Written by Mihai Dragan on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: cfw, cluj fashion week, finlandia
Finlandia decided to endorse Cluj Fashion Week. We thought about the Pure Vision concept turning interactive. The Pure live stream is now the connection to the fashion week for all those at home.
Want more interactivity? Tweet using #CFW, Cluj Fashion Week, and #CFW2010 and we make sure your tweets are seen live on the interactive screens in the location. Here’s a preview. More like a visual type of guy / gal ? Add a Pure Photo on the Flickr Group and get your picture shown on the wall.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 ( 2 responses )
Tags: incentives, interactive, maslow, online marketing
Having a look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (check it out on the right) I’ve noticed that the internet related advertising usually works on upscale needs such as self actualization, esteem, love, belonging, safety etc.
The finer the choices, the more the internet advertising can answer and relate to this needs. The two – way communication works best with upscale needs and probably upscale individuals: the influencers, the early adopters, the few.
The self actualization need, the “be all you can be”, the “discover your inner power” works best on the internet and it’s actually believable in a world where class, color, race, religion or income don’t matter. This is something the real world option can’t actually offer.
John Gerzema states that the recession has hit each and every one of us. “The times of leisure class marketing are behind us and the focus msut shift to addressing our essential needs” says John. While I cannot debate that I think that maybe, just maybe, it’s just the real world that won’t provide means of reaching higher ambitions to people. The internet will.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: martie, martisor, social media, viral campaigns, widgets
There is a Romanian tradition called Martisor. It celebrates the coming of spring, rebirth and others. Men buy women little (usually hand made) jewels and flowers. You can read a little more about it here.
We got inspired about the red and white thread that accompanies this tradition. So we made a little widget people can post on their blogs and web pages. I use one on the blog too. Check it out in the right upper area. If you visit the minipage you can read the text saying “We wish you many new years. Tangle our thread around your website. It doesn’t have any magical properties, bringing you countless visitors to the website but it’s pretty good at showing what this celebration is about: new beginnings and fulfillment. All you have to do is copy the html code below in your template files.”
It was pretty fun doing it and it really caught up. Up to 400 websites, blogs and social media profiles adopted the virtual “Martisor”. In just 5 days we’ve served around 250 000 virtual “Martisoare”. And counting.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 ( One response )
Tags: economics, entrepreneurship, online startups, Running the business, studies
Online startups are interesting micro-economies. Most of the systems are based on several variables like number of users, conversion rate and others, directly depending on the type of business systems they do (or do not) develop.
I have been studying the whole concept and focused on some of the variables that are usually left out.
The assumptions
The online startup I’ve studied to get a glimpse into this was an hypotetical online game. I’ve assumed the the game will be launched with a PR/advertising campaign, delivering an initial traffic to the website.
The game would sell power-ups to gain revenue. Other assumptions I have based my study on are that users would enter the website, register if they feel like, drop out and erase their account if it is just not their cup of tea, invite friends which would might or might not respond and of course, play.
The conventions
In order to test the user’s behaviour we will use several conventions, following Registration Rate (RR), Spread Rate ( SR – number of invited users / month / user ), Response Rate ( ReR – number of invited users actually visiting the website / month ), Dropout Rate ( DR – users cancelling / abandoning their ), Conversion Rate ( number of registered users buying upgrades), Medium cost per product (MCP).
I have also thought of a formula to determine purchase intent (PI), directly proportional to monthly visitors increase, RR and Influence rate of registered users (SR/ReR).
The Purchase Intent is Inversely Proportional to Dropout Rate (DR) and Medium Cost per Product (MCP).
The results
Although the concept hasn’t been tested on real life scenarios (I am looking for entrepreneurs willing to share some data for the study – 100% confidential) I guess I can outline some conclusions:
- Number of initial users is important but not the most important
- Spread rate (SR) is the single most important Indicator to be taken into account. Incentivize potential users to spread news and you have a booming business. Fail to do that and all the money in the world spent on advertising won’t guarantee safe revenue returns
- The response rate (ReR) is not actually that important. It doesn’t actually matter users being influential but rather willing to share information with their microcomunities
- Conversion rate (CR) is important but it will take more than that to have a really successful product. A tenfold increase in conversion rate is useless unless the registrants numbers goes up.
- Micropayments are the best choice. Increasing Medium Cost per Product (MCP), while having a steady increase in user base, means decreasing potential revenue. Increasing cost by tenfold will decrease potential sales by more than 50%
- Dropout rate (DR) is basically irrelevant as long as the dropouts are outpaced by new registrants.
- So, if it is something you should be focusing on as an online entrepreneur this is Spread Rate, Micropayments, and number of initial visitors.
I hope this helps.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Monday, January 18th, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: infrastructures, Interactive Advertising, new media, social media
I have been studying the whole concept behind Zynga’s recent success (Farmville, Mafia Wars etc.) and I just can’t stop thinking about how interesting it is.
Basically all of the other online games used to draw users to a social infrastructure (user accounts, social networks etc.) build on their own. The great thing about Zynga is that it targets already built social infrastructures (like Facebook, the iPhone AppStore). It lowers costs and it increases exposure and potential revenue.
What if brands would use the social networks to market products just like Zynga markets their games?
Written by Mihai Dragan on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 ( 3 responses )
Tags: advertising, brands, interactive, interactive vs conventional, media, startups, website
The website as we know it, at least as a concept, is dying. It has been for the last 5-8 years and now its death is even closer. Let me explain.
A site on the web
If you think about the term it is composed of two words that explain what the concept represents pretty good. A place on the web. It was the perfect way to introduce the concept to the general public. People were already accustomed with the concept of “site”: be it a store, library, house – each of these were built upon a “site”. People would access this site using a address or, in the internet world, a URL.
As with physical address users would visit a certain (or more) sites, based upon their previous experience, friends recommendations and more. In the economic world brands got used to “kindly invite” (or not so kindly as some interactive advertising techniques show us) to the homepage and the user would browse around, consume content and hopefully come back.
The shift in user behavior
That was the case back in the day when the websites count reached numbers of, let’s say, tens or even hundreds of millions of pages. A lot you say. “A more recent study, which used Web searches in 75 different languages to sample the Web, determined that there were over 11.5 billion Web pages in the publicly indexable Web as of the end of January 2005″ states Wikipedia. And that, my friends, was 2005.
What is a user to do in such an environment. Browse? To hard. Visit the same websites? Extremely limiting.
The first big online brand to address this issue was Yahoo that started as a recommendation website founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo. For a short period they had a boom and people would relate to what Yahoo! as a helpful resource in the online jungle.
Things got bigger and bigger. The internet expanded and users needed even more. They needed answers, they needed something to guide them to what they were looking for. Thus Google started a long and successful journey that led to a multi-billion enterprise. Google helped by pinpointing exactly the website on was interested in. And people were thrilled.
Has the internet stopped there? Hell, no.
More and more information hit the interwebs. What was once a resource for mainly text and image documents had turned into the worlds biggest collection of data. Be it photos, documents, books, videos – the world started storing its information in the big reservoir that we call Internet.
So many options, so little time. What to choose?
Going back to basics
People relate to their closest human peers in times of doubt. Not even the mighty Google could replace a kind word or the warm advice a friend is able to offer.
But our friends were already there. People gathered in online social networks and interacted. They would recommend the things they liked asked for advice when needed.
It started with forums, continued with blogs, hit new heights in human interaction with social networks such as social networks and now we have Twitter, the global phenomenon that let people tell one another what are they doing (be it watching TV or fighting a dictatorial regime). Under 140 chars.
Follow the users
The fact is no one ever needed websites. They needed “stuff”. They were on the look for data, a nice gift to buy grandma on her 76th anniversary, a fun video to watch, the coolest hit to download. Never for a simple website.
Being focused on the industry of interactive advertising I will focus on brands and maybe offer good advice. Brands need to realize that their users and potential consumers don’t actually need another website. They need what they want. They want fast answers, they want brands to “follow” or “befriend” them, not the other way around. They have the options and they have the power to select.
Brands are not what they used to be. At this moment the vast majority of Brands are still the big Advertisers that still expect to spend money on big media advertisements and have consumers lining up to their store or website (notice I use the terms pretty close to one another. They are.).
This is not the way. Huge opportunities await those that will follow their users, build presence around their users and still maintain brand awareness and a coherent communication plan.
A short example and some advices
I reached Zynga Poker on Facebook. Played around a little bit on the Facebook app they’ve built. Downloaded the application on my iPhone and bought virtual upgrades with real money. Until today, I have never visited their website. Zynga is a startup that has revenues in the orders of tens of millions of dollars (and growing).
I will leave you with some advices I consider helpful:
- Think outside the website.
- Be present in the social media.
- Stop thinking advertising. Think relationships.
- Build mobile applications.
- Study your market. Close. Closer.
- Develop intelligent applications.
- Let people play with your brand.
- Cut the TV ad budget. Cut the radio and print ad budget. Move online.
- Let people find you on the search engines.
- Follow your consumers and let them follow you.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Friday, August 14th, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: ads, banners, efficient, interaction, rich media, social media
Social media. As in 'people' media.
Although you know my opinion on statistic samples, a recent study on LinkShare stated that ads ran on social networks “are unlikely to be effective as direct marketing tools”.
Rich media banners seemed to be the most intrusive ones, “with almost two thirds (62%) viewing this tactic as an interference when browsing the web”.
59% stated promotions offered online are useful and , joy – joy, only 18% thought ads to be an intereference in their online browsing. My opinion is they’ve ignored them 
.
Social media communication VS Advertising
It’s interesting for me to find advertisiers thinking of social media marketing as running ads on social networks.
I feel this media as a new way of brand – consumer interaction. I can’t stress enough the “interaction” part. It’s just not about shouting. It’s about interacting, being there, talking, chatting, joining the masses, not ordering them to consume.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 ( 3 responses )
Tags: Analytics, guesswork, internet, online statistics, samples, statistics
Today I’ve received news of another statistic study. It stated 2 percent of romanians wish to relocate in rural areas. The study was conducted on a “representative sample” of 1100 people.
I will not talk about romanians relocating to rural areas. It’s boring. I will talk about the concept of statistics and the changes that need to be taken to reach the next level.
The “representative sample” of 1100 people is no more than 0.005% of the total population. So … how could this sample be “representative”?
The answer lies in the phisical ability to conduct the study. There is only that much a company can do. Back in the day, when Statistics was born as a science there was no way anyone can theoritize the appearence of something like the internet, the impact it had or the fast spread it gained.
I grew up learning on the internet. I failed once the Statistics class, not being one of my favourites in college. However, what I did learn on the internet is that samples can be way larger than the standard 1000, data can be collected easier and faster than by just “asking for answers” and many others.
Statistics need an upgrade. Because now it’s more guesswork than science.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 ( 4 responses )
Tags: agencies, future, interactive, media
As I previously gave you a brief (very brief) history of advertising here and here, now is the time to talk a little about tomorrow. About tomorrow’s agencies, as I see them.
New Media. Printed on old media.
I found a great post by Tim Williams called “What if the advertising agency died tomorrow”. Probably the best sentence I found there was “The advertising agency passed of a narrow mind. It died from a lack of understanding that there is no such thing as “new media”“. It states my take on interactive versus conventional perfectly.
The evolution of media
Long time ago print was king. Along came radio and TV. They changed the media scape and advertising as well. It was the birth of the 30 second spot, the blockbuster brand and helped advertising industry establish itself as one of the fastest growing industries.
This was also the birth of “trumpeter swan” creative and art directors, the birth of advertising festivals and a certain lifestyle for all those in this industry.
One day, a bright computer scientist by the name of Tim-Berners Lee, started what will has become the fastest growing media in the history of human kind: the world wide web. This was the wonder that tied people together and changed the way we see information, media and even ourselves as citizens of the world.
Changes
Frankly I find old media (print, TV, even radio), those one-way communication channels, so limited and limiting that I cannot comprehend their survival to this day. I am, however, sure they will converge to interactive driven media in a very short span of time.
So will agencies. Tomorrow’s “conventional” agencies will be interactive – powered. That’s why MB Dragan was repositioned to “Agency for Tomorrow”. An interactive agency that can deliver results just as well as conventional agencies.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: advertising, direct mailing, ogilvy, targeting
In his legendary “Ogilvy on Advertising”, David Ogilvy had a very interesting opening sentence in his direct mail chapter:
“One day a man walked into a London agency and asked to see the boss. He had bought a country house and was about to open a hotel. Could the agency help him to get customers? He had $500 to spend. Not surprisingly, the head of the agency turned him over to the office boy, who append to be the author of this book. I invested money in penny postcards and mailed them to well-heeled people living in the neighborhood. Six weeks later the hotel opened to a full house. I had tasted blood.”
Ogilvy fell inlove with direct mailing and he later mentions the wonders he has witnessed over the years: computers. He shows enthusiasm in how can they be used to select names by demographic classification, by frequency or amount of purchase. The man is thrilled at the idea he can merge and purge lists, send personal mails and many others we now take for granted as the internet evolved. Have I mentioned we are talking about 1983?
He is also known for his clear and to the point copywriting, for inserting coupons encouraging readers to “buy now” or send feedback to companies.
With his focus on targeting, filtering, measuring and interacting with consumers Ogilvy built one of the biggest agencies in the world and probably the most popular.
But that was then …
[to be continued]
