birddog

Underestimating social media; a recipe for disaster

Hell, it seems, hath no fury like a woman plagiarised. That is, a woman plagiarised, with the majority of the internet on her side. Here is a long and evolving story as short as I can possibly make it:

On Wednesday last week (3rd November), Monica Gaudio, a food/crafts writer in the United States, blogged on her personal LiveJournal site that an article on apple pie recipes, which she’d written in 2005 and copyrighted as such on a web domain that she owns, had been reproduced in the October 2010 issue of the advertiser-funded, for-profit Cooks Source Magazine, without her permission.

Monica emailed the Cooks Source editor Judith Griggs asking for an apology to be posted on the magazine’s Facebook page, and a donation of $130 made to the Columbian School of Journalism. Said editor replied in the negative, saying that Monica should have been grateful for the exposure, and that since she’d had to edit the piece before publishing it (unlawfully), Monica should actually pay her. The editor then proceeded to trumpet her three decades’ experience as an editor that had given her sound knowledge of copyright law, before stating triumphantly (and quite wrongly) that the ‘web is a public domain’ and therefore the magazine had done nothing wrong.

It had, of course. And how: by Friday morning, the story had gone viral and global. Hundreds of people commented and continue to comment on Monica’s blog; thousands more have linked to it. Twitter went into overdrive; influential bloggers drummed up their support. The obligatory ‘Hitler Reacts’ YouTube video was made. The magazine’s Facebook page (which has now been deleted) became swamped with several thousand comments, each one increasingly vitriolic. Someone even wrote a song. Overwhelmed by the response, the Cooks Source website was taken down for several days.

All this gives you a very bad rep if you’re a brand. But reputations can be managed if you act quickly. Cooks Source and more specifically Judith Griggs failed to do so, and as a result, it is more than their reputation that has taken a hit since this story went around the world: several advertisers have removed their business from the magazine.

To summarise all that, since it is quite extraordinary: one hopelessly misjudged email (and rather foolish rudeness on the individual’s part) has cost a magazine – a business like any other – a chunk of its revenue. And as the magazine is distributed for free, that revenue stream is especially important.

Is it only a matter of time before big business slips up too? After all, this is a saga with potentially scary implications. Social media publicity nightmares are well documented (GAP last month a case in point), but here now is an instance of tangible financial loss directly attributable to social media vilification. Granted, Cooks Source has nowhere near the PR muscle or corporate size to simply absorb such a mass online condemnation, but as what has happened makes clear, this modern form of virtual justice often bears little relation to the magnitude of the crime, regardless of who committed it.

It appears that the magazine was simply not au fait with how the increasingly social internet has brought a “fundamental shift in power between publisher and reader”. When Ms Griggs sent that snide email to a seasoned blogger, it is unlikely that she would even have considered the consequences. Her magazine was left like a sitting duck, unable to defend itself from an internet on a righteous rampage.

The Cooks Source website now carries a lengthy statement that, among other things (including a bewildering indictment of Facebook and an attempt to absolve themselves from full blame), does at least offer an apology to the wronged blogger. But it is now too late – the damage, to their business and their brand, has been done. If lessons such as these aren’t learned from, this won’t be the last time the social internet claims a victim.

Tim Miller
Content Editor

The Business of a Top 100 Brand

For the last decade, Interbrand has been producing an annual report on the top 100 ‘Best Global Brands’. It makes interesting reading. It doesn’t make truly compelling reading though, and it doesn’t offer much in the way of deep insight. Perhaps that’s to be expected – it’s the nature of the beast. When you’re looking for trends across 100 global brands it’s no real wonder that the common ground ends up being generic.

It’s a bit like the ‘Top 100 TV Moments’, and the ‘Top 100 Movie Moments’, and all the other ‘Top 100 Moments’ that exist as TV scheduling fillers. Whilst the journey through the respective ‘Top 100 [insert filler of your choice]’ can be an interesting one, you can be fairly certain that your personal favourite isn’t going to be number one. It is a source of constant disappointment to me, for example, that the angelic harmonising of the Von Trapp Family in the classic Sound of Music never actually makes it to number one anywhere except in my dreams.

And so, because we all kind of knew the report findings this year – the economy’s in the shitter, the financial brands have taken a pasting, no one trusts anyone anymore, social media and the digital landscape’s a bitch and none of the big brands really know how to deal with it globally… – I thought it might be helpful to offer an additional insight from Interbrand’s work that may offer some hope to the B2B community.

Seven of the Top Ten Global Brands achieve a significant proportion of their revenues from the B2B sector. Seven. Of the top ten. B2B.

I thought that was pretty impressive for the Business to Business market. IBM, Microsoft, Google, General Electric, Intel, Nokia, HP – they’re all big B2B players. Using Interbrand’s statistics, they have a combined brand value of over $300bn. That means those seven B2B brands in the Top 10 have a higher brand value than all the other B2C brands in the Top 20 combined ($271bn). Not too shabby.

So whilst we’re all scrabbling around in the muck and bullets of day-to-day B2B marketing life, it’s worth remembering that we have a significant pedigree to live up to. The next time someone tells you that ‘brands’ are things they buy in supermarkets, just remind them that, actually, the top brands are mainly B2B. (Then sniff the air, turn on your heel and exit leaving only a ‘talk to the hand’ gesture for them to remember you by…)

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Twitter

The convergence of media – increased choice for consumers but is it a good thing for advertisers?

In terms of developments in Media technology, the past 12 months have been incredible, for consumers at least.  Actually no, for everyone – but not everyone realises it yet.

So what’s happened?  The most significant change has been the growth and adoption of IPTV, or ‘TV on demand’ as it is often referred.  The BBC’s ‘iPlayer’ is probably the most well-known example.

TV on demand is essentially the beginning of the democratisation of one of the most powerful and popular formats of traditional media – Television.  No longer are consumers fixed to watching programmes in the order dictated by the broadcaster and the programme guide, they can now choose to watch what they want, when they want, on whatever compatible device they want – Television sets, desktop and laptop computers, smart phones, games consoles, the list goes on.

But what does this mean for advertisers?  Is the killer ad-spot on a Saturday night still as relevant if the people seeing the programme are watching it on a Tuesday lunchtime?  You could argue that video recorders have been around for years so there’s always been this problem, however people were generally more select with what they recorded, plus programmes weren’t ‘on-demand’ – we couldn’t watch something we hadn’t remembered to record.

In addition to the increase in programme choice, new platforms are emerging, aggregating multiple ‘on-demand’ services, such as BBC iPlayer, Channel 4’s 4OD, ITV’s ITVPlayer and so on, and delivering the content through one site, making it easier for consumers to view and choose content without having to navigate multiple websites.  This is the first part of convergence – the channels no longer sit in isolation.

I see the second part of the convergence happening when devices that can play this content through people’s televisions in the lounge reach tipping point.  I see myself as an early adopter, I’ve got to have the latest gadgets as soon as they hit the market so I regularly make use of the excellent iPlayer application on the PS3 – linked to my TV in my lounge.  I also get Sky TV through the net, through Sky Player, however I’m in the minority.  People don’t want to watch an evening of TV on their laptop, and until such a time comes where you can view iPlayer and all of the other on-demand services through your TV using your remote control (without the need for other devices such as games consoles) things won’t change much for most people.

Phew! So advertisers still have their prime ad slots… but what new opportunities does TV on demand present?

Hey! It’s the fucking Internet right? Guess what that means? ANALYTICS. Yes. Analytics, fucking loads of stats and monitoring. What percentage of 50 plus women who watch Coronation Street also use ASOS? ‘click’.

This is REALLY exciting. Really exciting. Behavioural monitoring, contextual advertising, hey, what about personalised advertising? ‘Hi Bob, you drive a BMW, ever thought about an Audi? You nearest dealer is… Yeah, that made you sit up didn’t it?

It’s not just about the analytics though.  Once the channels and ad networks crack it, we’ll get advertising that really is relevant to us, taking into consideration the TV and radio shows we listen to, not just the websites we look at – which are often very different to the types of TV we watch. I watch Eastenders, I don’t go on the Eastenders website. Ever. Nor do I Google pictures of Barbara Windsor. (Well, maybe once or twice).

TV has sort of been trying to achieve this for some time now – watch an ad, text a short code to get more info/a free sample/book now, or hey, visit our website – but how many people sit in their lounge, laptop at the ready for the TV ad web addresses – some of us yes, but we’re in the minority. How about a contextual, personalised TV advert which takes Bob to a contextual, personalised web page – how’s that for a good user journey?

I predict big things happening in the next 12 months, check out the following sites for a glimpse of what’s to come:

http://www.seesaw.com

http://zattoo.com

http://www.teev.co.uk

http://www.hulu.com

http://www.playon.tv

Oliver Budworth

Digital Director