For instance, here’s a response from Old Spice Man to Twitter user Jsbeals, who asked Old Spice Man to ask for his girlfriend’s hand in marriage

In the ensuing three days, the production team for Old Spice created 183 video responses to question threads from Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Facebook, blogs and 4Chan. Over the next seven-day period, they amassed a whopping 36 million total views to their social media experiment and built significant brand credibility with the thought-leaders and meme-starters of the Internet.

From the success of this brief initiative, advertisers should take away a few lessons:

1. Adapt your brand assets to fit an emerging medium – Old Spice used the strength of the character they created in their offline campaign. Even before this initiative, Old Spice Man had become something of an Internet celebrity. Netizens used the cadence of the original spot inside their own conversations and posed rhetorical questions about the Old Spice Man’s mythical nature. Old Spice was sure to leverage the equity they had already built for this character when bringing their brand into the social space.

2. Ensure quality content – Old Spice accomplished this by doing two things:

a. They used social media experts as copywriters – Not only did the Old Spice Guy have funny comments, but the comments were relevant to the communities. For instance, knowing (and leveraging) the Internet’s fascination with Ninja and Pirate battles.

b. They looked for comments where they could have success – They didn’t respond to every single comment left to them. Instead, they found comments that created the best opportunities to reinforce their brand message. For instance, choosing to answer “How can I smell like fighting and space shuttles?” rather than “Dear Old Spice Man: I tried Old Spice and the results were underwhelming.”

3. Produce content in real time – This was the most important piece of this project’s success: they recognized that social media is a real-time world. As such, these responses had to take place quickly and still retain a high production value. In most cases, the Old Spice responses came within an hour or two of the questions posed. Of course, this didn’t happen by magic; no, real-time messaging takes significant planning and “on the ground” resources to do it right.

4. Publish where your fans are – Don’t make them find you (even if you already have a social media presence). Dig into the forums and communities that aren’t particularly brand-friendly, but are where conversations are happening. For this promotion, Old Spice used a social media monitoring software to find conversations about the brand and looked for opportunities to embed themselves in “virally-relevant” communities.

5. Stay true to your communication goals – Of course, it’s important to stay true to your brand and the goals of your advertising. In many responses, Old Spice made sure to not only answer questions, but did so in a way that spoke about the brand and the product. For an initiative like this to remain loyal to your brand goals, you have to be willing to devote an extensive time investment from a broad team, from careful strategic planning down to execution.

We should say that this campaign has, so far, failed to produce sales results for Old Spice Red Zone After Hours Body Wash. In fact, according to SymphonyIRI, in the 52 weeks ended June 13, sales of the brand are down 7%. While those figures won’t include results from this social media initiative, it may show problems for the “Old Spice Man” direction overall. It’s a solid reminder that mass attention doesn’t necessarily mean money in the bank.

In all, though, Old Spice created a unique and breakthrough execution founded on a few of the tenets of social media marketing; principally, that real-time, personal content is sure to win the hearts and minds of your audience. I’d challenge you, dear reader, to define and learn from what is and isn’t successful both from your and your competitor’s emergent media practices. With enough insight into how the medium works, you, too, can build a breakthrough campaign.

For more on how this was pulled together, see this article: http://creativity-online.com/news/behind-the-work-old-spice-responses/144947

Online TV for a Fee

While the majority of content is free online, companies are moving toward fee-based models in an interest to grow the space’s content while building more lucrative business plans.

• As they project the DVD business to peak in 2013, Netflix’s Watch Instantly subscription service is the brand’s initiative to become a leader in streaming content. With content spanning both movies and TV shows, the service starts to creep into Hulu’s market, but the notion is that Netflix will maintain dominance in the movie space. And consumers are showing strong interest. Netflix just reported a 46% year-over-year growth in unique visitors to the website, citing the new streaming service as the driving force.
• Hulu just announced last week a new monthly subscription model, Hulu Plus, that adds backlogs of content (did you know that 90% of network TV content is removed in six weeks or less?) and brings access to iPhones, iPads and certain HD TVs. There is added capability and depth of content, but to keep prices low as they navigate this new space, this model still includes advertisement.

Online TV on TV

We’re not just seeing TV content show up online; we’re seeing online content brought to the television screen. Just as Hulu expands service to the television, other brands are also looking toward the black box as an opportunity for online video distribution.

• Google announced its Google TV last month, to be launched in the fall of 2010. Google TV is a connected TV set – instead of using your guide, users will be able to search both TV content as well as online content – bridging the platform gap and making all content watchable from the television.
• Apple is redesigning their Apple TV solution to be more compatible with streaming capabilities. The current system limits users to iTunes, but as the space grows, Apple is looking toward an app store methodology to incorporate and leverage other streaming businesses such as Netflix and Hulu.

With TV coming online and online content going to the tube, expect to see some changes in the online video space. With more brands moving to online distribution, marketers will have more options for ad placement and branded opportunities as the space gets competitive. And the online video product is getting a facelift as it competes with higher-quality television programming; marketers and brands should be ready to elevate the production quality of online content as the lines blur.

Video consumption is changing, and online video is here to play. Look for increased adoption, new opportunities to reach consumers and new products to come out of the evolving space. Viva la online video.

One of the biggest challenges facing online video advertisers is the lack of premium content on the Web. eMarketer reports that almost 63% of videos consumed online in December 2009 were user-generated content (UGC). If the online video marketplace is going to grow, more premium video content is going to have to find its way to the Web since UGC is not going to entice advertisers who are looking for a safe environment to market their brand. The biggest inroad for providing premium content has come from aggregators such as Hulu, who have tapped inventory from television networks and movie studios, providing free content to consumers in exchange for incorporating limited commercials within the programming. These types of efforts have begun to expand online video reach, which has been a big concern for major advertisers.

A large untapped market has been original cable programming. Until recently, watching most cable programming online hasn’t been an option for consumers since cable networks are reluctant to make the content available for free online while consumers are currently paying for the service offline. One solution for moving more premium content online is TV Everywhere, a system strongly supported by the top two cable companies, Comcast and Time Warner. TV Everywhere allows paid cable subscribers access to cable programming online. Before viewing the content, consumers must first prove they have a subscription to a cable provider offline, giving them access to all their paid cable programming online. Comcast rolled out the system to its 16 million subscribers last December, but adoption has been slow. Blame that on the 11-step authentication process that turned off a lot of consumers. Time Warner’s rollout hasn’t been quite so aggressive, testing the service with 6,000 subscribers in New York before potentially rolling it out nationally. If successful, this would help increase online video’s reach potential.

However, as more premium content moves to the Web, there is a concern that sites will start charging for it. There have been rumors swirling for months that Hulu will move from an ad-supported model to a paid-subscription model or some hybrid of the two, which could negatively affect viewing levels online. Critics of TV Everywhere worry that if consumers flock to services such as Hulu to watch premium cable content, they’ll cancel their current cable subscriptions. Depending on how much content a person consumes, an online subscription to a site such as Hulu is likely to be considerably less than a consumer’s cable bill, which could positively affect viewing levels online.

Another hurdle for advertisers moving video dollars online is the cost. Pre-roll and in-program CPMs for premium content can be two to three times higher than CPMs for the same programming on television. A lot of marketers are already unsure about shifting dollars from television to online, and higher online CPMs aren’t making the conversation any easier.

However, to combat this premium pricing, there is research that online video contributes to significant lifts across brand metrics much more than television. In a 2008-2009 study by Nielsen, brand recall for an online video advertisement was 22% higher than brand recall for a television advertisement.

So while CPMs for premium online content are higher than television CPMs, value should be associated with knowing a consumer is engaged with a brand for a full 15 or 30 seconds, and it is often reflected in the metrics.

Although everything regarding the Internet seems to happen at lightning speeds and it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement, it’s important to remember that the online video marketplace is still in its infancy. The first U.S. television ad was broadcast almost 70 years ago. The first online video ad ran less than a decade ago. It will be years before online video spending matches TV spending, but online video advertising will continue to thrive as more content becomes available online and CPMs level out.

Building or redesigning an important website can be like buying a starter home. You think it’s the solution to all your problems, but sooner or later you discover that it has problems of its own. The upkeep is a lot of work. One thing is certain if you are building a family: There will come a time when you outgrow your starter home, and you’ll notice that it seems like the house was built for someone else. A close examination of the house reveals that, in some instances, you just weren’t that important in the grand scheme of things.

For instance, the contractors used composite hardboard siding instead of wood, vinyl or cement, and it seems to not withstand the rigors of the environment like the other things might. Since hardboard is slightly cheaper than the alternatives, that part was built for the builder’s bean-counter… not for you.

When you encounter your first plumbing issue, the master plumber who comes in to fix it laments that when the builder installed the pipes, they didn’t seal them. That part was built for the construction workers, so they could get to their break quicker. It wasn’t built for you.

Who is your website built to serve?

It doesn’t always have to be this way, but in many cases, websites are built through a series of processes, negotiations and compromises – much like a house. However, it is primarily built to solve problems. Therefore, the design team must agree on which problems they are trying to solve, and in what order.

There are several ways to approach the problems you identify.

Recently I had the pleasure of attending the 2^nd Annual Big Design Conference in Dallas (#bigD10). Our keynote speaker was Jared Spool (@jmspool), founding principal and CEO of User Interface Engineering. His presentation, “The Anatomy of a Design Decision,” included an excellent perspective on user-centered design.

What is “User-Centered Design?”

The traditional definition of user-centered design can be explained this way (from Wikipedia):

“User-centered design can be characterized as a … problem-solving process that not only requires designers to analyze and foresee how users are likely to use an interface, but also to test the validity of their assumptions…”

“The chief difference from other interface design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the user interface around how people can, want, or need to work, rather than forcing the users to change how they work to accommodate the software developers’ approach.”

User-centered design can be broken into 4 categories.

1. Self-Design – The designer is the user. This is not traditionally considered user-centered design, but it can be effective when the designer is designing for himself or when other users are exactly like the designer.
2. Genius Design – When the designer intimately knows the user and the space for which he’s designing and can apply the patterns he’s learned without researching everything from scratch.
3. Activity-Focused Design – When the designer is focused on what the user does and verifies through research and testing. This is the benchmark for traditional user-centered design.
4. Experience-Focused Design – Through extensive research and deliberate execution, persuades the intended audience to perform a desired action and elicits appropriate emotion that makes the experience memorable. True experience design transcends the medium and is the hardest to plan.

User-centered design is, at its core, a philosophy, not a rule. It stands in opposition to three other types of design.

1. Unintentional Design – If this occurs, one of two things is true: Either the designer is absolutely clueless or has tried to stretch an architecture designed for one thing to serve purposes for which it was never intended to serve.
2. Technology-Centered Design – This occurs when you’re more concerned about “features” on the platforms you already own or have access to than you are how the user could interface with those platforms – and why they would even want to.
3. Ego-Centered Design – This is a variation of “Genius-Design” masquerading as “Self-Design.” The difference is that with Self-Design, the designer (whether he be an actual designer or simply a stakeholder who is hijacking the process through the exertion of power, intimidation or influence) actually is the primary user of the design in question. With Ego-Centered design, the designer simply presumes that everyone thinks like him — denying evidence to the contrary.

Getting to Good

There’s an old adage that production managers seem to like to use when estimating a project or allocating resources. It goes something like this: “Quick, Inexpensive and Quality. Pick two of the three.”

(Image credit: Adam Polansky)

Strictly speaking, this isn’t even true. Sometimes you can have only one. There are always limitations with any project. There are always going to be trade-offs, and discovering what isn’t negotiable is part of the process of getting to good design.

That really boils down the design process to its essence. Good design is primarily about solving a multitude of problems: for the user, the marketing group, the IT group, the finance group and the design group.

The value of a design can be broken down to its parts — such as usability, usefulness, desirability, etc., but if it doesn’t solve at least one key problem that synchronizes what your users want and what you provide, it is doomed to fail.

Instrumental to solving these problems is making sure you honestly identify what the real problems are — asking the tough questions up front to make sure you don’t go down the wrong rabbit hole. This requires confronting the uncomfortable truth that you may be using one design method when you mistakenly believe you’re using another.

For Further Reading

10 Usability Heuristics

The Elements of User Experience (PDF)

User Interface Engineering

Changes Facebook’s Made

f8 introduced new opportunities that change the way users can exercise their privacy. Open Graph and Instant Personalization allow an opt-in ability to share and personalize the web experience with Facebook tools and profile information. And Facebook increased the amount of privacy settings to make control more granular while shifting default settings to public rather than private.

With both of these changes, Facebook has put the onus of privacy control in the individual users hands. Demonstrated below is a visual representation from The Huffington Post of the switch the platform has made from a private to public default setting. As you can see, without user customization, information that was previously only visible to a user’s network has moved to full web visibility.

Public Concerns About Privacy

Although consumers have the same, if not more, ability to control their settings, this shift has left users feeling in less control. There is concern about the transparency and the communication of the shift that has left users feeling betrayed and vulnerable.  Although the issue stems more around the execution than the actual features, this has started an important conversation about the ownership and security of personal information in social media.

And the government has been brought into this conversation as well. In May 2010, a group of fifteen privacy and consumer protection organizations filed a complaint with the FTC stating that Facebook is engaging in “unfair and deceptive trade practices” with Instant Personalization by disclosing personal information to third party partners without first gaining user consent. While there are no lawsuits pending at the moment, consumers, organizations and the government are actively participating in and alerted to the issue.

So What’s Actually Happening?

In light of some public/media outcry, use is not wavering. Facebook has added 10 million users since the f8 announcements. Open Graph is already on 100,000 sites and pushing 1 billion impression daily. (To put this in perspective, Facebook Connect took a year and a half to reach 250,000 implementations.) And since the announcement of Open Graph, Facebook has seen its referral traffic and web interaction grow dramatically, with increased referrals from the Washington Post of 290% and 350,000 “Likes” pushed to Facebook from IMDB.  Consumers are engaging with the new plug-ins and they are willing to forgo their privacy for the functionality. In fact, since the new settings were announced, Facebook has seen brand image perceptions rise with those aged 18-34.

Growing Pains

From the consumer perspective, all changes need time allotted for adaption and buy-in. Although there’s been some discomfort, we’ve seen strong initial adoption and expect this to continue – consumers are finding benefit in creating more robust personal online profiles because the outcome is a more tailored, personally relevant informational experience. Facebook has announced plans for more simplified privacy controls in response to the public’s complaints, but in the mean time, consumers can learn how to control your privacy here.

And as for marketers, the opportunity to leverage the 30 billion pieces of data created daily from the Facebook platform is not only attractive, but it’s getting closer to a reality. With space is constantly changing and the discussion of privacy not likely to go away anytime soon, here are a few tips digital marketers should take as this story and the space develops:

1. Stay current with Facebook policies and follow the dynamic progression of Facebook privacy

2. Watch the Federal Trade Communications for guidelines or new standards in social media regulation

3. Look to the IAB for an understanding of how this will effect advertising

4. Be transparent and manage privacy expectations when implementing any social plug-ins on websites

These certainly aren’t the only models out there, but three that captured my eye as I was thinking about ways to help our clients figure out what made most sense to them.

The Media Impressions Method

Social media management company Vitrue uses a tried and true paid-media impression model and tries to apply it to an earned media environment like Facebook. They estimate the number of impressions a fan would be served on their news feed from a brand posting content, and then they calculate a conservative $5 CPM to their earned media. It seems they realize it’s a conservative estimate and realize it’s imperfect. This model was recently featured in a ClickZ article where one of our own strategists (John Keehler) commented on the concerns he had with using a paid media approach to an earned media environment. Others have concerns as well but you get the general sense that people watching the industry are glad that Vitrue’s at least taking a stab at putting some kind of valuation to social media efforts.

The Direct Sales Method

For e-commerce brands like Papa John’s, the task seems a bit easier. This quote from Jim Ensign, VP of Marketing Communications at Papa John’s suggests that they tie fans’ Facebook accounts to the Papa John’s site when they place an order, to see if their frequency of visits and average tickets have increased. Using this method, it’s important to experiment and test the impact of social media – healthy, good-for-you NakedPizza promoted an exclusive-to-Twitter deal, bringing in 15% of that day’s business. Twitter is such an important part of their business that they’ve even included a custom “Twitter” button on their point of sale system to handle the “I’m calling from Twitter” orders that come in, sometimes representing nearly 70% of their sales. This method still gets a little murky unless you have a system that can gauge how many of these sales would have occurred anyway, but it’s at least a bit more quantifiable than other methods.

The Risk Avoidance Method

This model, mentioned here by Forrester but not exclusive to them, introduces the idea that while most brands are thinking about ways in which social media can generate new sales, create new relationships, strengthen brand awareness, they’re not thinking about its power to manage and avoid risks. It generally makes the argument that social media, much like life insurance or buying new tires when your current set is reaching its limit, has a negative ROI, yet it’s still worth doing. Why? Because it’s like corporate reputation insurance, a social media life preserver of sorts. Forrester has a great quote in the article above:
“You pay premiums in the form of building relationships, listening, responding, creating widgets, and building communities. And because you’ve done so, you’ve earned protection that can help should a PR disaster strike—you have an existing group of people who have affinity for your brand and an existing channel in which to reach them.”
Calculating the ROI of social media efforts may not be an exact science right now, but the cost of not doing anything, in Forrester’s opinion is simply too high.

The Engagement Method

The thinking around this model has been around for awhile now (Forrester posted this video back in April of 2008) and it’s different in that it doesn’t try to put a dollar value to social media, but is rather a measurement model, using the four I’s (involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence) to understand the engagement level of people interacting with your brand on social media. It uses a combination of offline and online metrics to score the individual I’s, but again, this isn’t a model for ROI as much as it is categorizing what you can measure into four important buckets. It’s still up to the brand itself to come up with a way to benchmark themselves in these individual areas and tie them to something quantifiable.

What Else to Consider
As I looked at social media ROI models, it struck me that there are an incredible number of variables that might affect the way we value our social media efforts. Here are a few of them, posed as questions, not answers:

What are your goals with social media?
Attract new customers? Retail old ones? Direct sales? Loyalty? Awareness? Engagement? Any one of these will require tweaking of how you’ll be measuring, whether it be through a button on your POS or on your monthly tracking study.

What activity do you (or should you) measure?
This isn’t as simple as it seems. It may not just be the number of “likes” of your brand – if that’s your focus, you may end up with a brand page with thousands of likes yet no conversation. In addition to likes, you have unprompted wall posts, people posting pictures and video, comments to your status updates, sentiment on your page, and retweets. Which metrics are most important to you and your brand?

Is there value of your presence beyond sales, awareness and sentiment?
This speaks a bit to the last method of social media ROI, the Risk Avoidance Model. In addition to social media being something like corporate insurance, do you gain additional insight into your customers and prospects, filling in some of the holes that traditional market research couldn’t get at? By being active, do you hear of potential customer issues with your brand earlier than you could understand otherwise?

The debate is certainly not over and this wasn’t meant to do so. But I hope it’s given you some food for thought as you take steps to understand the value of your presence in social media – and if you’re not there yet, hopefully this gives you a sense of what can be measured in this space.

What is iAd?
Quite simply, iAd is an ad network for “in-app” advertising. The format of these ads isn’t standard, it’s a new format designed to offer richer interaction… without flash, of course. Here’s a video of iAd in action:

How much does it cost?
Apple has taken an unorthodox approach, charging a reported $10 cost-per-thousand impressions AND a $2 cost-per-click. The cost-per-click in particular is very high, and the charge for both impressions and clicks isn’t standard. This combination also makes the overall cost of the ad placement very high.

How can I participate?
Well, according to the folks Apple has already reached out to, you’ll need a hefty spend of 1 million to be one of the first advertisers. In addition, it appears that because Apple bought Quattro Wireless, some of the first brands being contacted are those Quattro already has a relationship with.

From an Advertiser’s Perspective… what’s great?
One of the best things about iAd is the rich ad format. It makes me think about what ABC did with their “Ad Pods” for full-episode online viewing: while most advertisers were running pre-roll video ads, ABC created a rich format that allowed for much more than just watching a commercial, but providing an interactive experience. As a result, brand recall is higher, engagement metrics are higher… I would expect the same thing with this new format. According to Wired, however, Apple won’t even let advertisers design their own ads, and will eventually release their own advertising SDK.

It is an untapped market. Steve Jobs mentioned a potential of 1 billion in ad impressions daily. We’re talking about a market that isn’t just untapped, but extremely engaged with their devices.

Finally, this will advance mobile advertising forward. Apple’s reputation as a harbinger of the future will be enough for folks to pay attention to mobile advertising. Brands have been dabbling for years in mobile ads, but this will represent a tipping point. It will also set a benchmark for other mobile ad networks to offer richer ad experiences.

From an Advertiser’s Perspective… what’s not so great?
There are a few concerns any advertiser should have with what we know…

According to the Wall Street Journal, antitrust enforcers are taking an interest in Apple’s changes to the developer agreement, which forbids developers from selling any third-party advertising through their apps. Many developers are currently making revenue through the sale of advertising. Apple will provide ads under the new agreement, and ask for a 40% cut.

What’s shocking for those buying advertising is that changes to this developer agreement would suggest that the use of third-party tracking like DoubleClick and Atlas may not be allowed. There aren’t many advertisers today that would entrust reporting solely to the company selling them the ads, that’s why the industry developed third-party tracking in the first place.

Even if tracking were to work, the pricing model calls into question the ultimate effectiveness of the ads. Some advertisers will pay a premium just to be associated with Apple at this early stage. However, most brands have a finite budget, and will want these ads to show a positive financial return. Such high initial costs will make it much harder for these ads to perform. Of course, if we can’t track how they perform, it won’t really matter, will it?

The Final Word
In the iAd announcement, Steve Jobs says that online ads right now have interactivity, but lack emotion. This is something he cites as the strength of television. If this new ad network and format are to be a bridge between the two, the real test will be how they perform for the advertisers.

Search as an Opportunity for Innovation
A panel aptly named “Beyond Algorithms: Search and the Semantic Web” pulled together some impressive search innovators (including representatives from Wolfram Alpha, Siri, Twine and Bing) to discuss creativity in the space. Hitting on topics such as long running search sessions, data visualization tools and delivering more relevant results, the major theme boiled down to personalization. As Barney Pell from Bing stated, “we’re heading to situations where systems can ‘get’ you.” With category innovators like Siri leveraging API’s to enhance search, be on the look out for opportunities and functionality that focus on personalizing search.

New On-Demand Music Models
Two announcements coming out of this year’s SXSW were the launch of MOG and the US launch of Spotify – both pursuing digital music models that could change the way people consume music. MOG and Spotify offer streaming, on-demand access to millions of songs through either a paid monthly subscription or free of charge with an advertising model. There is also a purchase capability included, but this all-access pass will test consumer’s motivation to buy music. Spotify founder Daniel Ek summed up his intent when he said, “we want to make music like water.” We’ll see how music industry players respond, but in 2010, music consumers win.

Twitter – Anywhere and Everywhere
Twitter announced its’ new @anywhere platform, a framework for an enhanced tweeting experience from anywhere on the web. Site owners will be able to add Twitter function to their site allowing users to share content and follow fellow Tweeter’s without leaving the page. This is incredibly valuable as site owners can more effectively leverage citizen marketer’s sharing capabilities while keeping them on their site. Another Twitter update is the addition of geo-location tweet tagging, putting Twitter in the competitive space with tools like Gowalla and Foursquare. These SXSW announcements entail some of the growth strategies Twitter is employing to further their web presence, product functionality and market share.

Too Many Apps? There’s an App for That.
We’ve gotten to a place of clutter within the social-sphere and now its time to simplify and add manageability. Check.in is a new app that allows users to “check in” on all their location apps – Gowalla, Foursquare and Brightkite. And the SuperGlued mobile app aggregates tools for managing a live music interest by connecting schedules, ticket vendors and social opportunities from various existing platforms. Although solution managers aren’t a new concept, look for more applications that help streamline digital activities.

SXSW Interactive has created a forum to showcase innovation, spark ideas and challenge players to think progressively about the future. As consumers continue to live more and more digitally, watch for new products, enhancements and solutions to change the way we engage and consume digital. Thanks for the inspiration SXSW Interactive 2010, and see all you geeks next year.

As I prepped for the panel, I wanted to make sure I was on top of the latest insights about the digital lives of Hispanics and came across a white paper by AOL, aggregating eye-opening trends about “the web’s most rapidly growing population.”

What AOL covers in this study is a slew of insights that reinforced much of what we’ve been seeing and experiencing with other clients that have a focus on digital marketing to Hispanics. What it also provides is some hard-to-ignore facts that you can share with your organization, who may not realize the growing presence of Hispanics among your digital audience and what that means to your digital marketing efforts.

Here are a few facts and trends that stood out the most to me, and I think will be the catalyst for changes in the way we think about Hispanics and digital:

Internet Usage Rates Are Nearly At Parity With General Market
I recently got the opportunity to do some digital strategy work for a local hospital that provides medical care to much of the underserved in Dallas. One of the assignments was going out to their satellite clinics and asking patients how they felt about receiving communications from the hospital using various digital touch channels like text messaging and websites.

I assumed with this particular population with lower incomes that their appetite for digital would be low to none, but I was proven wrong interview after interview. The interviews were of course qualitative so just anecdotal, but nevertheless stunning. I kept hearing over and over about their desire for text message alerts or a website that cataloged all the upcoming health fairs, and it’s certainly not what I expected.

Data from the PEW Research Center and AOL Advertising found that the number of Hispanics online has grown significantly and at a faster pace than the total US online population. And now in 2009, the online adoption gap between Hispanics and the General Market has narrowed to just 13 points. And it’s not only online behind a computer, but according to the National Center for Health Statistics, over 7.7 million Hispanics over the age of 18 depend solely on their mobile device for communication, more than any other demographic group. ComScore reports that over 70% of Hispanics consume content on their mobile phones.

Think about what this means for your online audience, particularly in categories where you may have previously assumed that Hispanics weren’t visiting your site or interacting with your brand on their mobile device. And if you don’t know the demographics of your site, consider evaluating it with an exit survey or a third party vendor like Quantcast that can help determine the kinds of visitors to your site.

Hispanics’ Overwhelming Enthusiasm of the Benefits of the Internet
The AOL study cited a good deal of trust and love of the Internet from Hispanics; in fact, much more than the general market. One indication of this trust comes in the fact that 72% of them put their confidence in product rating sites, compared to just 28% in their friends’ opinions. There’s even more compelling data, comparing Hispanics versus the General Market on a number of psychographic metrics, like “always go to the Internet to find deals,” “use the Internet to keep up with pop culture” and “a great place to meet people with similar views.” In each of these instances (and even more that I haven’t mentioned), Hispanics rate higher than the General Market and it starts to paint the picture that they have high regard for the Internet as a place to gather information and socialize with others.

As marketers, how can we leverage their interest to gather information and socialize and provide online assets that speak to and fulfill these desires? Particularly if the Hispanic audience is a core target, we may want to tailor the content and functionality of websites and online advertising to their unique needs.

Throw Out Your Assumptions of Unacculturated Hispanics
Before I address the differences and commonalities of unacculturated versus acculturated Hispanics, it’s important to note that compared to the General Market Internet user, online Hispanics have a higher tendency to be an early adopter and keep up with the latest technology. And that’s not even the shocking part. The truly eye-opening trend is that if you take the digital Hispanic consumer and split them up by acculturation, from Hispanic Dominant (typically Spanish speaking), Bicultural (a mix) and US Dominant (English speaking), it’s in fact the less acculturated Hispanics, the Hispanic Dominants that have the greatest tendency to be an early adopter, evaluating new technologies and spreading the word to others in their communities.
And because Hispanic Dominants tend to be more comfortable with Spanish, when appropriate, we as marketers have to start thinking about how easy content tailored to Hispanic Dominant users is accessible. And this doesn’t just mean to throw your English language site into Google Translate or pay a freelancer to translate your General Market site. In many cases, as you’ve seen above, Hispanics have their own unique needs and they’re not always simply cultural – they mean even be more technologically savvy than your average website visitor.

The Future
Someone at the end of the panel discussion asked me, what do you see as the future in digital marketing to Hispanics? My answer: As technology continues its torrid pace and Hispanics grow in influence in the digital space, I wouldn’t be surprised if marketers really look at Digital Hispanics as the population to test new technologies and applications with, taking those learnings to the General Market.

I hope this gave you some new perspective on this audience – and I’ve just scratched the surface in terms of what makes this demographic so unique. I encourage you to find more resources out there about Digital Hispanics. An easy place to start is with the AOL Hispanic Cyberstudy I’ve been referencing. It’s a free download here.

The Toyota Conversations site is powered by Tweetmeme, and Toyota worked closely with Federated Media to launch the branded channel. The site allows Toyota to aggregate tweets that link to or mention news, images, video related to Toyota and the recall. While some of the tweets are negative, there’s a decidedly positive tone to the effort, as Toyota is prominently featuring their own tweets, videos, ads and links to other social media properties. They’re both embracing and controlling the conversation. So in addition to seeing a retweet where someone says they’ll “never buy a Toyota again”, we also see news stories being tweeted about that reference Toyota’s contribution to new safety rules, their March sales event announcement, and more. They’re also including what Tweetmeme refers to as “AdTweets“, which are essentially ads that include a “retweet” functionality.

This branded Tweetmeme channel is only one of many digital touchpoints Toyota is leveraging for the recall. The “hub” of the digital recall campaign, and the site you’re sent to from the homepage of Toyota is Toyota.com/recall. It’s a kind of recall “dashboard” (no pun intended), that includes important recall information for owners, news, announcements, videos and more.

Yet Toyota has also used a number of social media channels as well. Realizing the importance of news stories and social sharing, they have a partnership with Digg.com. In addition, they are using corporate social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Toyota has certainly jumped feet first into a number of different social and digital touchpoints, but what are the lessons to be had for other marketers? Here are a few thoughts:

1.) Social Shapes Conversation AND Media
We know that social media has become more important to customers, but it’s also become standard for media as well. Toyota seems to have recognized that sharing news is a big part of the conversation online, and that social media has to become a core part of any public relations effort, rather than an add-on.

2.) If You Build It, They Might Come
One of Toyota’s biggest blunders in these digital campaigns is that they don’t consistently cross-promote these social channels. Take, for instance, the fact that on the digital “hub” for the campaign, Toyota.com/recall, there’s no link to the ToyotaConversations.com website. In fact, there’s not even a link for Facebook or Twitter, only a link to the YouTube channel. Even in social media, once you get to the Facebook Page, you can find a link to the ToyotaConversations.com website, but there’s not a link on Twitter.

3.) The World is Still Flat
One of the more interesting dilemmas is the global presence of Toyota, and how small decisions have the potential to complicate things. Take, for instance, that the URL for Toyota in the US is Toyota.com. The Worldwide URL is Toyota.co.jp. The recall clearly hasn’t just affected the US, and the coverage has certainly been worldwide, yet there doesn’t seem to be much consideration taken to make sure the approach is coordinated globally.

Perhaps the most important takeaway is one Toyota has taken to heart… That a willingness to adapt to the changing media environment may be the best crisis planning tool.