Advertising Is A Poison -And We're Hooked On It

This article is by George Monbiot and appeared on The Guardia

We think we know who the enemies are: banks, big business, lobbyists, the politicians who exist to appease them. But somehow the sector which stitches this system of hypercapitalism together gets overlooked. That seems strange when you consider how pervasive it is. In fact you can probably see it right now. It is everywhere, yet we see without seeing, without understanding the role that it plays in our lives.

I am talking about the industry whose output frames this column and pays for it: advertising. For obvious reasons, it is seldom confronted by either the newspapers or the broadcasters.

The problem was laid out by Rory Sutherland when president of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. Marketing, he argued, is either ineffectual or it "raises enormous ethical questions every day". With admirable if disturbing candour he concluded that "I would rather be thought of as evil than useless." A new report by the Public Interest Research Centre and WWF opens up the discussion he appears to invite. Think of Me as Evil? asks the ethical questions that most of the media ignore.

Advertising claims to enhance our choice, but it offers us little choice about whether we see and hear it, and ever less choice about whether we respond to it. Since Edward Bernays began to apply the findings of his uncle Sigmund Freud, advertisers have been developing sophisticated means of overcoming our defences. In public they insist that if we become informed consumers and school our children in media literacy we have nothing to fear from their attempts at persuasion. In private they employ neurobiologists to find ingenious methods of bypassing the conscious mind.

Pervasiveness and repetition act like a battering ram against our minds. The first time we see an advertisement, we are likely to be aware of what it's telling us and what it is encouraging us to buy. From then on, we process it passively, absorbing its imagery and messages without contesting them, as we are no longer fully switched on. Brands and memes then become linked in ways our conscious minds fail to detect. As a report by the progressive thinktank Compass explains, the messages used by advertisers are designed to trigger emotional rather than rational responses. The low-attention processing model developed by Robert Heath at the University of Bath shows how, in a crowded advertising market, passive and implicit learning become the key drivers of emotional attachment. They are particularly powerful among children, as the prefrontal cortex – which helps us to interpret and analyse what we see – is not yet fully developed.

Advertising agencies build on this knowledge to minimise opportunities for the rational mind to intervene in choice. The research company TwoMinds, which has worked for Betfair, the drinks company Diageo, Mars, Nationwide and Waitrose, works to "uncover a layer of behavioural drivers that have previously remained elusive". New developments in neurobiology have allowed it to home in on "intuitive judgments" that "are made instantaneously and with little or no apparent conscious effort on the part of consumers – at point of purchase".

The power and pervasiveness of advertising helps to explain, I believe, the remarkable figure I stumbled across last week while reading the latest government spreadsheet on household spending. Households in the UK put an average of just £5.70 a week, or £296 a year, into savings and investments. Academic research suggests a link between advertising and both consumer debt and the number of hours we work. People who watch a lot of advertisements appear to save less, spend more and use more of their time working to meet their rising material aspirations. All three outcomes can have terrible impacts on family life. They also change the character of the nation. Burdened by debt, without savings, we are less free, less resilient, less able to stand up to those who bully us.

Invention is the mother of necessity. To keep their markets growing, companies must keep persuading us that we have unmet needs. In other words, they must encourage us to become dissatisfied with what we have. To be sexy, beautiful, happy, relaxed, we must buy their products. They shove us on to the hedonic treadmill, on which we must run ever faster to escape a growing sense of inadequacy.

The problem this causes was identified almost 300 years ago. In Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, the hero remarks: "It put me to reflecting, how little repining there would be among mankind, at any condition of life, if people would rather compare their condition with those that are worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complainings." Advertising encourages us to compare ourselves with those we perceive to be better off. It persuades us to trash our happiness and trash the biosphere to answer a craving it exists to perpetuate.

But perhaps the most important impact explored by Think of Me As Evil? is the one we discuss the least: the effect it has on our values. Our social identity is shaped by values which psychologists label as either extrinsic or intrinsic. People with a strong set of intrinsic values place most weight on their relationships with family, friends and community. They have a sense of self-acceptance and a concern for other people and the environment. People with largely extrinsic values are driven by a desire for status, wealth and power over others. They tend to be image-conscious, to have a strong desire to conform to social norms and to possess less concern for other people or the planet. They are also more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression and to report low levels of satisfaction with their lives.

We are not born with our values: they are embedded and normalised by the messages we receive from our social environment. Most advertising appeals to and reinforces extrinsic values. It doesn't matter what the product is: by celebrating image, beauty, wealth, power and status, it helps create an environment that shifts our value system. Some adverts appear to promote intrinsic values, associating their products with family life and strong communities. But they also create the impression that these values can be purchased, which demeans and undermines them. Even love is commingled with material aspiration, and those worthy of this love mostly conform to a narrow conception of beauty, lending greater weight to the importance of image.

I detest this poison, but I also recognise that I am becoming more dependent on it. As sales of print editions decline, newspapers lean even more heavily on advertising. Nor is the problem confined to the commercial media. Even those who write only for their own websites rely on search engines, platforms and programs ultimately funded by advertising. We're hooked on a drug that is destroying society. As with all addictions, the first step is to admit to it.

7 Things to Do When the Media Gets it Wrong

It’s one of the most asked questions in media training sessions: “Should I ever freeze a reporter out?”

When I hear that, says Brad Phillips president of Phillips Media Relations, I immediately think of a scene out of The Godfather or Fatal Attraction, complete with horse’s heads and boiled bunnies. I imagine my clients suddenly appearing as caped crusaders, known by names like, “The Wronged Spokespersons,” who exact their revenge on unfair journalists by “rubbing them out.” But freezing out a reporter is a dramatic step, and it often backfires. After all, don’t you think a company is guilty when a newscaster says, “We contacted representatives from the Huge Corporation, and they refused to return our calls?”

So, before making a decision to blacklist a reporter, here are some remedies that may solve your problem:

1. Show it to a neutral party. It’s an age-old truth: The closer you are to a news story, the more likely it is you will think it’s a negative story. Ask neutral parties to read, listen to, or watch the story and give you their views. Often, you will be surprised to find that the message you hoped would get through to the audience got through.

2. Talk to the reporter. Remember, reporters need access to sources to do their jobs, and good reporters are willing to hear their sources’ objections to a story (they may not agree with you, but they usually listen). Call the reporter, and ask if he or she is on deadline—if so, ask to schedule a time to call back. When you speak, remain polite regardless of his or her response. You will get a better reaction to a discussion about objective factual errors than subjective differences of opinions.

3. Write a response. In print journalism, you almost always have forums available to you for a response, such as a letter-to-the-editor or op-ed. If it’s an option, use it. Don’t repeat the original errors in reporting, since it just gives those errors more airtime—just articulate your point of view.

4. Speak to the editor. If you’ve gotten nowhere with the reporter, it may be a good idea to raise your objection with the reporter’s boss to insure he or she is aware of your complaints. Who knows? Perhaps you’re the fourth person to complain about the same reporter in a week. There is a downside here: no one likes to be complained about, and the reporter may take it out on you through future news coverage.

5. Respond with statements only. If it has become abundantly clear to most independent observers that the news organization in question is irrevocably biased against you or your organization, you have two choices: cut off all access, or respond with precision. It is almost always recommend the latter option, which means sending a short written statement in response to a reporter’s query.

6. Cut off all access. The only time you would consider cutting off all access is when you can honestly say that there is nothing to be gained by speaking to the reporter. Those cases may exist, but they are rare. Most of the time, good media management means finding solutions to working with the press—not avoiding them altogether.

7. Use social media. Cutting off access doesn’t mean you stop communicating. Instead, use social media to continue communicating with your key audiences—through all available channels, including your company website and blog, and your corporate YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.

Should a Brand Use Social Media?

Should a brand be on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter? The answer depends on context. The phenomenon that is social media has meant that many brands or businesses want to leverage it – in many cases before they understand it. There’s a brilliant quote by Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist at Google that sums this eagerness up:

Social media is like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When it’s done, they’re surprised it’s not better.

As with any other medium, we don’t recommend you dive in head first without knowing your audience or what you want to achieve.

Take Twitter for example. It was founded in 2006 as a fun and casual way to share your thoughts with others around the world. But as one of the co-founders, Biz Stone, admitted in a recent interview with The Age (25/02/10), Twitter is no longer considered fun and casual, but has changed to being a real-time “information network for discovering and sharing information”.

People seek instant information and Twitter gives it to them. It broadcasts information succinctly and quickly to those interested in your brand.

Two brands that have been hugely successful using Twitter are Starbucks coffee and Dell computers. Why? Because they follow the basic principles of engaging with their fans:

1. Understand the environment
Twitter is about contributing. It’s about being part of a whole. It’s an extension of one’s own brand. So don’t expect the majority of followers to interact with you. A 2009 study by Heil & Piskorski showed that 90% of the content is generated by 10% of users, but that does not mean that the majority aren’t listening or letting others know.

2. Add a return for investment
Dell computers have used Twitter to offer their followers exclusive offers and have reportedly generated US$6.5 million in sales as a result. Both Starbucks and Dell also listen to their followers about how they can improve their products and customer experience.

3. Dedicate resources
Twitter is a real-time broadcaster of information, so if you are receiving customer feedback, positive or negative, you must be able to respond promptly to be seen as credible. Again, the two examples here do a brilliant job.

Which brings us back to the question – should a brand use social media?
Yes, if it fits a strategy to expand the brand online, to get people talking about the brand, generate awareness, seek out ideas and look for opportunities to improve customer support.
No, if there aren’t enough resources to dedicate or if the commitment to the network isn’t genuine.

How To Get Consumers To Buy Your Product After Looking At The Print Ad

It may be tempting to use attention-grabbing visuals in your print ads, but research shows that if you go too far, as Budweiser did in this ad, readers will remember the visual and not the product

On average, readers only spend about 2 seconds looking at a print ad. Given the short amount of time you have to grab their attention says Francesca Pefianco, a marketing analyst, it’s important that any ad you create 1) grabs the reader’s attention, and 2) encourages them to buy your product or service.

Most print ads are composed of a strong visual, a headline, body copy and a logo or signature. But producing a great print ad isn’t as simple tossing these elements together. There are several do’s and don’ts that are essential to creating effective print ads:

DO:
Agree on your SMART goals. Your objective should be more than to simply “increase sales.” Get more specific with your goals, such as to “increase lunchtime store visits by 30% in 3 months” or “drive 15% more customers into our retail locations over the course of 60 days.” Specific goals are called SMART goals, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic and Timebound. Design your ad around SMART goals and be sure to hold yourself accountable to them.
Hook the reader within 2 seconds. On average, readers only spend 2 seconds looking at a print ad. It’s important to use visuals and headlines that cause the reader to stop and look at your ad. Headlines that evoke an emotion from the reader are more likely to catch the reader’s attention. Using white space and bullet points in an ad have both proven to stop readers in their tracks and produce a higher response rate as well.
Use high-impact visuals. In the 2 seconds a reader takes to look at your ad, 1.5 seconds are dedicated to visuals while only 0.5 seconds are spent looking at your copy. Use bright, clear images to promote your product. Research shows that people recall photographs 26% more than artwork and are more likely to look at an ad where the subject’s eyes are looking directly at you. That said, your visuals should always support the concept of the product or service you’re selling. Using attention-grabbing visuals just so you can stand out can have a negative impact on your brand.
Put strategy before creativity. Many advertisers sacrifice targeted content for witty or appealing messages. Even if it would be interesting to use a cartoon to advertise your product, would that really be appropriate in an ad about fine jewelry? Think about where your ad will be printed as well. The message you might want to use to sell your orange juice will be different in a local newspaper than it would be in a specialty magazine.

DON’T :
Don’t stuff your ad with too much information. Less really is more. Too much copy or too many images can actually cause the reader to skip the ad because they feel overwhelmed. In most cases, brand-oriented ads should only use one or two images, have a one-sentence headline and keep the copy to four sentences or less. (There are exceptions to this rule such as when you’re running a promotional/retail ad. But if you’re running a branding ad, it’s a good idea to keep your ad clean and uncluttered.)
Don’t force unrelated connections. It may be tempting to use a funny visual of a baby with food all over its face in your ad, but if your ad is for a new desktop computer, the audience might not make the connection. Worse yet, research indicates that when an association in an ad isn’t clear, the audience will forget about the product and simply remember the funny visual — in this case, the baby with food all over its face.
Don’t create negative associations. You might think its clever to compare your energy drink to a cheetah, but the second you mention that a cheetah hunts and kills its prey, the audience automatically applies that association to your product. It’s difficult to avoid some negative associations when using analogies in your messaging, but think through all of the possibilities before printing your ad. In the same vein, try to forgo offensive or stereotypical associations in your message. What may be funny to one person might enrage another and forever damage your brand image.
Don’t let your brand disappear. It’s not unusual for a brand to disappear in a print ad. When the integration is stretched or when your logo and signature are not prominently displayed, people can forget what product an ad was about entirely. Be sure to place your brand’s logo at a readable size in one of the corners of your advertisement.
When crafting a print ad, compose your elements in a way that’s eye-catching, creative, thought-provoking and positive. Be sure to avoid clutter, negative association and bad integration. Print ads are still a prominent form of advertising and can be an incredible tool for your marketing when done correctly and effectively, so use these tips as guidelines the next time you create an ad for your product or service.

5 Tips on Crowdsourcing Content for Marketing

Content is an essential vehicle for corporate storytelling, attracting and engaging customers to buy, Lee Odden blogs. Organizations are beginning to get that, but struggle with content sourcing and how to scale. Besides hiring an editorial staff complete with corporate journalists, one of the most valuable sources of content for online marketing comes from your brand’s community.

Tapping in to what customers care about related to your products /services and what your brand stands for can be a gold mine of meaningful content. Here are 5 of those tips with some additional commentary based on discussions with audience members at a recent SES San Francisco conference:

Interviews. Raising questions is one of the most basic ways to crowdsource content. The method to employ depends on the desired outcome. Asking the community for suggestions of whom to interview and what questions to ask is a great way to get people involved. Interviewing industry thought leaders provides the brand’s audience with unique content and creates a positive association between the “brandividual” and the company.
Example: Tapping multiple industry thought leaders for their definition of “content curation” for a blog post that received substantial distribution and return visits.

Social Q&A. Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn, and sites like Quora can provide very useful platforms to present questions and attract answers from a variety of people. Of course, your intent needs to be clear and permission for reuse should be obtained before republishing. Those familiar with the Q&A communities can word questions to attract replies from specific influentials who might not otherwise respond to a content participation pitch via email.
Example: Posting a question to LinkedIn related to the “shift in direct marketing budgets to digital“, that received great quality responses and over 30 comments on the post.

Contests Resulting in Content. Examples of contests in which consumers produce their own videos and share images abound on the social web. Search engines love any kind of content, especially text.
Example: In the past, Marketing Pilgrim ran a great contest for a search marketing scholarship. The articles written by contestants drive traffic to Andy’s website and also become content on it. To top it off, the articles were compiled into an e-book.

Comment Feedback Loop. One of the most meaningful ways for a community to engage with a brand is through comments on a company blog. Asking readers to participate in a dialogue by commenting can result in content that is better than the original blog post. Brands can then recognize blog commenters by drawing attention to the “best of” comments through a separate blog post or in a newsletter.
Example: See TopRank’s Online Marketing Newsletter for an example of this in action, where comments are curated into a section called, “What the Online Marketing Blog Community Has to Say”.

Book Authoring by Community. Reaching out to industry experts to share their insights as part of a larger project, such as a book in print or an eBook can be very effective.
Example: Author Michael Miller did this with Online Marketing Heroes, of which I was a part. He interviewed 25 successful marketers; the results of those interviews became the book published by Wiley. Numerous companies have connected with industry thought leaders for content and compiled the responses into an eBook. A good example is Jay Baer’s – Staggering Social Media Insights: The Best of the Twitter 20 eBook.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg for creative content crowdsourcing ideas. Each industry and community is different and with quality analysis and creative ideas, organizations can accomplish content creation objectives as well as better engaging and growing their social networks.

Have you overcome content creation and scaling issues by crowdsourcing? What creative content sourcing ideas have you implemented? Let us know by leaving a comment.

Social Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Does your business engage in social media? Then you must have a social CRM strategy: How can you integrate social collaboration functionality with your existing systems? How do you staff your SCRM efforts? How do you transition from listening to engaging in conversations, and which ones should you engage in? How do you get the results of those conversations into your CRM system? Start with understanding the following.

1- Google Is Your Friend
One of the great CRM questions is, "how do I find out where my customers are talking about me?" The big social media standard bearers -- Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn -- are obvious first thoughts, but often customers congregate on smaller sites that are more narrowly focused on their vertical markets or their unique interests.

Discovering these rich niches of often-intense conversation could prove far more lucrative than relentlessly panning in the waters of Facebook or Twitter for a nugget of discussion about your business. So how do you find these smaller, specialized channels? Do you need to throw significant cash at it? Is there a tool you can buy that will magically reveal these social media mother lodes?

You can surely blow a lot of dough on technology to find them, but before you do, make your task easy: plug in the name of your company, the names of your competitors, or keywords that pertain to your business into Google Search. It'll return results for those terms and, with a little digging, it should reveal many of the significant smaller social media channels where people are talking about you.

2- Make Sure To Show Up At Your Own Party
These days, online marketing pieces and company websites have lots of little Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media icons strewn about their landscapes inviting customers to click on them to friend, connect or subscribe to them. It's remarkably easy for designers to add them to their pages, and it's also remarkably easy for marketing managers and other executives to tell designers to add them to their pages.

Unfortunately, it's not quite so easy to recognize that when you plaster an icon on company content, you're making a commitment to be part of the conversation -- not just when the content is published, but for as long as that standing invitation is open to the public. If you're going to tell people to follow you on Twitter or Facebook, then you'd better be there for them.

Don't start inviting people to your Facebook or LinkedIn page or to follow you on Twitter unless you plan on having a real, ongoing presence there. And, for heaven's sake, don't invite them to a customer community of your creation if you don't have a genuine commitment to maintaining and participating in that community.

Engaging haphazardly is worse than not engaging in the first place, because it asks the customer to do something and then fails to honor that action. Customers get the same level of non-communication, even though they have actively done something extra to get it.

3- Once You Go Social There Ain’t No Coming Back
One of the terrifying things about social media is that it takes control of the company message away from designated spokespeople and distributes it around the company. Especially when people love their jobs, their blogs, tweets and status updates may be chock-full of information that the company may not want in the public sphere yet.

This isn't happening because employees all over the world have decided to maliciously divulge important material or to sabotage marketing efforts, said Greg Gunn, vice president of business development at HootSuite. It's happening because most companies don't bother to educate their employees about how they should talk about the business on social media.

So tell them. Unless you include them in the company's understanding of how social media should be used in discussing the business, don't be surprised if they say things you don't want them to say.

For example, for competitive reasons, it's not OK for the engineers at a software company to blog about new, revolutionary features before they are announced. Do they know that? And do they know the date when the project they're working on will be announced? If they do, then you could effectively multiply your marketing efforts, with your traditional marketing being supplemented by the blogs and tweets of your developers.

Here's a non-technology example: Marketing creates a new, official name for an incentive program, but the sales department fails to get the word, and the socially active people in sales continue to use the old name, creating confusion among the customers and, ultimately, the impression that internal chaos reigns inside your business. Did sales get the memo -- not just about the name change, but about how the program needed to be referred to in all circumstances, including on social media?

Companies need to realize that everyone in the business is potentially a source of company information in the social era. You must help them deliver a controlled and coherent message about your business, and that entails keeping everyone inside the company informed about marketing and messaging plans. It also means making them aware of the importance of bringing things they learn through their conversations back to the business when appropriate.

So make sure you have a sound strategy in place before jumping into social media. Make sure all your employees are aware of the dos and don’ts you have put in place. Most importantly, make sure your internal communications are clear and followed. If you have any questions let us know.

What You Can Learn From Apple To Market Your Store

The Apple store turned 10 this past May celebrating a spectacular and surprising success. Back in 2001 when the first two stores opened in Tysons Corner, Virginia and Glendale, California, it seemed like a crazy and desperate idea, writes Peter Gorenstein, financial blogger.

Critics asked, "why would a technology company like Apple open a brick and mortar store when the future of commerce is moving online?"

"Literally half the store is devoted to solutions because people don't just want to buy personal computers any more. They want to know what they can do with them," was Steve Jobs' answer, in a video presented at MacWorld just days before the first grand opening. Like so many of his decisions over the last decade Jobs was right.



Today, with its 300 stores across the country, and more than $9 billion in retail sales last year, Apple is arguably the most successful retailer on the planet based on sales per square foot, says Peter Gorenstein, finance writer.

According to a recent MacWorld article Jeweler Tiffany & Company's $2,700 per square foot used to be considered the gold standard, but Apple has surpassed Tiffany, generating more than $4,000 in sales per square foot. By comparison, Best Buy's sales per square foot is about $1,000, and Walmart's is about $400.

Apple has been able dominate at a time so many other retailers are struggling or have gone out of business, due in part to Apple's iPod, iPhone, iPad, Mac and iTunes offerings.
Remember Virgin, Tower, and all those independently owned music stores? You might, but your kids may not. They've been buying music on iTunes and using their iPods for as long as they can remember.

Many suspected electronics giant Best Buy would benefit when its top rival Circuit City went under. That hasn't happened. Best Buy has reported three straight quarters of declining same-store sales, including a 5.5% drop in U.S. stores in the last quarter.

Borders filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last winter but Barnes & Noble isn't likely to see an increase in business, what with Amazon and the iPad and all the tablet copycats popping up. Meanwhile, direct competitors like Microsoft and Dell have had little success with their retail stores. It's unlikely fans of either will be lining up outside their doors when the next version of Windows is released.

The lesson Apple offers is to give customers a chance to interact with your product, test it out and ask questions. Going to your store should be an experience for your customers regardless of the product you sell. The more time customers spend in your store, the more comfortable they will be with your product and the more likely they will be to buy.

Green PR

Ever wonder how much energy you use every time you google something? Of course you have, says Greg Menken, VP of Sustainability at Beckerman PR. Google reports that the energy used by the company (not your computer) per average search is about 1kJ (0.0003 kWh). To put this in perspective, Google says the CO2 emissions of a newspaper is the equivalent of 850 searches, that of a glass of orange juice, 1,050 searches, and so on. But multiply that 1kJ by hundreds of billions, and you need a lot of energy.

In response to growing scrutiny of such high energy use by the tech sector, many companies are looking to economize their data center operations, hoping to save cash, ease criticism, and win customers. While it is true that an online search is greener than a trip to the library, it is also true that many technology companies, and their data centers, have developed reputations as energy hogs. Reports indicate that data center electricity use more than doubled between 2000 and 2006, and is expected to double again by 2011, climbing to as much as 10% of all energy use in the U.S. by 2020.

According to Greenpeace, if considered as a country, global telecommunications and data centers would have ranked fifth in the world for energy use in 2007, behind the United States, China, Russia and Japan. Kent Garber of U.S. News and World Report says that with increasing concern about greenhouse gases, server farms are attracting the same kind of "furrowed-eyebrow" examination as other major energy users. Environmental groups are applying pressure on data center-heavy technology companies to make their data centers as green as possible. Even Congress ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to study private and federal data center energy usage.

As reported in Distributed Energy, the industry is trying to improve its energy consumption reputation. Eaton, a power management company to data centers, has recognized that its customers are increasingly demanding that their centers be designed with maximum energy efficiency. Fairly or not, "Data centers have gained such a reputation as energy hogs. That's not a good thing to have, PR-wise," says Ed Spears of Eaton.

Greenpeace v. Facebook is a good example. Whatever your opinion of Greenpeace, this year it launched a "Facebook loves coal" type of campaign to pressure the company to use renewables to power its new data centers. The group claims that 500,000 of its own Facebook friends engaged in the campaign. True, Mark Zuckerberg is no poorer, but the company has been forced to address the issue.

Partly in response to consumer interest in green, many companies are beginning to green-up their data center operations, often as part as an overall sustainability strategy. Yahoo's new data center near Buffalo, N.Y., for example, is designed to maximize air circulation (important for cooling) and will get energy from hydroelectric facilities. Microsoft is using retrofitted shipping containers to house servers at its new Chicago data center. The container architecture requires much less energy to cool the systems. HP, ranked among the most sustainable companies in the U.S., recently built a data center in the U.K. in a cold climate that uses outside air to reduce cooling costs.

More than good PR, these innovations are being driven by economics. According to Eaton, energy costs for cooling and operating a data center have gone from about 10% to as much as 60% of some companies' entire operating budgets. Microsoft saves 30% in operating costs at its Chicago center and HP's U.K. center saves the company $8 million a year -- critical cash flow in a down economy.

Whether it's PR or economics that drive green, both will continue to play an important role in the energy and environmental decisions that technology companies make. Says Bill Kosik of HP, "The business case for green could just as easily include increasing market share by taking an aggressive stance on minimizing the impact on the environment as it could include tactical upgrades to optimize energy use." Sustainability will always be driven first and foremost by economics but, as Kosik says, tech companies would be mistaken not to realize the PR and marketing value of sustainability as well.

Marketing to Multigenerational Audiences

A key to successful engagement in public relations is to provide meaningful content that also takes into account the evolving habits, preferences and values of today’s multiple audiences. One useful way to define those audiences is to understand how members of each group have been influenced by the era in which they were born and raised, and how their experiences growing up have shaped their view of the world says BurrellesLuce PR agency.

Identifying Generational Markers
While there is some debate as to the start and end dates of each generation, these are the generally accepted demarcations usually associated with each American age cohort:
* The Silent Generation or Traditionalists (born late-1920s through 1945)
* Baby Boomers (born 1946 through 1964)
* Gen-X (born 1965 through 1980)
* Gen-Y, or Millennials (born 1981 through 1993)
* Gen-Z, or Generation Next (born 1994 through 2004)

Winning Tactics for Communicating With Multigenerational Audiences Today
1. Understand your audience by demographic. Determining the gender, age, and other key characteristics of your core audience is the first step in building an effective campaign. By working with other departments within your organization, you should be able to construct a clear picture of your target market and be confident that you're proceeding in the right direction. Even a little research can go a long way when getting to know your audience.

2. Consider audience traits in shaping messages. Take, for instance, Gen-X and the ramification of communications via geo-location sites such as Foursquare—understanding the distinctive preferences and values of each group can help you form messages that are precisely aligned with each constituency.

3. Avoid unexamined assumptions about an audience’s preferred media channels. It’s risky to assume that all members of a generation would rather receive, say, an email instead of a phone call, even if their generation is perceived as preferring one over the other. Instead, begin to build your own library of research (including customer surveys and testimonials), which can be a more reliable guide to the preferences of your target audiences.

4. Identify the generations most responsive to calls to action. It may be that you are aiming a product promotion toward Gen-X, but it is really the Baby Boomers who are the most responsive. Rather than continue to push the brand on someone who isn't interested, recalibrate the campaign to focus on those who are listening and engaging.

5. Look beyond generalizations. While some Millenials, for example, seem to need more attention and praise than, say, members of the Silent Generation, there are always exceptions to the generalizations. Gen-Yer Kristin Piombino, editorial assistant for Ragan.com, challenges people to move beyond "millennial myths and stereotypes" in this article. "We don’t want you to treat us differently than anyone else in the office or look at us like we’re another species," she states. "We just want your respect, and a chance to prove ourselves."

Indeed, respect and being heard are really what any audience or person wants, regardless of generation or industry. You must truly listen to your audience and view your constituents as individuals with specific needs—and not just another set of data—to enhance the conversation and foster engagement with important communities across multi-generations.

Netflix Teaches a Valuable Lesson in Social Media Marketing

If you are a successful online movie streaming service with a DVD rental wing, are facing incredible pressures from competition and changing technologies and need to increase your prices and differentiate your service then it’s only natural that you will be using social media marketing with every breath, right? Well, umm…maybe not. This is a lesson Netflix simply forgot to take into account says online strategist David Amerland.

When Netflix decided to change its name to Qwikster not only did it lay itself open to just about every joke you can imagine concerning the company’s literacy but it also, it seems, forgot to trademark the name and did not check to see if the name was available in social media. The result of the oversight is nothing less than disastrous. Qwikster, is a handle already owned by a Twitter user who has a joint-smoking Elmo (the Sesame Street character) as his avatar. The account belongs to a student by the name of Jason Castillo, whose Tweets around recreational drugs, sex, games and music have a surreal, hypnotic quality all of their own and are a world apart from the mundane concerns surrounding the renting of DVDs or the streaming of movies.

Without a trademark on the name and with Jason Castillo actively posting, Twitter can do nothing to make him close his account or hand it over. Amusement aside, this illustrates first, that even a company like Netflix, which in many ways ‘gets’ the web, has not yet made social media marketing part of its DNA. Second, that the moment you take your eye off the ball and forget that we live in an age where social media is pervasive and capable of creating a massive boost or being an unforeseen hurdle, that’s when you are most likely to stumble.

Reed Hastings, Netflix’s CEO recently had to use Google’s social network, Google+ to apologize to Netflix users for the rise in Netflix prices and also explain why it was necessary and why the company had no option but to do it. He also posted an apologetic note on the Netflix blog. His opening confessional tone aside, it is clear that had there actually been thought put into social media as a valid means of communication from the very beginning, Netflix would now not be in hot water with its users nor would it be the butt of jokes concerning the pot-smoking Elmo’s Tweets.

Here are some lessons taught by Netflix’ social marketing faux pas:

1. Use the social media channel correctly. Social media is a communication channel first and foremost. Marketing on it is incidental and incremental, requiring a lot of effort for relatively little appreciable return. Communication however is instant.

2. Make communication with your public a core activity. Do not treat social media communication as something you bolt on as an afterthought. Social media is about creating transparency and a two-way conversation. Try to use it as a new form of Press Release and it is likely to explode in your face.

3. Create a dialogue. Does any company have a 100% grasp on its customers? They all work with a marketing persona in mind, yes they all have a certain demographic profile they operate with and yes, again, every company has some idea of the age-range and income of its core customers, but all of these figures make sense only when viewed from a distance. You’d be pressed to find a single person who precisely fits any demographic, marketing persona or even age-range income combination (though, it has to be said the latter is usually the ones which come closer because of their built-in imprecision). To suddenly have the ability to really talk to customers on a daily basis about what they like and dislike concerning your products and services is something which last century we could only dream about.

4. Be enthusiastic. Communicating like there is a gun being held to your head hardly makes for successful online communication in any channel. This is the real-time web! There are great opportunities to utilize social media correctly. Do it like you really care.

5. Respond to feedback. There is no point in saying you are listening if your behavior shows you are prepared to do nothing about it. You have to show what you are prepared to do and why when you take no action that is the right thing to do.

6. Show you are human. You may be corporate. You might be a one-man operation. You might, even, be part of a large conglomerate worth over $7 billion a year. If you are not prepared to put a human face to your communications, admit mistakes, explain faults and give well-reasoned arguments for everything, the only thing you’ll do is manage to alienate your customers.

Social media is still new. Communicating with customers is not. However, the latter has always been governed by what has been possible to communicate through the channels. We should expect many more mistakes to be made in the near future but as we learn from each one, the excuses for us getting our social media strategy wrong will at some point begin to wear a little thin.

6 Tips to Improve the Effectiveness of Your Banner Ads

When searching the web, you probably have come across your fair share of banner ads, most of which you don’t even notice and many you find intrusive or annoying. Can you recall the last banner ad that you saw? How about one you actually clicked on?

The average click through rate from banner advertising on the internet is 2.1%, says Brittney Smith, Marketing Analyst for the 60 Second Marketer. You want viewers to not only see the ad, but also to interact with it. In order to boost the effectiveness of your online advertising, take a look at these six tips to help get you the response you’re looking for:

1. Make it quick. Gaining the attention of the viewer occurs within the first few seconds they glance through the webpage. The message needs to be kept as simple and concise as possible. Shorter ads will be easier for the consumer to remember.

2. Location, Location. Your banner will fade into the background of the page if the message is not relevant to the audience viewing it. Targeted placements are crucial if you want to reach people who will be receptive to your message. Be selective where you buy ad space. A successful response does not include a 16-year-old boy clicking through on your banner ad directed towards mothers.

3. Intrigue your audience. Using simple animation can increase your response rates by 25%. Adding a bit of creativity to the ad can go a long way. If you have the proper resources available, consider using rich media, with sound and other special effects, to set your ads apart from the rest of the clutter. Make sure the animation or images are useful, not annoying, to consumers. “Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I’ll understand.”

4. Develop follow-through mechanism. If you are looking for a specific action from your users, be sure to create follow-through mechanisms that lead the consumer where you want them to go, whether that is the company’s homepage or a landing page specific to the banner.

5. Test your banner ad. The most important factor in the effectiveness of a banner ad is to test and optimize across several fronts. The performance of your banner ad can vary greatly from one design to another along with the size and placement within the website. Be sure to constantly monitor the ad once it has been placed.

6. Keep consistent with your campaign. Your banner ads should not simply be a one off, but be integrated with your overall marketing campaign. Banner ads need to support and tie in with your other marketing such as email and direct mail.

Banner ads can be a useful addition to your ad campaign, but a futile venture if they do not expose the brand to users or drive them to action. When creating banners, consider the users’ interests and what you want the end goal to be. The performance of your banner ad can always be improved through revision and if used properly can be an effective tool. Banner ads can offer a layer of interactivity to the consumer that they do not get from traditional media. Users can spend minutes interacting with these ads, so make each second count!

Minority Youth Media Consumption

Minority youth spend more than half their day consuming media content, a rate that's 4.5 hours greater than their white counterparts, according to a Northwestern University report. Television remains king among all youth, but among minorities who spend 13 hours per day consuming media of various types, electronic gadgets such as cell phones and iPods increasingly are the way such content gets delivered, the report found.

"Children, Media and Race: Media Use Among White, Black, Hispanic and Asian American Children" was touted by researchers as the first national study to focus exclusively on children's media use by race and ethnicity.

Minority youth media consumption rates outpace their white counterparts by two hours when it comes to TV and video viewership, approximately an hour for music, up to 1.5 hours for computer use, and 30 to 40 minutes for playing video games. In the past decade, the gap between minority and white youth's daily media use has doubled for blacks and quadrupled for Hispanics.

The study acknowledged that technology is a structural part of modern society but said the numbers suggest that young people are settling for a sedentary lifestyle and risk further exacerbating ongoing problems such as child obesity. Increased parental involvement, including limiting usage time and monitoring content, could mitigate those concerns.

The report analyzes by race data from the 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation Generation M2 study on media use among 2,000 8- to 18-year-olds and the foundation's 2006 Media Family study on another 2,000 children from birth to 6 years old. It did not chart the type of programming youth were consuming nor did it offer final conclusions. Young people in all groups read for pleasure 30 to 40 minutes a day, the only medium that no difference was found between minority and white youth.

Other findings include:

- Minority youth spend 3 hours and 7 minutes per day using mobile devices to watch TV and videos, play games and listen to music. That's about 1.5 hours more each day than white youth.

- Traditional TV viewing remains most popular. Black and Hispanic youth consume more than three hours daily; whites and Asians more than two hours.

- Access to TiVo, DVDs, and mobile and online viewing increase television consumption to 5 hours and 54 minutes for black youth, 5 hours and 21 minutes for Hispanics, 4 hours and 41 minutes for Asians, and 3 hours and 36 minutes for whites.

- Black and Hispanic youth are more likely to have TV sets in their bedrooms (84 percent of blacks, 77 percent of Hispanics compared to 64 percent of whites and Asians), and to have cable and premium channels available in their bedrooms (42 percent of blacks and 28 percent of Hispanics compared to 17 percent of whites and 14% of Asians).

- 78 percent of black youth, 67 percent of Hispanic, 58 percent of white and 55 percent of Asian 8- to 18-year-olds say the TV is "usually" on during home meals.

- Black children under 6 are twice as likely to have a TV in their bedroom as whites, and more than twice as likely to go to sleep with the TV on.

- Asian youth spend more time in recreational computer use: Nearly 3 hours a day compared to 1:49 for Hispanics, nearly 1.24 for blacks and 1:17 for whites.

How to Make a 3D YouTube Video the Easy Way

3D is no longer exclusive to movie studios. If you can scrape together two camcorders, some sticky tape and access to a hooked-up computer, you’re just a few steps away from making your own three-dimensional cinematic works of art, says Amy-Mae Elliot of Mashable.

This is largely thanks to YouTube‘s free online 3D Editor suite. Mashable spoke to Samuel Kvaalen, YouTube software engineer who helped develop the product. Kvaalen told why the video-sharing company created the tool in the first place: “The idea was trying to make creating 3D videos accessible to as many users as possible in a simple, easy manner.”

So is it really easy to make your own 3D YouTube video? After a quick walk-through of the software with Kvaalen, Mashable tested it out. Here’s the super-simple, step-by-step look at how to shoot and edit a three-dimensional video.

1. Shooting

As far as hardware goes, you’ll need two cameras, ideally the same model, although you can use any two that can record at the same resolution. You’ll also need some way of holding them together and some 3D glasses so you can edit and view the final result.

They used two Cisco Flip MinoHD pocket video cameras. They separated them slightly with Blu-Tack in order to reach the power button on the side of the camera. Be sure to use a ruler or other straight surface to ensure the camera’s lenses are at exactly the same height.

Once you’ve got your cameras lined up, you need to attach them together. They simply wound masking tape around the bottom of the cameras to hold them in place. Think of it as recording separate footage for your left and right eyes. This is the basic principle behind how 3D technology actually works.

With that set-up complete, you’re ready to go. What to shoot is, of course, up to you, although Kvaalen has some pointers to share. “You don’t want to film objects that are too close — you want to try and keep it at a decent distance — a few feet away is ideal,” says Kvaalen. In addition he suggests keeping the camera as stable as possible. This will yield the best results. Finally, try and press record at exactly the same time on each camera.

2. Editing

Once you’ve shot your footage, signed into your YouTube account and uploaded your two videos, head over to YouTube’s 3D Editor. It looks similar to the ordinary YouTube Editor, but you’ll see tabs on the bottom right that relate specifically to 3D editing. You can now drag and drop the two clips that you want to use to the “left” and “right” boxes.

The first thing to do is get the time sync right. Whereas this used to be done manually with editing software, the 3D Editor does it for you. Kvaalen explains: “You want to start filming with both cameras at the same time but that’s pretty much impossible, you’ll always have at least a few milliseconds off, so this uses the audio to sync them automatically.”
By “listening” to the audio from the videos — even just ambient sound — the Editor will be able to accurately time sync the two videos.

Next up is vertical alignment. Kvaalen offers some more advice: “Users should bolt the cameras together so they don’t move relative to each other, or “vertically shift,” but there is usually a small vertical difference in height. This tool lets a user manually suggest a vertical shift percentage.” As far as attempting a guess estimate the shift, they just kept tweaking until it looked right. Start at plus or minus 10% and keep going until you get the best result.

Finally, once you are happy with your video in the preview window, you can add a title in the top right hand box and publish it. After the video processes (usually a couple of minutes) you’ll have a shareable 3D video to impress your friends!

3. The Results

To view one of their test videos in 3D, you’ll have to grab your 3D glasses, but even if you can’t find a pair, they can report we were happy with the results.

With relatively little hardware and a pain-free editing process, YouTube’s aim of making 3D video creation simple, easy and “accessible to as many users as possible” has been achieved with the 3D Editor. There will be a lot of YouTube users having lots of fun with this 3D tool.

Have you used YouTube’s 3D Editor? How did you find it? Let us know and link us to your creations in the comments below.

Reinventing the Newspaper: Part 620

To date, the print newspaper’s relationship with the Internet has been a little bit like Dr. Jekyl’s learning to live with Mr. Hyde: On the one hand, enormously powerful; but on the other, quite difficult to control, and pretty easy to have turn against you, says blogger Nate Hubbell. And in recent years, the traditional newspaper has more often than not found itself on the receiving end of Mr. Hyde’s more destructive side.

The popular way of fighting back for larger newspapers and print magazines, if they have the brand
recognition and readership base required to support it, has been to launch a so-called “paywall” – basically a digital subscription – for their online content. Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, Wired, The New York Times -they’ve all got a paywall of some design erected around their Web content now.

In the main, all of these paywalls have been examples of the newspaper and magazine companies trying to apply their print business model to the digital age. Very few, with the possible exception of The Daily, have tried
to really break the mold and do something completely different.

The New York Times has launched a new section of their website, called beta620 (the 620 refers to their headquarters’ building number in Manhattan, NY), which appears to approach the idea of the newspaper in 21st
century from a truly fresh perspective.

As GigaOm noted, the site itself has the feel of a startup, “with the lower-case beta620 label, and a series of quirky images that identify the different projects underway at the NYT.” And, indeed, it does have somewhat
of the same goal in mind. The projects underway are explained quickly, and the lead developer of the project is given direct credit for the idea right on the page. Additionally, at least for the time being, all the apps on the site are free to try out – much like the give-it-away-free-at-first-to-get-them-hooked strategy of many Internet and social startups.

The new site is a great attempt by the newspaper company to actually innovate and move the industry’s model forward. In my humble opinion, we find some of the ideas very cool, especially the Longitude app, which shows
news stories’ geographical origin and spread overlaid on Google Maps; and Buzz, which puts a “filter” over the normal NYT.com site appearance to show the extent to which each story is being shared and generating “buzz” across various social networking platforms.

Of course, we have no way of knowing if this new startup-like path is the future for newspapers. But, for our money, it seems like a good idea, and at least they are trying something new. We’re certainly interested. And that’s really the point.

Paying for Followers is as Icky as Paying for Sex

Peter Shankman

There are certain things you don’t do in this world: Abuse an animal. Make any attempt to get any TSA official to smile. And also, you never pay a consultant or company to acquire new Twitter followers for you. They’re not real, and they won’t help you in the long run says Social Media Entrepreneur Peter Shankman.

By itself, the number of Twitter followers you have is the new penis envy. If that sounds familiar, it should – I’ve said it before. But with new “consultants” popping up all over the place guaranteeing you “2,000 new followers in 30 days” in exchange for your credit card number, I believe it’s time to revisit the subject.

1) Quality will always trump quantity. I’ll take 500 interested, engaged, active, and contributing-to-the-conversation Twitter followers over 50,000 from whom I never hear back any day. In fact, (and I mentioned this before, too,) when I have some occasional free time, I’ll DM some followers I’ve never heard from before, asking them if I can change anything to make their experience of following me more beneficial. If I don’t hear back, or if they continue not to respond to anything I tweet, I no longer count them as a “real” follower in my mind. In some cases, I’ve suggested that some followers unfollow me, and based on what they’re tweeting about, follow other, more relevant Twitter users, instead. It’s never about the amount. It’s about the engagement of those you
have.

1a) – Remember –By default, high engagement from the followers you do have almost guarantees new followers daily, since they’ll be people who have seen your current followers engaging you – thus, they become interested in what you have to say. This is the best kind of follower, an organic follower. Getting organic
followers should always be your goal, because they’re born from you tweeting interesting and exciting content. I can guarantee you that paying for followers will not generate one single organic follower. Expecting it to is like
expecting a prostitute to want to come home the next morning to meet your family. There’s no reason for them to, since it was always a business transaction, and nothing more.

2) Here’s the number one, time tested, best way to get new, organic followers: Respect the followers you currently have! My favorite line of all time, and I say it often: Having an audience who actually wants to listen to what you have to say is a privilege, not a right, just like wearing Spandex. You have the privilege of having an audience who wants to engage with you, and you must respect that. That means listening to what they have to say more than you ask them to listen to you. It means holding contests and giving away free (quality) product or discounts to the audience you currently have, and not insulting and ignoring them by holding weekly “our next follower/fan gets a free thingamabob!” contests. You’ve worked hard to have the right to talk to the audience you have. Why would you, as soon as you get them, ignore them, looking for the next one? It’s like those people we’ve all met at networking events: As you’re introducing yourself to them, you can’t catch their eyes, because they’re
already scanning the room for the next possible introduction who they think might be better than you. Insulting as hell, isn’t it? Well, by constantly focusing on trying to get that next new follower/fan and not giving props to the ones you have, you’ve become that guy to your audience. Don’t become that guy.

3) So the logical question then becomes “well, if you’re telling us to only focus on the followers/fans we have, how do we attract new ones?” And it’s a valid question, with an even more valid answer. Your job is no longer to do your own PR. For years, it was. For years, you were the one charged with shouting from the rooftops how totally awesome your company was, and getting people to listen and believe you. Those days are over. That’s no longer your job. If you’re still doing that, you’re wasting your time.

Your new job is simply thus: Create such amazing experiences for your current customers and audience, with stellar customer service, amazing response to them, and spectacular content tailor-made for the audience you already have, and your current audience will take over your job AND DO YOUR PR FOR YOU!

Think about it – Your audience, if treated beyond well (think awesomely,) will go out and share how happy they are with their audience, and well, simply put, chances are, that’ll convert some of their audience over to you, and you’ve got an organic follower, who’s so much more likely to turn into a paying customer for you.

It’s no longer about you having to shout about your awesomeness. It’s about allowing an audience who for the first time has the tools to do it themselves, to go out and do it. And you’re not asking them to – you’re not begging – you’re not asking them to “vote for your page,” or any of that crap we see so often. You’re simply offering such an amazing service, product, and in the end, full experience, that they do it on their own, because they want to share their story.

Think about the last time your flight was late. Remember when you finally landed? You and everyone else on the plane pulled out your mobile phones and bitched. Didn’t matter who you called, you just needed to bitch about the craptastic service you got, and how you were never flying that airline again. But then, think about the last time you had an awesome experience. You did the same thing, without even realizing it. You shared it. You talked about it. And you did it without being prompted. You wanted to talk about it. You wanted your friends,
those people who put their trust in you, to have that same amazing experience. You wanted to build organic followers for the company or brand that made you feel like a superstar.

That’s what we need to be striving to do. Not trying to get to a “number” or fans of followers. Not pulling out the tape measure. We need to focus on being amazing, in all aspects of our business. When we figure that out, it won’t be a numbers game anymore. It’ll be about your business growing. And in the end, a business that grows,
and generates revenue, and is profitable… Well, I’ll take that over a thousand new followers every single time, and so should you.

Advertisers’ Cookies: 'Do Not Track' Goes Live, Gets Slammed

An organization of Internet advertisers took steps this week to protect Web surfers' privacy, but the system may be more bark than bite, reports Matt Brownell of MainStreet.
Third-party advertisers regularly use information gathered from your browsing and buying habits to target you with relevant ads -- think, for instance, of how many times you've visited an online retailer, then noticed the retailer's banner ads following you around the Internet. That's raised some privacy concerns among many users uncomfortable with advertisers knowing their habits in such detail.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, whose members are responsible for 86% of online advertising, has proposed a self-regulatory step in which advertisements would contain a "do not track" button as a means of disclosing the tracking mechanism and giving users the ability to opt out. Monday was the deadline for the members to join the program and comply with the rules.
Privacy advocates aren't convinced, however.

The advocacy group Consumer Watchdog said Monday that the "Advertising Option Icon" doesn't qualify as a "do not track" feature, as it allows users only to opt out of being tracked by the companies participating in the program. Also of concern was the fact that the opt-out action would remain in place only until the user cleared his or her tracking cookies -- something many privacy-conscious people do on a regular basis.

Perhaps the biggest objection, though, is that any self-regulating system will be ineffective in the absence of actual government enforcement.
"This industry program is another example of the failure of self-regulation to protect consumers from unwanted monitoring of every move they make on the internet and their mobile devices," said Carmen Balber, Washington director for Consumer Watchdog, in a statement. "Action by Congress and the FTC to require a 'Do Not Track Me' option is crucial for consumers to gain control over their own information."

It's not the first time we've heard that refrain in reference to Internet tracking. Earlier this year, when Microsoft's Internet Explorer joined Mozilla's Firefox in implementing a tool that would let users automatically disable tracking, we noted that both browsers rely on voluntary compliance by the advertisers.

The question, then, is whether such mandatory compliance will take place. When the Federal Trade Commission proposed a "do not track" option back in December, it said self-regulation could be sufficient. But its tune may be changing: Earlier this month, an FTC commissioner expressed his belief that more compulsory regulations may be necessary to force advertising companies to disclose their practices and give consumers a way to opt out.

If the industry's new attempt at self-regulation does indeed prove ineffective, those calls could grow louder.

Mobile Advertising's Battle of the Sexes

Leslie Horn writes in PC Magazine Men aren't from Mars, and women don't hail from Venus. But it appears men prefer Android and women tend toward BlackBerry, according to a new infographic from Inneractive that analyzes the differences in mobile advertising among males and females.

Inneractive reports that men tend to click on ads more frequently than women. Men have a click through rate (CTR) of 2.73 percent versus a CTR rate of 1.65 percent for women.

The company also takes a look at the top app categories used by either sex. The top three apps for women are entertainment, social, instant messaging apps, and brain and puzzle apps.

For men, the top three are sports, arcade, and action, and card and casino apps, Inneractive's infographic shows.

"It is understandable that men and women prefer different types of apps," the graphic reads. "What is even more interesting is the different return that developers generate based on the app category."

For example, women are almost six times more likely to click on ads within entertainment apps than in social and IM apps. This means the eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions, or how much it costs to show an ad 1,00 times in an app) is higher for entertainment apps.

Men, however, click through ads at the same rate in the top two app categories for their gender, making the eCPM the same for these categories as well.

Inneractive also broke down the different operating systems each gender favors.
"When analyzing the gender of our users based on OS, we found that most platforms were split down the middle," Inneractive says. "Most, but not all. Android, we found, has a dominant male user-base and BlackBerry was just the opposite, mostly female."

Apple was found to be very close to an even split, with 49 percent female users and 51 percent male. Symbian reported the same stats.

Android, however, is 39 percent female and 61 percent male, and BlackBerry is 59 percent female and 41 percent male, Inneractive says.

The 7 Social Media Marketing Essentials for Brands and Companies

Social media is changing in front of our eyes. It can be easy to become distracted by all the new technologies and some people don’t know where to start or how to make a difference with their social media marketing.

With that in mind, Niall of Simply Zesty agency, created a list of seven key areas that we think all businesses and brands should be spending their time on. Yes the headings are broad and there are a hundred things you could be trying within each section but if you improved your company’s performance across these 7 areas you would start to see real tangible results. It can be easy to get caught up in all the hype and move from one platform to another trying to follow the trends but have a little focus, hone in on these clear goals and you will be in a far better place…

Internal Communications
The tools are available to help improve how you talk to each other within your company. Companies that communicate well internally will more often than not have far better results. Try out Yammer, Convofy, SocialCast, Campfire, Facebook groups or instant messaging tools like Skype or Google chat to get the best out of your company. The smart companies are adding a social layer to their entire business and putting as big a focus on internal communications as external comms. Make sure that your company has excellent social media guidelines to allow staff to talk about where they work and the benefits of working there. The days of control where upper management decided what was projected in to public domain about your company are long gone and every single one of your staff now have a voice thanks to social media.

Branded Content
It’s not enough trying to create engaging updates or throw up the odd picture on social media channels. If you are really serious about engaging with a community you’ll need to start thinking about branded content and how to seed it within the communities that you have access to. This could be anything from videos and websites to blogs or podcasts and the most important thing about branded content is creating something that the consumer has genuine interest in. We all know how to filter ads out these days and the savvy consumer is looking for new ways to engage with brands. Content should be at the very center of everything you do and spending time and money developing branded content is a route most brands and businesses should be going down. Now you won’t have their budgets for creating content but it’s an important part of social media now and one your company should be trying to engage with.

Stunning Customer Service
There is no reason why you should’t be talking to your customers in this day and age. The tools are there from Twitter and Facebook to Linkedin or forums and the smart brands are talking to their customers and solving problems to build positive word of mouth. The businesses doing this well are actually being proactive via social media channels and finding the problems and putting out the fires before they go any further. The upside of creating advocates through stunning social media customer service is that they all have the power to tell 100s of friends about their positive experiences. Being proactive and engaging with your customers on 3rd party channels rather than waiting for them to come to you is the key.

Ignore Facebook At Your Peril
Websites come and go. Look at Myspace and Bebo as classic examples. Many think Facebook will have a similar fall from grace one day and that we will move on to the next big thing but to think like that would be foolish. You need to think of Facebook not as a website but as a platform which will become as important as the internet or Google itself. Facebook is starting to force its way on to websites, it’s being built in to the core of mobile phones and soon you’ll be buying stuff through there and it will influence search results. Facebook is not going away any time soon and while you should always have a broad approach and not have all your eggs in one basket, spend a decent percentage of your time and money marketing via Facebook. It’s only going to get bigger and more important.

Transparency
It’s getting harder and harder to spin a story about your company that is not accurate or glosses over the truth. Brands and businesses have to be more transparent than they ever have in the past. Consumers and the man in the street have as much say in a brand as people working within the company. It’s a seismic shift away from the days when control was key and the message could be tailored to suit the goals of the company. There have been countless social media disasters and many of them arise from companies trying to bend the truth or cover something up. Social media is bringing a whole new level of transparency to business and for the consumer that can only be a good thing.

Adapting To Technology And Being Nimble
Trends change in social media circles quicker than you could imagine. While it is important not to jump from trend to trend without achieving anything it’s also important to be nimble and have your marketing strategy evolve over time. In the past placing an advert in a newspaper was always pretty much the same process but marketing on Facebook can change from week to week as the platform evolves. Twitter doesn’t even have an effective ad platform yet but chances are you could be using it next year. You need to look at new platforms like the tablet computer which, although less than 2 years old, is creating a seismic shift in our online habits. These new technologies and platforms seem to come out of nowhere and they can change entire industries within a year so be nimble and evolve your strategy because consumers might not always be in the same place.

Mobile Mobile Mobile
If you don’t have some sort of mobile strategy for your business or brand then you better start moving fast. Consumers are moving away from newspapers and magazines and embracing smart phones and tablets. Have a look around at other people on the next bus or train you are on and you’ll see people peering in to their mobiles. People are finding deals on the go and they are researching products on their mobiles. We’re only at the very start of this journey and as tools like location aware advertising and local deals take hold over the next year it’s clear that you would be a fool if you hadn’t at least started to put some thought in to the area of mobile.

NASCAR and the Pentagon: As American as Apple Pie

The battle over spending continues to rage on Capitol Hill and while Republicans are keen to take an axe to the budget, one interesting item was spared: The Army’s sponsorship of NASCAR. The House gave the green light for that sponsorship to continue, rejecting an amendment that would have blocked the Pentagon from using taxpayer dollars for NASCAR ads.

The Army spends more than $7 million a year to sponsor NASCAR Sprint Cup driver Ryan Newman and several million more as part of a partnership with NASCAR. It says the prominent ads on the car and presence at the track help attract recruits.

Over the last decade each branch of the military has had a partnership with NASCAR. But now just the Army, Air Force and National Guard continue to sponsor teams - the Marines, Navy and Coast Guard dropped their own NASCAR sponsorships in recent years.

Perhaps the ads are working. Military recruitment is surging - the waiting lists to sign up are currently longer than they have been in recent years which could be a result of several factors: the still-struggling economy, high unemployment rate and the post-9/11 GI Bill, that pays for education and housing for family and service members who have served at least 90 days and were honorably discharged.

Recently NASCAR revamped its business and marketing model to reach new and younger audiences hoping to increase track attendance and TV ratings. NASCAR's audience had steadily eroded over the last four years due to a variety of circumstances, not the least of which was alienating its longtime, hard-core fans with a variety of changes: later starts to appease West Coast viewers; altering its rules that made for safer, albeit less exciting racing; as well as a tepid economy, rising ticket prices and skyrocketing gas prices.

The new integrated-marketing communications department has focused a good part of its attention to the critical 18- to 34 year-old demographic, using social media to help organize college viewing parties; developing a dedicated youth website; and promoting young drivers such as surprise Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne (age 20), Joey Logano (21) and, starting with the Nationwide Series Kroger 200 race this Saturday, action sports star Travis Pastrana (27). It is also expanding its outreach for branded entertainment in TV, films and music videos, and taking a deeper dive into the burgeoning Hispanic market with the creation of more Spanish-language content.

The Army saw an opportunity to leverage NASCAR’s strategy into a recruiting tool so it sank some serious advertising dollars into drag racing. They wanted a driver to be all he could be for them, personable with a heavy foot on the gas, as passionate for what the Army represented as he was for squeezing every nano-second out of his Top Fuel dragster. The Army’s sponsorship places an impetus among young fans that sharpens the focus and dedication, the idea being that a military branch active in a foreign theater provides more of a motivation than, say, selling auto parts.

The Army has maintained a presence in NASCAR since 2000, through direction from Congress itself. NASCAR, of course, is one of the most popular spectator sports in America, and if the Army wants to attract more people, then—stereotypes aside—there aren’t many better places than stock car racing.

All Publicity Is Good Publicity

Any brand will tell you that the pinnacle in publicity is to have your customers be your brand ambassadors since word of mouth is cheaper than any advertising campaign. Recently we encountered two situations (no pun intended) where this premise was put to the test.

Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino doesn't usually require a lot of motivation to lose the shirt. But Abercrombie & Fitch wants him to go one further — the company offered to pay a "substantial payment” to "Jersey Shore" cast members to stop wearing clothes carrying their brand because the series is "contrary to the aspirational nature of the brand. We are deeply concerned that Mr. Sorrentino's association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image," the retailer said in a news release.

It may seem strange that a brand that employs half-naked models to stand outside its flagship stores and courted controversy with racy catalogs has come out with such an aggressive campaign against the hard-partying cast of "Jersey Shore." But the audacious approach is getting the teen retailer tons of publicity during the crucial back-to-school season, the second biggest shopping period of the year. The CEO says it's having fun with the ploy, and marketing experts say the company may wind up laughing all the way to the bank. "It's free marketing. Because the approach is so ridiculous, everybody's talking about it," said Wall Street Strategies analyst Brian Sozzi. Most companies spend millions paying movie stars to wear their brand, but Abercrombie & Fitch flipped that model on its head.

Peter Shankman, social media entrepreneur and self-described steak lover, was on a flight to Newark when he jokingly tweeted the following:

“Over the past few years, I’ve developed an affinity for Morton’s Steakhouses, and if I’m doing business in a city which has one, I’ll try to schedule a dinner there if I can. I’m a frequent diner, and Morton’s knows it.” said Shankman who insisted that he was merely joking and had no expectations from that tweet. But lo and behold! Next to his driver waiting at the airport was a Morton’s representative carrying a Morton’s bag with a Porterhouse. Shankman was so pleased and surprised that he tweeted out what happened to his 100k followers --some of whom wondered if it had been staged (was not) and if this would have happened if Shankman had had only a few followers.

Shankman credits Morton’s “spectacular” Customer Relations Management system and social media team (they know his mobile number) for going above the call of duty to make a customer happy. “Customer service is no longer about telling people how great you are. It’s about producing amazing moments in time, and letting those moments become the focal point of how amazing you are, told not by you, but by the customer who you thrilled. They tell their friends, and the trust level goes up at a factor of a thousand. Think about it: Who do you trust more, an advertisement or a friend telling you how awesome something is? We live in a world where everyone you meet is a broadcaster. Look around. Think of all your friends, all your colleagues. Do you know anyone anymore who doesn’t have a camera in their phone, or anyone who doesn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account?” Shankman said.

All this raises the question -- what are you doing with your brand that flip-flops the norms the way Abercrombie & Fitch did or that transforms your customers into brand ambassadors?

 

How To Do PR without Looking like You're Selling Something

Valeria Maltoni writes on her blog:
People flee sellers, especially in a bad economy. Public relations was born and thrived for many years on the wave of mass media - newspapers, television news, and magazines, for example. It's quite logical to think that if you get someone else to talk about how great your company is, then you are much more likely to gain public trust. Gaining trust helps you sell your products better.

In a connected world, citizen journalists will also begin and continue to gain credibility and trust. While the demands for news of so many online communities continues to grow, we're already seeing many start to view certain bloggers and peers as filters.

By definition, public relations is the art and science of establishing relationships between your organization and its key audiences. You gain exposure to groups and individuals by using useful topics and timely content directly and through third parties, while no money exchanges hands.

I associate PR closely with branding, they're both about behavior and reputation, sort of the organization infrastructure on top of which sit applications like sales and product development. In that light, then, how do you do PR without looking like you're selling something?

What do you want from PR?
Decide what kinds of relationships you're looking to develop and also what kind of behaviors you're willing to exhibit. When people talk about transparency, what they're really looking for is if you'll do what you say you'll do. That will be the starting point for a strategy.

What resources are you willing to commit?
I find by far the greatest challenge organizations face today is that of committing resources to developing relationships at the Grail of leads. The biggest opportunity companies are missing is internal. Do you have a network inside your organization? Whenever I ask this question at events where I speak, no hands go up. Why? Something that is seen as long term with (potentially) no fast results in the short term.

People answer that it's not their goal to chat up someone in development, for example. Let's not kid ourselves, people, a) if you want to become valued, you need to make the time to mingle with many in the organization at different levels to gain insights into what they know and what your role could be, and b) if you want to build relationships, you need to be in it for the long haul.

Set goals
How are you going to get there? Your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. If you set them up that way, you'll be able to track how you're doing achieving them. To help with goal setting, start with understanding the people you're trying to reach. What are they looking to learn?

Execute
This is usually where the best laid out plans fall apart. If you run a search, you will find that the terms business strategy give you 7.9MM entries (I use inverted commas) and business execution only a little more than 88k. Why the disparity? Everyone likes to be a strategist, yet the money is in the execution - and that's where the hard work is, too. Execution is not making lame pitches on Twitter.

Re-evaluate goals in light of interim progress
Since we're talking about a long term strategy, it's a good idea to check in on goals frequently so you can adjust your aim and activity mix. I find deltas helpful - two columns, a) What did we do well? b) What could be done better? In much new media the feedback is instantaneous, and public. You'll be able to capture it, if you're listening.

Execute some more
When you deal with the community in a new media space, thus mostly public, demonstrating you learn from feedback gives you major props at the moment. There will come a time when etiquette will be understood, and you'll be held to much closer scrutiny over not respecting the time and attention people and their communities give you. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The Web presence of the future is composed in thirds - community building, marketing, and editorial impact. This diagram will hopefully help you see the intersections.

On demand means as pulled by the community or people, when they decide they want it, which doesn't necessarily mean real time. The other two are fairly self-explanatory.

And let's not ever forget that just because we may be trying all these new technologies and adopting them, our customers or the people we're working to build relationships with are, too.