Digg, Stumbleupon).

The first important question for modern marketing/PR

June 11, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Before you start on Facebook or Twitter, and when you’re coming up with your strategy, there’s one important question to ask yourself.

Who’s more important – your boss or your consumers?

I’ll expand more on this shortly – but the answer isn’t as obvious as you might think…

The cost of social media

May 31, 2008 By Dan Thornton

When you’re looking at why companies might be reluctant to use social media and blogs properly, and why measurement is so important, it’s important to remember there’s a very real cost involved to them.

It’s something I’m acutely aware of, both in my professional role, and particularly in my personal life at the moment. My blogging and use of social networks has definitely been affected by my other commitments, whether it’s doing work on our house, sorting the bills, fixing the cars, or taking care of our pets. And the biggest commitment is to our baby son, which has had a big effect on how I can justify spending time online.

And in my professional role, I’m very aware that although implementing social media work has no direct financial cost, it has a real cost in terms of allocating time and resource.

Just as I wouldn’t expect to pay for something I didn’t receive, it’s unreasonable to expect a company to pay for for staff, and all the additional costs (office space, broadband, etc, etc,) to pursue social media engagement without them receiving a return which exceeds that value (increase in sales, website traffic etc). That’s where planning, measurement, and being realistic all come into play…

(And even this post has taken twice as long as it used to, due to my son needing attention!)

Solve one problem to justify social media marketing to any boss

May 14, 2008 By Dan Thornton

There’s just one problem which requires solving to finally put social media/buzz/community marketing people in a position to easily justify investment and resource.

Image by uBookworm under Creative Commons

We can all measure the splash of a promotion dropping into our worlds.

But what we need to do is be able to measure the quality and quantity of every ripple it makes, and everything else it disturbs, and combine all those measurements into one, simple, and hopefully big, number.

Until digital and social media advocates are in positions of responsibility in large companies around the globe – that’s what it takes. And to get to that position, you have to either accommodate the measures of the old school, or start a new firm and grow to the size of a global megacorp. In the meantime, we need to be famous to 15 people for quality,

and still show we can also reach 15,000 with anything down to the merest 5th hand whisper.

The problem is, measuring every single effect of even a single conversation is near impossible. But the closer we strive to it, the more influence and reach we can report back.