Digigen & The TinMan

I have been avidly reading NYT’s coverage of the NetFlix $1m competition. If you don’t know anything about this, NetFlix hosted a competition to create an improvement in its service.. the prize $1m. The team winners were a 7 man team, who had exactly the same response as the second place losers….except they delivered it 20mins earlier. As the article points out, that is a very expensive 20mins. ($50k per minute)

The good news for all your losers out there, is that these losers have come up trumps. The team from Opera have managed to drum up an additional $10m worth of business directly from the learnings they discovered in the NetFlix process.

I’m sure this isn’t what they originally hoped when they entered but its quite an interesting way of thinking. e.g. Let’s enter this competition and see what learnings we can take from it. If we win great, if we don’t great.

I also wonder how many of these competitions we might see cropping up. Building improvements to eBay’s auction model, Facebook sourcing a new platform design from within its community, the list could go on and on. Perhaps we might even see Craigslist redesigned by someone who has got work through the classified board.

Either way its a nice story to bring a close to a Wednesday workday…

I have been studying social media pages for awhile in my role. We have some real success which we have been running for clients, no more so than Skittle Skuffle on Facebook. One of the most successful brand pages they have run. I think therefore that I have hit on a pretty smart model which I believe demonstrates what brands should be doing. Essentially it shows the real cost of running social media pages, through ad, human and content spends. Of course this needs refining somewhat and we are already on the fifth version. However, here is an original version.

I recently posted an article about Moving Brands and their quest for ideas for the rebrand of London….Although I personally thought that the pitch idea of crowdsourcing was fantastic, unfortunately the GLA didn’t think so and Moving Brands did not win. A real shame for London I think as the ideas, displayed on the www.abrandforlondon.wordpress.com site were absolutely brilliant.

Taking it on the chin like a true English Gent, Moving Brands has posted the full presentation on the site and therefore I am linking to it here.

I personally think the pitch reads really well and that they nailed the idea, but sounds like the GLA didn’t think the same.

The rise of social media has meant it is easy for consumers to talk about their bad experiences with a brand. Although sometimes its hard to tell the truth from the chaff, these reviews can have a poingnant effect on a brand’s reputation and potential success. Some have embraced bad reviews and made better products, some have continued to make the same products thinking the reviews will go away. Kryptonite is an example of the former, Bose an example of the latter.

The consumer reviewer is indeed the one who holds the power. Even the stats are telling us so…. 78% of consumers have bought a product based on another consumer’s review, approx 43% of Europeans have bought a product based on a conversation in social media. (Jupiter 2009 and Fleischman Hillard 2008) So the clear output is make better products, provide a better service or feel the wrath of the consumer.

It isn’t just review sites which have enabled consumers to fight back. The cost of producing a site through the likes of blogger, the ease of using Google to push your message, and the time it takes (minimal) means consumers can fight back efficiently. The case in point is Audi Edinburgh.

As you can see from the above Google grab, a wiley consumer has played Audi at their own game. Having been serviced badly this consumer took matters into his own hands and launched the website www.EdinburghAudiPoorService.co.uk. As you will be able to see from the site, he is none too happy and is seeking revenge. He has actually been pretty clever in terms of using Google to back up his site. For the keyword “Audi Edinburgh” he can expect to generate around 5,000 searches in the month. If Audi are lucky he may just end up running out of money, unless of course a clever sponsor comes in e.g. BMW.

Two ways how this exposure to small arms fire can be alleviated for brands?

1) Ongoing Investment in Social Media Monitoring

I believe brands who effectively monitor social conversations and review sites, can alleviate these sorts of problems pretty quickly. Domino’s Pizza now know when anyone sneezes cheese onto their pizzas for this very reason. Its  clear from reading conversations around the web that Edinburgh Audi has been reliable for bad customer service and this seems like the tip of the iceberg. An earlier reaction to this could have stopped this taking place.

2) Rapid Reputation Management

Like a Kwik-Fit fitter, Audi should have been quick out the blocks to quell this problem. They could now outbid the user and engage in dialogue within Google. e.g. “We are sorry. From Audi Edinburgh” could be an effective way of going cap in hand. Maltesers certainly saw this when they reacted to news of their Rubber Maltesers, embarking on a rapid PPC campaign.

Having currently been reading The Cult of The Amateur (Andrew Keen) for around two weeks now, I had started to think that writing a blog is a thoroughly unprofitable and unrewarding business. Keen points out on numerous occassions that many of the big blogs we think about being profitable are in fact not at all. His examples are Guy Kawasaki’s, gofugyourself, etc. None of which pulled in much revenue. (Thank god I have a proper job I thought!)

However, new figures released today about TechCrunch suggest that Keen has got this massively wrong. The SF Chronicle has just released figures suggesting that TechCrunch generates around $240k a month in advertising revenue. That is a serious amount of money whatever business you are in and shows really the worth of TechCrunch to those within the digital industry and perhaps those sourcing information about it. At 1.25m visitors per month the site has significant traffic and works out at a cost per visitor of $192. If for example, every visitor visits the site say 3 times…then the average cost per impression (visitors x freq of visit) is $64. This seems like a pretty expensive way of advertising to an audience who could probably be considered to be advertising adverse.

Anyway, it seems to be working for TechCrunch..they have just hired a new CEO, so good luck to them.

Matt Bamford-Bowes