Tag Archives: Nielson

QR codes & the unsung usefulness of ‘Bounce Rate’

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I made this QR code in about 5 seconds. The barrier to creation is low - which is a blessing and a curse.

They’re popping up everywhere. To the design purist who balked at having to include a URL (with the ‘www’ no less) in a print ad or video super ten years ago, these new and rather ugly QR codes and their peer badges must add more insult to aesthetic injury.

Worse, the QR codes I’ve experimented with have consistently yielded a disappointing user experience. This has less to do with the codes themselves than with their rather unimaginative use. While I’ve found several accounts online of clever uses of QR codes, most of the ones I’ve bothered with personally have simply directed me to a website for the bodycopy of the sales pitch.

As QR codes become more common it might be worth stopping a minute before you slap one on your next communications piece. The novelty value will be fleeting as so much is in our culture today.

I was surprised to learn that QR codes have been around since 1994. Of course what’s been missing all this time is a portable reader in every hand. Now, with U.S. smartphone penetration at about 31%, the ROI on QR code initiatives might make them worth employing – especially if you’re targeting minorities who index much higher than anglos in terms of smart phone use (interesting eh?).

(It’s also interesting to note here that at 31%, smart phone penetration has some ground to gain if its to make Nielson’s 50% estimate for close of 2011. Granted, growth is about 60%/year in the category. It will be worth watching whether actual use meets Nielson’s 2009 prediction on 12/31/11.)

As it turns out, making QR codes is pretty easy. Maybe that’s part of the problem. When everyone can do it, you get the YouTube effect – a lot of noise to sift through before you find the really good stuff. I created the QR code in this blog post myself. It points to my LinkedIn page. Because they’re so easy to make, I’m not surprised that they’re appearing more frequently now. They’re also something ‘new’ (despite the 1994 birthyear) for marketers to foist upon their constituencies. I see them in magazine ads, on transit posters, even on videos. I do have to wonder though, how well they’re working – for both the communicator and the person standing there with the smartphone in their hand.

There’s a little labor on the smartphone owner’s part, right? In addition to downloading a QR code reader, you have to be interested enough in a premise to whip out your phone in the middle of the street, call up the app, focus on the code to scan it and then settle in while the 3G connection chugs along loading the website or message in a fairly small screen which in turn usually requires some zooming to read.

If the result of that effort is just a website and sales pitch, well, I’d be disappointed. Wouldn’t you?

So where am I going with this? Well, I suppose my biggest point is that just because the codes can be created, and just because 1-in-3 people can download a reader and decipher them, doesn’t mean 1) you should use them and 2) people will bother with your code. Like every other digital shiny object that comes down the line to rescue marketers from being stuck with the conventional stuff, QR codes aren’t the point but are rather the process of getting to the point.

That’s very important to keep in mind.

Simply getting someone to scan your QR code isn’t in and of itself a communications victory. The barrier to leave is far lower than the barrier to entry in the case of QR codes. Unlike clicking web links, scanning QR codes takes time and effort. Disappointment on the other end of this more significant effort feels like betrayal or at least having one’s time wasted. Those are strong emotions. Emotions you probably don’t want associated with your brand, product, service or what have you.

As I write this, it dawns on me that perhaps one of the more under-discussed metrics in the digital space, but one that is very important in measuring ‘engagement’ in digital communucations, is the bounce rate. It’s fun to count inbound traffic coming to a site.  How about those session lengths though? Is 1 min. really ‘engagement’. And what about depth? If someone only goes a page into your site what does that say about that long session time? (Either they’re slow readers or the browser is loaded but no one is looking.) And a high bounce, especially if combined with a short session time, probably means your message , including your QR code (or other inbound traffic mechanism) – has missed the mark in terms of the value its delivering to your customer.

Proportionally speaking, it takes a marketing firm far less effort to add a QR code to a communications piece than it does the single user to go through the work of deciphering it. You’ll want to be sure all the dots are connected and that your message is on point and delivers a fair value exchange for your customer’s time.

Anything else is misalignment.

The Internet Video Paradigm Drift

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The chart above presents some pretty interesting information on the state of TV in the emerging world of Internet video. It’s not surprising that sexy new devices like tablet computers capture all the headlines. What is surprising is just how wide the gap is between old-school TV and newer video-viewing technologies.

Here’s my row-by-row take on what this all means.

  • Traditional TV – This fits other studies I’ve seen which say we U.S. citizen watch about 5.5 hours of TV per day.  It is, however interesting to note that teenagers watch about half as much TV and their grandparents.
  • Timeshifted TV – So much for TiVo killing the TV advertising business eh? On the more generous end TiVo’d programs only get 1/10th of our total time. People still live by the networks’ schedules it seems, even though they don’t have to. That’s an interesting behavior. It would be nice to know more about why people act this way. That or perhaps part of the pleasure of TV time is just sitting down and surfing through 200 channels.Maybe that’s an a end unto itself.
  • Using the Internet – This one staggered me frankly. Compared to TV viewing rates, Internet use gets a pretty small allotment. Keep in mind, thats hours per week on average and it extensibly includes all that Facebooking, Tweeting, blogging, and user generated content making we’re all supposedly doing all the time now.The heaviest Internet users, 35-49 year olds, log only 6.5 hours per week on average (and one assumes that includes while at work). That’s a little over 1/5th the amount of old-school TV watched.
  • Internet Video – Here comes the tech-geek buzzkill. Look at those numbers. And that’s per week again. For TV programmers that means all those 22min. sitcoms you’re worried YouTube is airing for free… they aren’t being watched all that often – at least not in their entirety. Internet video watching is all about short-format programming, even with those iPads that supposedly make it convenient to curl up on the couch and watch a TV show in full.
  • Mobile Video – This is snippet city to the extreme. Clearly teens – with time to kill – are the most voracious users by a long shot. At twenty-one min. per month though, that’s about 7-10 short videos every 30 days. That’s useful to know of course, but its hardly a generation moving away from TV (which they still watch for 23 hours/week) to watching everything on their phones. Equally interesting, the next biggest enclave is late 20-somethings and they watch less than half of what the teens watch on their mobile devices.

Conclusions.

Certainly you can draw your conclusions. If you follow this blog, you know I’m driving at my philosophy of Now Not New which I have written about multiple times. I’m also continually reminded by these types of studies, that despite headlines calling for zero-sum urgency, change happens in a slower paradigm drift. It’s simply not as fast as the headlines proclaim and I believe the media and technology industries lose sight of this reality frequently in their prognostications about the future. That’s not to say we can all bury our heads in the sand. There is, however, time to think about these issues, how they effect your business and life, and the develop a reasoned plan to attending to them. In fact, when you think about paradigm drift, its really inexcusable for an industry to be ‘caught by surprise’ because these changes don’t happen overnight, or even over the course of a year or two. They take years to achieve any sort of critical mass.

What I am most curious about though is how the younger demographics’ media habits will change as they pass into different life stages. When they graduate from high school and then college and eventually find themselves at desks with mortgages and children to support, will they find solace by dropping down in front of the TV to casually surf through whatever’s on? Statistically speaking they do right already if you consider that 18 year olds spend 8x times watching TV as futzing online. That we may need this ‘down time’, even if technology gives us more productive ways to use our ‘cognitive surplus’, is an interesting premise. On an instinctual level, I think there is some merit to the idea that cognitive surplus or no, we need vegge-out down time too.

Certainly mobile devices and tablet-style media players will play an increasing role in a number of people’s lives. Such is the march of technology. However, those saying the world is changing overnight and that iPads will revolutionize computing in a year or two should give charts like the above serious consideration. Broadband was supposed to turn the Internet into a TV when it became widespread. A good ten years into the Cable Modem era and most video is still watched on TV. Is that because the right device still hasn’t come along?

I’m guessing there is something about the experience of watching TV – something that has nothing to do with the screen, the pipe or the content but rather with the experience of dialing-down and tuning-out – that will stick around because we humans need it.

That is a strategically relevant piece of information to anyone working in the media business.

Word of Finger: Persuasion & the Science of Marketing.

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Amazon has its reviews. YouTube has its star system. Sites across the web invite people to comment, rate and review products, content and even each other. A whole other batch of people make decisions on these ratings. Does this seem unusual to anyone else?

Think about it. No one vets the people making these reviews. They could be anyone. Yet when twenty-five people give an Amazon book 5 stars we’re inclined to believe it must be a good book. Why? Are these people at all qualified to rate a book? They might be professors of literature, sure. They might also be brain-dead dropouts. Or worse (and in high probability), they might be friends of the author signing on to plug the book without having even read it. You just don’t know.

But a book is a $15 purchase; even if you buy it and dislike it, no real harm is done. However, this isn’t just happening in the small-ticket category. It happens among ‘considered purchases’ too – electronics, even cars. Again and again we allow perfect strangers, people we know nothing about, to influence our purchase decisions. It’s one thing to say I won’t trust the advertiser because they’re going to spin the story – of course they are. It’s another to go 180º in the opposite direction and rely on a bunch of strangers who with minimal effort can register their whims on a comment board.

Consumer Reports used to be the resource for people looking for vetted, impartial reviews on products. I’m staggered that said company has not made more noise. This ‘trust a stranger’ social media world  is a perfect environment for Consumer Reports to demonstrate its value and become a superbrand. Why they aren’t more vocal is beyond me.

Recently, WIRED magazine’s Jargon Watch introduced me to the term Word of Finger. It’s meant to differentiate social-media style buzz from true word of mouth though I think WIRED missed an opportunity in its definition.

Word of Mouth traditionally has implied dialog (and not necessarily orally, despite the term). This in turn implies the people probably know (at least something about) each other. Historically we don’t express our opinions to strangers unless we’re professionals paid to do so. Word of Finger, as I see it, recognizes the nuance that some social media actions are indeed between strangers. In this sense I would argue Word of Finger isn’t as valuable as Word of Mouth even though the former travels faster and has a broader reach than the latter owing to the dynamics of (true) friend networks vs. simply connected networks of individuals.

In this sense Facebook would be Word of Mouth – even though you actually enter the information with your fingers. Amazon’s comments panel is Word of Finger for most people (unless you happen to know one of the commentators). With the former, you know the people and can gauge whether they have any valid capacity to review a topic. With the latter you have no clue who they are, what they know or if they’re in any way qualified to make a judgement call on the topic at hand. Common sense would dictate that the Word of Mouth references have higher persuasive capacity than the Word of Finger. But is this so? I find scant information on the matter. This post on a Nielson blog was as close as I got. Witness the following chart:

What is surprising to me is not that people don’t really trust commercial advertising (duh.) but that absolute strangers have such a high level of trust. It’s worth noting here though that this is a measure of trust and not persuasion – an important difference. I may trust that you actually believed a certain product was great but whether that’s enough it make me buy it myself is another matter.

To date, most of the social media measurability I have seen is tied much more to reach and awareness issues. I would argue that this is because marketing people, and especially new media marketing people are firmly focused on a technological aspects of what they do. Geeks get a rise out of the idea that Facebook is getting as big as China. A nifty statistic for sure, but for most practical business purposes somewhat meaningless.

I also believe that the discourse around social media has largely been focused on how it displaces traditional media. This has had the effect of funneling the thinking around social media into comparative dynamic which tends to force old categories to the surface. I would even go so far as to say the applications of social media have been largely focused on satisfying the same needs as traditional media – awareness, recall, exposure, impressions. This latter is probably the industry’s way of adhering to the principle of apperception.

Today’s social media industry is an art-meets-math world of stat reporting which offers click paths and session times with little sense of how these are correlated to persuasion or drive. Yet the difference between Word of Mouth and Word of Finger is at least 20% according to Nielson above and I would bet, figuring for persuasion as defined by actually acting/buying/changing behavior, that Word of Mouth (among true friends) delivers added value still.

Persuasion has always been the achilles heel of marketing and advertising in terms of metrics. Since the day ‘www’ appeared in browser windows, we have all promised more measurability, yet surprisingly little ground has been gained in measuring persuasion. We tend to now, as we did two decades ago, measure awareness and exposure because frankly, they’re the easiest measurements to make – especially online with server logs.

The bad news is, while social media can provide awareness and exposure they in fact do it less well than old media did; requiring more in both resources and attentiveness. It was much easier to buy TV time in the 1980′s and just run a campaign than it is to orchestrate a social media campaign across the splintered media landscape.

The original book Positioning written by Jack Trout and Al Ries made healthful mention of psychology, a key science in the understanding or persuasion which in turn is central to the objective of marketing. The newer edition (still over a decade old) embellished upon this even further going so far as to stipulate that a mind that is made up is very hard to change. (Think about the implication of that for a minute brand people.) Here are a few profound little tidbits:

“..short-term memory appears to be more auditory than visual, whereas longterm memory can be both.”

“Material learned while one is happy is better recalled when one is happy, and material learned while one is sad is better recalled when one is sad.”

“Minds tends to be emotional, not rational.”

“In order to change an attitude, then, it is presumably necessary to modify the information on which that attitude rests. It is generally necessary, therefore, to change a person’s beliefs, eliminate old beliefs, or introduce new beliefs.”

“Too many advertisements try to entertain or be clever. The Starch research people can demonstrate that headlines that contain news score better in readership than those that don’t.”

“We tend to think of boredom as arising from lack of stimuli. But more and more commonly, boredom is arising from excessive stimulation or information overload.”

It’s amazing to me what happens when you step outside of one industry and its lexicon (for example, marketing) and look at the dynamics from the perspective of another industry and its lexicon (pyschology in this case).

Related to this is the interesting if controversial Transtheoretical model. Conceived to help psychologists help people make healthier choices, it nonetheless provides some interesting insights into the idea of readiness and persuasion that could be applied to other fields.

Yet except for the occasional article here and there or the tromping around of the rare psychologist hired by an agency as a brand planner, there isn’t a sense that marketing is conducted as a behavioral science.

Shouldn’t it be?

Shouldn’t we be spending as much time studying the nuances of Word of Mouth vs. Word of Finger as we do oohing and aahing about the ability to ‘check in’ at a local Dunkin Donut’s to get a coupon? Shouldn’t sociology, anthropology and psychology be departments within agency walls? Wouldn’t these skillets enable a keener understanding of what all these new media opportunities truly afford us?

The Virtue of Small Marketing

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The Te of Piglet is a book that came out over a decade ago. It is about the virtue of smallness featured in Taoist philosophy. Smallness in the West gets a mixed reception. For the most part, we are a culture focused on largeness. Until only recently, American ideals included large homes, large cars, large portfolio valuations and living ‘larger than life.’

Similarly, the consumer marketplace has also been dominated by largeness. We’re offered ‘20% more free’ in repackaged detergents. We super size our meals for added ‘value’. We have ‘big box’ stores. And of course we like our engines large, our power tools large, our plasma screens large… just about everything (except the credit card statements).

XXL to S
But all of that seems to be changing now. Recessions are famous for reducing our collective appetites, shrinking our portions (and portfolio values) and getting us ‘back to basics’. But the trend has historically been cyclical with largeness coming back en vogue as soon as the economic purging eases sufficiently. It’s funny, we aren’t really good at staying ‘right sized’ for long.

This time though, it might be different – especially in consumer marketing. Here’s why:

In terms of media, consumer markets and meaningful connections, things are trending smaller.

Begin with the well-documented fragmentation of media. Sure we have the occasional viral video that gathers millions of viewers or an annual spectacle like the Superbowl to aggregate millions of couch potatoes. But generally speaking most media channels and content providers are targeting smaller groups, not larger. The number of truly mass media and mass cultural moments in our day-to-day lives is shrinking as people scatter across the expansive array of media options.

(Not incidentally, our attention span is getting smaller because of all this.)

Next up, consumer markets themselves are getting smaller. With product customization becoming easier, and individual consumers demanding greater levels of catering to their own needs, it’s getting a lot harder to say, ‘Our target group is males 18-49’ with a straight face. Even the formerly ‘niche’ groups like ‘extreme sports enthusiasts’ are splintering into subsets. This constant fragmentation is being enabled by digital media and its ability to empower people to control 100% of their personal programming. Digital media also conveniently accommodate the growing mandate for customized content; whatever one person is looking for, someone else is making. If not, said person has the tools and means to make it himself.

Then there are meaningful connections – the holy grail of marketing. I came up in the marketing business and have watched the TV-centric, Nielson-focused, broadcast paradigm reluctantly shift to share space with new media, new metrics and newly empowered consumers who don’t just take what’s thrust upon them by the ivory towers of old-world content creation.

Instead of eyeballs and impressions marketing lingo is moving toward engagements, experiences and relationships.

Doing The Little Things Well
It is at the intersection of smaller markets and smaller media channels that smaller connections can make a big difference. And it is here that the virtues of small marketing can be found. Businesses that succeed today do so not through superior advertising or stellar promotions or incredible events. Though these can all contribute, stellar businesses today focus on doing the little things well. It is these seemingly small details that make a company stand out in a world of hyperbolic overpromise and underdelivery.

Often these ‘little things’ are the afterthoughts of the old world advertising hierarchy. They are the customer service representative’s training. They are clearly designed and well-used receipts or deposit slips. They are a package so well thought out that it contributes to the positive emotions around a purchase.

Would the iPhone be as enjoyable a purchase if it came in a crappy blow-molded plastic package? Hell, Apple is so good at details, even their replacement adapter is packaged artfully (taking some of the sting out of shelling out eighty balloons to replace something that maybe shouldn’t have broken in the first place). And the owners manual for an iPod shuffle is a single card – the embodiment of user-friendly simplicity.

Starbuck’s decline began when they over expanded. Symptomatically, they pulled out the hand-operated espresso machines and replaced them with the automated devices designed to handle larger volume. The result was a less remarkable experience. Suddenly Dunkin Donuts and McDonald’s could get into the game. And they have, much to Starbucks dismay.

In fact, just today I got a birthday gift from a co-worker. It’s a workout shirt by a company I’d never heard of, called Atayne (their Facebook page is here.) In addition to making their product out of 100% recycled plastic, they’ve attended to little details that make an already great product even more remarkable.

In ordering my shirt, my friend had to call to rush delivery as the start-up company didn’t offer express shipping online. She offered to put the cost on her credit card and in response the phone rep said, “It’s on us, just spread the word.” And she did. (And so am I, right now.)

So attuned are these guys to the ‘little things’ that even the clothing tag furthered the company’s green credentials. The tag actually has wildflower seeds pressed into the recycled paper it is made of. The copy on the tag encourages runners to do ‘guerilla gardening’ – that is while out on a run to dig a hole, bury the tag, water it, and wait for wildflowers to grow.

Atayne understands their audience which is the secret to doing small things well. Those actionable insights into a consumer group lead to levels of understanding which can be woven (pun intented) into a powerful message.

In addition to understanding my need as a runner (for wicking fabric), Atayne embodies my desire to be greener. But the real insight comes from how. That tag appeals to my inner rabble rouser by encouraging random acts of greenness. This is an emotional connection with the kind of positive rebellion that resonates with a Gen X fellow like myself. Combined with a civil sales rep and the free express shipping my perception of Atayne is of one cool company.

Given the choice between Champion or Nike or Fila, I would look to Atayne first. While other brands spend millions on advertising and highly flashy websites, these guys won my heart with a good phone rep and a clever clothing tag (not to mention a great product).

Big Ideas vs. Small Differences
In the advertising industry it used to be that the ‘general agency’ (read the people doing the TV commercials) defined the campaign by a ‘big idea’, which was then repurposed by all the ‘below the line’ agencies (direct, promotion, interactive). This created not a little resentment from the below the line shops who always felt they were doing the unglamorous work while the TV guys were doing the fun, big idea, creative stuff.

That’s changed in some agencies and not as much in others. In addition, the digital/social media world has turned the outside-in means of marketing on its head. Today those small, seemingly incidental elements are becoming increasingly important. A good package or deposit slip or in-flight video or user manual often makes the difference between a satisfying experience a remarkable one.

That matters because it’s the remarkable experiences that create word-of-mouth buzz which, amplified across social media, is now the dominant marketing channel of our time. For example, Atayne in spending $10 to help my friend ship that shirt, now has access, through me, to my entire network. Not only will I mention Atayne to my athletic friends, but I’m also blogging about it and will be wearing their shirt and message. Not a bad score for a couple of sawbacks.

In an advertising-saturated world, products recommended by a trusted friend can almost be assured strong consideration, if not purchase. Conversely, a product featured in a funny, six-figure-plus TV commercial may not even be remembered beyond the comedy. (“Who were the guys who did that funny commercial about the hamster cannon?”)

Then there’s the whole matter of authenticity. Let’s say your big money ad campaign actually drives customers to your door. If upon getting there the experience is just average, or worse, negative, then all that money was poorly spent. If, on the other hand, the experience was exceptional, then that advertising investment will pay greater dividends.

The problem with starting at the ‘big idea’ TV commercial is that the details that pay off that idea aren’t usually in place. But if the ideas are in place first, and the little things are attended to, then the big bucks being spent in media work harder.

As companies wrestle with shrinking budgets and splintering media and the challenges of our age, they should look at the small things that accumulate to create a remarkable customer experience worth talking about. Those ‘below the line’ materials just might make the bigger contribution to raising your sales.