Digital ravings of an analog girl

This morning’s keynote session at ad-Tech Asia was given by Scott Goodstein, External Online Director on the Obama presidential campaign.  Scott and his team looked after all the online channels that were outside of www.barackobama.com.

With perfect hindsight, of course we know that this campaign was a huge success.  However, when the campaign began, before most people had ever heard of Barack Obama, there was some risk involved in using digital and social media for a political campaign. If you consider that Campaign Managers (and Marketing Managers) spend all their time trying to control the messages out there, the use of digital/social media requires a bit of a leap of faith.

Scott Goodstein’s first point addressed this.  The most essential element of any campaign is to have a strong message and a good product.  He fervently believes that they had both in Barack Obama. 

This does not mean that you should shy away from social media if there is a chance there will be negative content posted about you/your product/your brand.  But, you should be prepared to hear negative comments and respond to them and act on them. 

This was Scott’s second point about why the Obama digital campaign succeeded.  The online campaign team made an effort to respond to every question or comment posed to the campaign (and there were a lot!).  This took huge drive, organisation and human resource, but not necessarily a great technology investment.  Outside of www.barackobama.com, all the online communication took place using free online tools such as facebook, myspace, twitter, youtube and eventful.

The purpose of using digital media for the Obama campaign was to engage the ‘long tail’ of voters and supporters who did not access traditional media.  While the majority of target voters did watch television and read the papers, there was a significat minority who engaged only via a wide range of digital tools.  The Obama campiagn started on just one or two platforms, and focused on small targeted segments. 

In the South, one campaign targeted barbers.  Why?  Because barbers spend all their day talking to their customers.  If you can make barbers talk about you, your message will spread rapidly.  My cousin Phil the Barber of Westborough MA is fairly typical here.  He spends all his day chatting to his customers, and every spare moment in between appointments interacting on Facebook (Go the Bruins! Right Phil?). 

The Artists for Obama campaign, allowed artists to make and post images to support the campaign.  The now iconic image at the top of this post was one of these.  It gave the artists a way to help the campaign (imagine how much an ad agency would have charged!), gave exposure and encouraged interaction. 

The Obama campaign really did leverage their advocates.  If you visit the site even now that the Presidential race is over, what remains is the supporter rallying and organising functionality.  The idea here is that supporters can find a interest group or event in their area, and if they’re really keen, can sign up to organise a group themselves.  The site offers a lot of tools and support to anyone who want to organise events.  Now it’s about pushing the Obama agenda for change.  During the election campaign, this was used for raising funds for the campaign and encouraging people to get out and vote.

Scott also emphasised that the technology available changed during the campaign.  The online Obama shop was partly a success because there was a shift in attitude to making online purchases.  More people began to believe it was safe.  Social media and mobile phone technology exploded.  Obama’s team were willing to experiment, and to commit resource even to smaller segments.  I should mention here, that Scott’s idea of a smaller segment was the one million subscribers to their mobile messaging service…

The Obama team were not afraid to direct traffic away from their own ‘controlled media’ (their website and emails) to the more open terrain of social media like Facebook and Youtube.  They used video very cleverly for everything from encouraging supporters to get out and vote to upselling contributors to make a larger contribution.  Barack Obama even recorded a ringtone for mobile phones.  You too can have your ringtone saying ‘it’s Barack Obama.  Pick up!’.

And finally, during the Q & A, Scott mentioned the pre-emptive use of search.  He cited an incident where a political candidate knew a scandal was about to break.  The candidates team posted their side of the story, linking up to all the relevant keywords, so that once the scandal broke, their content also appeared on the first page of search results also.  There’s some smart and adventurous thinking…

A useful analogy from the ‘Leveraging Social Media’ session at ad-Tech Asia.  Compares social media channels to areas of interaction in the real world:

Your Living Room – Facebook

Your Bedroom – Friendster

The Nightclub/Bar – Myspace

The Boardroom – Linkdn

I’ve just attended the ‘Engaging with Youth’ panel discussion at ad-Tech Singapore.  Five bright young things (BYTs), aged between 19 and 21 sat at a raised table and addressed an audience of 300 about how they communicate, socialise, shop, live – all online using social media.  None of them were fazed by the large crowd – after all, they consider themselves experts in this area.  They’re here to share their wealth of knowledge with the old folks…  Their confidence was palpable.  They are the future consumers we will/are marketing to.

So, what are the BYTs like?:

Of the five BYTs, only one regularly reads a newspaper – but only on the weekend.  They prefer to seek out the news they’d like to hear about – but not necessarily from the online versions of print media.  One BYT said he gets all his news from Digg.  The news he reads is only the top-rated stories, and of course mainly American slanted news (so much like a local US paper then).  None of the BYTs watch television via the box.  All of them download and watch TV programs online.  All of them consume TV advertisements on Youtube (but only if they’re entertaining and informative and recommended by their friends). 

However, the BYTs all agreed that they still interact mostly in the real world.  They commute to school/work, they regularly see their friends in the flesh (and discuss the things they’ve seen in their online interactions),  They all still browse in real world stores, eat at restaurants, travel to real places, for real experiences.  But, the BYTs do their pre-purchase research online.  They don’t accept the first price offered.  They make purchase decisions based on the recommendations from their ‘friends’.  The reason that friends is in inverted commas, is that in this case, ‘friends’ might include members of their wider online circle – user groups, fan clubs, twitter friends, bloggers, users of Digg, De.li.cious, FriendFeed.

The BYTs agreed that they don’t like to see banner ads, and they don’t like being followed on Twitter so that if they follow you back, you can send them commercial messages.  This type of behaviour is likely to give them a negative impression of your brand or product, which they will share with all their ‘friends’.  You can see how the wrong behaviour in this world can materially and instantly damage your brand.

The BYTs do not check their junk email folder and they have no problem with hitting the SPAM button if perchance your un-requested message makes it to their inbox.  They block or ignore all unsolicited messages of a commercial nature, yet are quite happy to receive personal, non-commercial messages from people they don’t know.  When the BYTs want a commercial message, they will find you and ask you for it.  They are very sure of what they want, and when they want it.

Four out of five BYTs had shopped online recently.  Two had bought clothes, one had bought music downloads. None had bought books.  The moderator jokingly asked if they know what books are…  There was marked and prolonged silence, accompanied by five icy stares.  Clearly the moderator was one of those old traditional media dinosaurs…

Interestingly, even though all five of the BYTs have iPhones (even the one who claimed not to like Apple), they all agreed that the mobile device was still really for snacking-type consumption.  Text messages, brief tweets and the like.  For more involved messaging or surfing, all preferred to use their computer.

If they don’t read the papers, watch TV or view banner ads, how do I get their attention?

This tough question was posed to the BYTs by one of the traditional dinosaurs in the audience.  We know this audience member is a dinosaur, because she asked her question using the microphone.  All the relevant, intelligent questions were posed via twitter using #adtechasiayouth.  They responded that brands should interact with them in their forums, but not try overtly to sell them anything until they’re ready to buy.  When they want to buy, they’ll find you, and ask you for the sale. 

…erm, so how do I tell them about something they don’t know they want yet?

In short, unless you are in the BYTs circle of friends, you don’t.  You can try to seed a discussion in a forum about your product or brand, but if you then try to lead the discussion in a certain direction you risk turning the BYTs off.  And of course, the discussion could flame you and your brand, or even worse, fizzle.

So what does all this mean?

We’ve come full circle in marketing.  Back in the good old days before mass media, if you wanted, say, shoes, you’d ask your mum/granny/friend where to get shoes.  Chances are your mum/granny/friend would send you to buy shoes from your local cobbler, who would rely on you to tell your friends, and to come back when you needed more shoes.  With the advent of mass media, you no longer had to ask where to get shoes, because the shoe makers were telling us, even before you knew we wanted the shoes.

We, the mass media generation, came to trust what was told to us by the sellers of products and services.  In fact, we seemed to think that if it was on TV/radio/print, then it must be the truth, despite the fact that we knew these messages were paid for content.

The BYTs have an inherent mistrust of brands, mass media and the selling process.  They’ll listen to what you have to say about your product, but will not believe it until it is confirmed by one or many of their ‘friends’.  We are back to the friends and family advocacy model, but on a much larger scale, because now you don’t need to buy from your local cobbler any more.

Is this the end of marketing as we know it?

Well, not completely, not yet.  The BYTs still interact in the real world, and consume marketing from multiple sources  – conciously or otherwise.  But, we as marketers do need to adapt.  We need a mindshift about how we communicate.  Our brands and products need to make it back into the circle of trust for the BYTs.  We need to leverage the friends and family advocacy model.
  

The panel of bright young things consisted of:

Ajeeja Limbu: Nepalese by birth, brought up and educated in Singapore.  Ajeeja confessed that he likes quiet – to go into his bedroom and shut the door, read and surf the net (shame that he was placed next to the very un-quiet moderator…).  He is currently studying online journalism at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

Devin Gustafson: A 3rd year advertising student at University of Texas at Austin.  Devin is the opposite of ‘quiet’.  Everything about him, from his hot pink shades to his strident remarks, yells at you.  He’ll do well in advertising.  He came with his own large entourage from the University of Texas.

Dorothy Poon: Recent graduate of Singapore Management University.  Dorothy was hired for her first job via Facebook.  The employer did a search on keywords/tags and invited Dorothy to apply for a job as their social media executive.  Dorothy is already well connected.  She blogs, she tweets, she has her own site, she has her own opinion and she’s not afraid to share it. www.dorothypoon.com, www.doryandfillet.wordpress.com, @summerisque

Daryl Tay: Recent graduate of Singapore Management University.  Co-founder of Social Media Breakfast | Singapore, and blogger http://uniquefrequency.com.  Claims he does not read newspapers.  Ever.  Already bears a striking resemblance to every cantankerous, opinionated newspaper editor I know.

Vickland Malik: About to graduate from Singapore Management University.  A youth with a social conscience and a soft-spoken but firm manner.