Marketing For Nerds

All’estero molti siti di fiere e di riviste di settore hanno forum di discussione, feed RSS, blog, form per commenti, sezioni news aggiornate e pulsantini come questo

In Italia manco uno.

Ma cosa aspettano?

Understanding and Applying Web 2.0 Definitions to Organization Websites (tradeshowweek.com)
Super-Charged Virtual Trade Shows: Utilizing Social Networking Services (meetingtechonline.com)

Di Max Freiert su Compete.com

Social Addicts: How do Hardcore Facebook, MySpace and Twitter users differ?
“[...] This analysis is designed to help with media buying, but in the case of social networks it can also help define the psychographic makeup of the group, and how “addicts” generally use their favorite social site. …>>“

Via Marc Bresseel

“[...] a very complete and enlightening survey ‘investigating behavior, trends, preferences and attitudes across all forms of entertainment activity’ among a representative national demographic sample of UK consumers that is a thousand of male and female between 15 and 54 years old (with the 24 to 54 group weighting for 76% of results).
The 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey commissioned by Wiggin and done by Entertainement MediaResearch covers a wide range of activities from traditional to digital topics. …>>“

Summary report (30 pagine) .pdf
Full report (250 pagine) .pdf

I Pennywise, storica band punk-hardcore californiana (molto amata dal sottoscritto), ha stipulato un accordo con MySpace Records e Textango, società specializzata in servizi per telefonini, per permettere il download gratuito del nuovo CD “Reason To Believe” tramite il famoso social network . Il tutto finanziato da Texango.

Come funziona:
dopo aver aggiunto ai propri amici il profilo textango si riceverà un messaggio con il link per scaricare un file zippato contenente le canzoni in formato mp3 a 320kbps, un .pdf con il booklet completo e … un invito a scaricare una bonus track tramite invio di SMS:

Dal 25 marzo l’album è disponibile nei negozi su etichetta Epitaph con un bonus DVD, 2 bonus track e su vinile in edizione limitata.

[Anche su AdWeek, La Stampa e Marketing Vox]

Mi sembra che questa iniziativa dei PW si differenzi dai casi già noti, es:

Radiohead: bassa qualità audio (160kbps) e niente grafica

Nine Inch Nails: “Ghost I-IV”, pur essendo a pieno diritto nella discografia NIN è un “esperimento” (36 tracce strumentali - 1° volume di 4) la cui uscita è fortemente legata alle possibilità offerte dal web come mezzo di dis-intermediazione, di cui lo stesso Trent Reznor dice:

“I’ve been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn’t have made sense until this point. [...] I’m very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference.”

Forse un caso simile ai Pennywise è quello dei Charlatans, ma in generale mi pare che la strategia adottata dai PW riesca ad unire ( e migliorare) elementi presenti negli esempi citati prima in modo più efficace: pieno coinvolgimento della casa discografica, alta qualità audio, uso dei social networks e un prodotto non “sperimentale”.

Poi magari mi sbaglio.

Paul Dunay su Buzz Marketing for Technology si chiede Is Social Media more difficult in B2B than B2C?

” … My point is that out in social media land if you know exact who your audience is, what will resonate with them and how to tap into it, you are home free. B2B audiences are more fragmented, with internal employees, external partners, channel partners, third party vendors, and, oh yeah, customers and prospects …>> “

Io sono d’accordo con Andy Sernovitz di damniwish.com :

With BtoB you know your audience, you know what they care about, and it’s easier to connect them.
You’re dealing with an existing community instead of unknown masses.

“Corporate social technology strategy, Purists, and Corporatists — why companies CAN participate” di Josh Bernoff

“It’s time for me to weigh in on the question: can companies be part of the social world?

This is in part a reaction to Shel Israel’s comments of a few months back and my colleague Jeremiah’s Owyang’s responses. But it’s an ongoing issue that comes up often in the blogosphere in my conversations with corporate clients.

On the one side are the folks who say, “The social world is an emergent phenomenon generated by people connecting.” The original Cluetrain Manifesto rails against many aspects of the corporate world and basically posits that the right way for companies to get involved is for people inside those companies to connect to their customers. Based on my recent participation at a Cluetrain event, Cluetrain author Doc Searls still harbors a lot of skepticism toward corporations pursuing goals in the social world. For shorthand, let’s call these folks the Purists.

On the other side are companies who are looking at the social Internet and saying “how can we exploit this to do what we already do — PR and advertising, for example?” PR and advertising are mostly one-way, broadcast type communications, and these folks continue to try to adapt those one-way modes of thinking in the two-way, read-write world of social computing. I’ll caricature these folks as the Corporatists. …>> “

Ripreso da Israel (anche qui tempo fa), Searls e nuovamente da Bernoff

“4 widget best practices” di Nikole Brake su imediaconnection.com

If you’re launching a widget campaign, consider these strategic and technical factors to maximize your campaign’s impact.

The intense popularity of widgets, gadgets, Facebook applications and their kin has advertisers and publishers eager to get on board. But before you invest in a widgetized advertising campaign, there are a number of strategic and technical factors to consider. There are also important guidelines to follow to ensure you get the most from your investment.

Via Brand Central Station

b2blog.com: Why not allow user reviews on your B2B website?

” [...] 1. Fear. Your team, CEO, and salespeople will ‘what if’ you till you scream and give up.
2. No alternative products: We aren’t distributors with multiple brands to select from. At Amazon, I can jump from Canon to HP products. If shopping at Agilent, a bad review may drive me to Tektronix’s website.
3. Its personal. These are my products and I don’t want anyone dissing them publicly on my website!
4. Cases vary. Successful application of many B2B products depends on the skill of the user and the actual usage.
5. Customized products. The reviewer may have a unit with a modification that they may praise in a review, but others may not know is extra.
6. Loss of control. Related to fear–how do we control who posts reviews? What do you do when a salesperson calls saying he lost a sale due to what a review said?

Well, I could go on, but those are enough to stop any B2B marketer from allowing reviews on their website. What do you think? Are these just excuses, or reasonable reasons? Are there other issues at hand? Is it worth allowing reviews anyway?[...] “

Dice Porter sul suo Bokardo:

“When people are on MySpace, the activity they’re doing isn’t search. It’s something akin to “hanging out” or “networking”. Their task is almost the opposite of search. They are already on the site they want to be on. They don’t need to click on links to take them where they want to go.

[...] Social ads don’t work as well because people are being social, not searching for something.

[...] Google is investing a ton of energy into mobile, because when people are mobile we’re in unfamiliar places with the same old needs. We’re searching not only for our destination, but services that will help us along the way. So that’s why every time you turn around there’s some new quiet feature in Google Maps, because maps and mobile are the future of advertising.“

News.com - Google still waiting for social ad payoff

Tra i tanti siti che raccolgono gli spot messi in onda in occasione del Super Bowl c’è spike.com.
Qualche curiosità in italiano su DoubleBBblog

In occasione del Super Bowl, il 2 febbraio Jeremiah Owyang ha lanciato TwitterBowl, “a real-time social experiment where the audience rates million dollar advertisements in real time using Twitter”.

A quanto pare, “qualcuno” ha accettato l’invito e Owyang commenta così

The social media experiment went very well, there are over 2500 responses to the superbowlads account. I spent over an hour hand copying all the replies on that account to this spreadsheet of all the responses. [...] where you can do a search [...] and see how people are talking about the different brands and the ads.

[Update] Come precisa Owyang nei commenti, i dati sono stati elaborati da Josh Bernoff, analista di Forrester e pubblicati qui.

Vedi anche Microblogging.it