Recognition Marketing - Beware The Circular Firing Squad

Think About The Consequences Of Your Actions Before You Act

By David Miranda

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) are in the umpteenth week of their strike against the entertainment establishment. FYI, they are striking for understandable and substantive reasons - getting a piece of the pie for their work that is being sold through new distribution channels, i.e. the internet, podcasts, etc.

No one, on either side of this dispute, could have imagined that this would have gone unresolved for so long. The result? Production of affected television shows have been halted and, most recently, the annual Golden Globes awards show was cancelled. The upcoming Oscars are also threatened. Some shows like David Letterman's, Jay Leno's, Jimmy Kimmel's, and Bill Maher's have come back on the air in recent weeks by either making a special deal with the union or deciding not to use union writers.

Here's the issue.

Audiences for television and film are already harder to get. The distribution marketplace has already changed forever with more and more alternatives available to consumers.

The WGA and the establishment are participating in a circular firing squad, i.e. shooting themselves to make a point. The consumer public could care less about this squabble between the haves and the have mores. They just want entertainment - and will find it elswhere if pushed.

Hasn't anyone learned from the costly lessons learned from the past strikes in professional sports such as the NFL, NHL, and MLB? These respective strikes caused audience resentment on a major scale and it took a long time for these sports to recover.

Such will be the case in the world of entertainment.

The leaders on both sides who let this get to this point should be vilified considering the incredible amounts of money that is being lost across the entertainment ecosystem. They are myopic and ego-centric to surmise that this dispute is worth alienating audiences. The writers produce exploitable intellectual property and should be compensated. The entertainment establishment who capitalize the industry deserve a reasonable return. The public deserves not to be caught in the middle of this resolvable matter.

Hard lesson to be learned here by both sides? Fix it quick or the marketplace will find new ways to invest its leisure time and dollars?

Recognize the problem. Discover a solution.

Remember its "ready, aim, fire", not "fire, ready, aim".

Recognition Marketing - The Rise And (Potential) Fall Of The Holy Google Empire

By David Miranda

Achilles has his heel. Superman has his Kryptonite. The werewolf has his silver bullet. Dracula has his stake through the heart. Google has privacy.

As the search 8000-lb. gorilla enters 2008, it seems indomitable. Search share has increased; it owns YouTube, Blogger, G-Mail, Froogle, AdSense, Feedburner, and it's purchase of DoubleClick just got approved by regulatory authorities. Google fortunes (and stock price) continues on an upward trajectory.

Google's "Achilles Heel" is privacy.

Here is the case. Google (and its wholly-owned subsidiaries) is not really in the search business. It is in the data collection and analysis business. They collect and analyze data from all interactions with many millions of users - all this data is collected without the prior permission of the user. Think about this for a moment. If you search on Google, have a G-Mail account, have a blog on Blogger, visit any site with AdSense, visit any site using DoubleClick, have an RSS feed through Feedburner, or frequent YouTube; the odds are great that Google has been collecting and analyzing your behavior.

Want a scary non-Google example? How about Yahoo!. Yahoo! provided information on a Chinese dissendent to the Chinese government. The dissident was arrested and now sits in prison. Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo, was called to testify before Congress and apologized. The Chinese dissident, however, remains in prison.

I use Google in this example because they are the biggest and most powerful, but not the only company on the privacy radar screen.

What happens to Google's fortunes if every person using a Google site or service is asked to opt-in and give their approval before their personal online behavior is shared with third parties for economic benefit to Google and their advertisers, etc.? What happens when privacy advocates take Google to task through litigation? When the government decides to intervene? When Google has to divulge to the public what they collect and how they use the information?

The bottom line is this. Without the prior expressed approval of each use, i.e. opt-in/opt-out, Google's current business model is compromised. It is the elephant in the room in Mountain View.

Stay tuned.

Recognition Marketing - Understanding Pandora's "Bots"

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Search "Bots"

By David Miranda

As we speak, algorithmic "reconnaisance" entities, affectionately known as search bots, are relentless scouring the Internet for information on behalf of their search engine masters - on any subject, anywhere, all the time. Once they find what there looking for, they immediately communicate what they have found to their creators for distribution to millions.

How they do this is shrouded in mystery for if anyone were to figure this out they may rule the lucrative world of organic (natural) search.

There is a good, bad, and ugly of search bots.

The good is easy to understand. Bots search and find good things about a person or company and distributes this favorable info to the connected world which, in turn, will be positive (leads, pr, etc)

The bad is less discussed, but also easily understood, i.e. the bots finding some unflattering information in the public domain from motivated third parties who seek to benefit from misinformation, i..e. competitors, disgruntled former employees, etc.

The ugly occurs when "bad" gets widely distributed, particularly through a credible source that gives it credibility and substance in the connected world. The "ugly" then becomes like a bad stain, i.e. difficult to remove.

The words to the wise, therefore, is this:

1. Be relentless vigilant of your brand on search engine results. Search results with negative references should be dealt with swiftly by contacting the source directly. Do not assume they will have no impact or just go away.


2. Do not try to resolve this issue on your site or blog. It will could aggravate the situation and, perhaps, have the opposite results.


3. Do not think there is a magic solution for removing unfavorable information. Search engine results do not have an "eraser".

In summary, proactively manage your net presence and remember Pandora's bots are watching.

Recognition Marketing - Good Search Engines Can Do Bad Things

Sponsored Links - Bait And Switch?

I love Google (and Yahoo!, Ask, MSN, Lycos, etc). Each provides a quick and friendly tool to find what I am looking for. Google even shows me that my search for whatever produced several hundred thousand results in .02 seconds. Simply amazing!

Ever notice (or click), however, on what these search engines call "sponsored links"? These are the ones that magically (and always) appear at the top or right hand column of search results. These are the ones "sponsored" or paid for by third parties. These third parties successful bid (and pay for) keywords and phrases that guarantee their links appear next to the free (organic) listings. By the way, the search engines make a considerable sum of money from these "sponsored links" known by their better name "paid search".

I, for one, am not against anyone making an honest buck and the search engines have surely done that in recent years.

But there is something amiss here that needs to be corrected (or disclaimered). In other media, mis-direction or misleading ads of this kind all called "bait and switch" , i.e. "I thought I was getting this, but I got this instead." Translation: "I've been bamboozled".

Let's say you did a search for say a specific brand (Delta Air Lines, AT&T Wireless, Citibank, etc.) and in the sponsored links you noted "Delta Air Lines" etc and clicked on it only to find it was not Delta Air Lines, but another firm's web site who had paid the search engine for the keyword phrase "Delta Air Lines" say a travel agency or another competitive airline. Sounds like bait and switch to me. Wouldn't you also wonder why a respected search engine would be a party to re-directing or misleading you?

I am sad to report that this is indeed the case with many sponsored searches. There is not even a clear disclaimer that informs the consumer that "the following links may not be sponsored by the mentioned brand."

I, for one, thinks its high time that search engines respect the integrity of brands on their respective sites. If the link implies it is sponsored by the brand I recognize and I am searching for, I should be linked to that brand and not some company that has hijacked it or a search engine who is aiding and abetting this behavior.

To all the good search engines, I say, stop this bad behavior. Put consumers and brands first.

Recognition Marketing - 2008 Is The Year Of Emergent Complexity In Marketing

Are You Prepared To Win?

By David Miranda

Does life seem to be more complex than ever before? This is surely the case if you are a marketer. It seems like every day there is a new marketing channel to consider employing or a traditional channel that is less and less effective than before. The result, for most marketers, is cognitive dissonance on some scale. Cognitive dissonance, to refresh your memory, is a psychological term describing the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs. Sound familiar? Feel familiar.

Marketing is normally spoken of in macro terms, e.g. marketing strategy, brand positioning, etc. This macro approach is still relevant and needed in today's new landscape. The cognitive dissonance occurs in dealing with the complexity of how to best execute the macro strategy in a marketplace of uber-choice and uber-competition that produces desired results.

The answer lies in what researchers call "emergence" also known as "emergent complexity". (The PBS series "Nova" had an interesting program on emergence that ran in July of 2007.)

Scientists describe emergence as a science that studies how complex patterns and behaviors arise from the actions of individual units acting independently. The overall pattern that arises from the behavior of the individual parts is called emergent complexity.

Sounds complex, but consider this example.

We are all familiar with the games checkers or chess. The rules of these games, though few in number, give rise to a huge number of possible moves, most of them irrelevant or outright bad if the ultimate objective is to win, not just play, the game. Among these possibilities are those that greatly influence the possibility of winning (the right moves) assuming they are part of a strategy that includes only moves that positively contribute to winning. The "right moves" are those that exploit a game's basic rules but at a higher level of comprehension for those that play the game well. Winning (or success), therefore, is based on a player's keen understanding of the emergent complexity of the game including the basic rules, the level of competition, analysis of past performance, and the moves and counter-moves of each player in a dynamic environment.

Sound familiar? Feel familiar?

2008 will be a year of emergent complexity requiring new thinking to succeed. Using the chess analogy, it will be like playing three-dimensional chess where a move on one board will have an impact on the other boards in play. What are the boards? Search (organic and paid), mobile, social networking, blogs, product placement, PR, TV (broadcast, cable, satellite), POS, direct mail, etc. etc. etc. Each of these "games" have their own unique rules of play. Each demands their own keen contextual understanding to succeed. Each has their own respective emergent complexity. Each cannot be appreciated unless understanding their respective impact and influence on the greater good.

Here are some tips to exploiting emergent complexity:

1. Understand the media behavior of your targeted audience.


2. Understand the basic "rules" that apply to the channels your audience is using.


3. Create an internal culture of continuous learning by exploiting the basic rules of each channel and developing appropriate strategies that employ "the best moves" while eliminating the "irrelevant or outright bad moves".


4. Simultaneously, think horizontally, vertically and diagonally. Avoid "thought silos". A great chess player considers all the pieces on the board when considering a move.


5. Organize thoughtfully. Put the right players of your organization in the right game, i.e. "a great checkers player doesn't necessarily make a great chess player."

In summary, be prepared to play the game of emergent complexity in 2008 or find yourself "checkmated" by the competition.

Recognition Marketing - What To Look Out For In 2008

Be Prepared For The New Year

By David Miranda

2008 will be an interesting year. It is a presidential election year with the most diverse slate of candidates in a generation. US. economic growth is slowing. World oil prices remain high. Toyota is expected to claim GM's long-held spot as the world's Number One automaker. The American dollar is soft against major world currencies. Credit is getting tighter after the sub-prime debacle. The Summer Olympic Games will be held in Beijing. Yes, it should be an interesting year, but there are a few areas that a marketer should pay special attention to since they will have a dynamic impact on marketing strategy moving forward. These include:

1. The privacy issue - The assault on privacy has been both overt (opt-in/opt-out programs); covert (Patriot Act; data collection such as from cookies without the expressed prior approval of the consumer) over the past few years and criminal (ID theft, mishandled, stolen or lost consumer data occuring both in the public and private sectors. Marketing Implication: The Do-Not-Call List will be followed by Do-Not-Email, Do-Not-Mail, and Do-Not-Text lists, etc, etc.. Opt-in programs will become the norm. It will be more difficult in the future to get consumers to provide confidential information and there will be more government oversight due to consumer backlash. Search engines and other web sites will be required to get a consumer's prior approval to collect data from personal searches, browsing/surfing, etc. Bottom line: Advantage to the consumer.


2. The copyright issue - As this article is written, there is a prolonged writer's strike that has put the brakes on many productions in Hollywood. The main sticking point? Writers want a piece of the revenue derived from new channels of distribution of their work, e.g. the internet, mobile, podcasts, etc. Video-sharing sites, like YouTube, are the targets of litigation regarding copyright infringement with the copyright owners demanding either compensation or removal of their protected material. Other owners of copyrighted material such as magazines, newspapers, book publishers, etc. are seeking financial remedies for the unauthorized use of their content by third parties. Marketing implication: The free ride is over for those financially benefitting from using unauthorized copyrighted content. It is the distributor of the content who must either pay or do without. This includes search engines, audio & video sharing sites, etc. Bottom line: Look for a change in current business models.


3. Great ideas will cut through media clutter - Media channels have proliferated and will continue to do so as newer channels, like mobile, find their critical mass audience. Consumers, using new technology, are now determining their own individual media consumption patterns. In this world of uber-choice and uber-noise, great creativity is the key factor in cutting through the clutter. Marketing implication: Great ideas will be the most valuable marketing currency for a brand. Bottom Line: If your marketing is very, very, very good, it's not going to be good enough. It must be great, driven by world-class creativity.

JibJab's Musical Tribute To The Year 2007

In 2007 | Funny Jokes at JibJab