Insightful articles, opinion and commentary about mobile and web.

Lessons in how not to handle social media were played out in excruciating detail across the social landscape last week. It all started with the appearance of Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro on Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. The experience did not go well for the restaurant’s owners, Samy and Amy Bouzaglos, who came across as wholly unsuited to running an upscale eatery. They swore at customers, would not accept a diner’s feedback and revealed how they resold cakes made by other bakeries at a higher price. Gordon Ramsey actually walked out of their restaurant, unwilling to digest any more of their unsavoury business antics.

The restaurateur’s exit sparked a torrent of social media shaming from people on Reddit and a volley of one-star reviews on Amy’s Baking Company‘s Yelp page. There the whole sorry episode should have ended, however the owners took it upon themselves to respond to the commenters on Reddit and Yelp by throwing a volley of torrid abuse back at them. It’s not pretty.

Epic meltdown on Facebook

Their posts started out defensively before degenerating into a barrage of insults and profanities. For instance, some of the owner’s cleaner posts on their Facebook page read:

As I said, these were the cleaner posts, many more were full of invective and expletives. The owners have since issued a retraction of sorts, claiming that the restaurant’s social media accounts had been hacked. Believe this if you want to.

The real irony in this story is that the whole thing started with the restaurant appearing on Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares – the show that is designed to help failing restaurants. The restaurant was already in trouble before the social media disaster. Now, while everyone on the planet has heard of the eatery and its somewhat combative owners, I’m not sure anyone’s going to be queuing up to eat there.

Of course Amy’s Baking Company is certainly not the first business or brand to damage their reputation and credibility on social media.

Last year in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, American clothing retailer Gap, got itself in all sorts of trouble by using the disaster as the springboard for an ill-thought through promotional tweet:

 “All impacted by #Sandy, stay safe! We’ll be doing lots of Gap.com shopping today. How about you?”

It beggars belief that a company of Gap’s standing could let this particular tweet slip through their approval net. By way of an apology, the company made a donation of $1 million to the American Red Cross, and posted a written apology on their Facebook timeline.

Likewise, back in 2011, shoe designer Kenneth Cole used the Cairo riots as a platform to sell his new collection.

“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.”

Of course Kenneth Cole promptly apologised for making light of the riots in Egypt, but not before the Twitterverse was running rampant with a #boycottKennethCole and a spate of fake insensitive Kenneth Cole tweets.

Hijacked hashtags can also create all sorts of issues for unwary brands. Starbucks created the #spreadthecheer hashtag hoping to encourage Starbucks fans to tweet upbeat holiday messages under the hashtag. Unfortunately users hijacked the hashtag and tweeted out negative sentiments about the chain’s workplace practices.

In the same vein, McDonald’s oversaw its #McDStories hashtag fiasco where people began sharing some unpalatable stories about the fast food chain.

Typically social media meltdowns don’t have a lasting effect on brands. It’s more a matter of weathering the storm, and damage control. Of course we’ve never seen anything quite like the Facebook meltdown for Amy’s Baking Company, and while it did strike me as a media stunt gone wrong, I think this one may have long-lasting consequences.

While the Samy and Amy story has made for riveting reading, there are a few takeaways that we should all take on board:

1. Don’t use social media when you’re upset. Consider waiting an hour or two – or better still, sleep on it. Things always look so much different in the cool light of the next day.
2. Respond only to key comments and try not to be defensive. The best approach is to address the issues raised unemotionally to show that you are listening, and demonstrate that you’re doing your best to make amends. Certainly apologise if you need to.
3. Don’t feed the trolls. While it’s important to respond to major comments – you don’t have to respond to everyone, as many of the commenters may be trolls waiting for you to stoke the flames. Silence typically works wonders.
4. Never use derogatory language or make abusive and personal comments.
5. Never use CAPS LOCK.

This article first appeared in marketingmag.com.au

Simon van Wyk, Founder of HotHouse thinks marketers can learn much from musicians.

I wasn’t surprised to see that the documentary Searching for Sugar Man picked up a BAFTA (25/02 update: as well as an Oscar at this year’s Academy Awards). If you haven’t seen it, Searching for Sugar Man is the story of the folk-rock protest singer Rodriguez who is as much of an enigma today as he was back in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. It’s a true story of immense talent and missed opportunities.

At the time Rodriguez was hailed (prematurely as it turns out) as the finest recording artist of his generation. After a string of rousing social and political songs (in the style of Bob Dylan) on two albums that spectacularly failed to sell in North America, his record label unceremoniously dumped him. He disappeared into oblivion and all but gave up on his music career, turning instead to manual labour as a means to support his young family.

Curiously, he did enjoy some success here in Australia and in South Africa in the twilight years of the apartheid-era. Indeed in the late 1970s in South Africa he became as popular as the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. There, his disappearance from the rock scene took on mythic proportions. Remember, there was no web then, and South Africa was exiled from the West. Bootleg recordings of his prophetic songs stirred a generation of progressive white liberals. I grew up in South Africa and remember that when his albums were released there – every household had his first album “Cold Fact”.  In fact this album went Platinum, though Rodrigues was wholly unaware of his success and never received a dime in royalties from the sales.

Controversial lyrics

Listen to his soulful music today and it truly beggars belief that his music failed to sell. Even forty years after they were written, these songs resonate and stand up to the test of time. While some of his lyrics would have been considered more than a little controversial (especially in conservative South Africa) and unsuitable for general airplay, surely this would not have been a disadvantage. For teenagers and college kids, then and now, any whiff of controversy, or a general air of anti-establishment usually spells a sure fire recipe for success. This formula certainly didn’t stop the ballads of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez et al being purchased in their millions.

So considering there was a large market for Rodriguez’s style of music, and the songs are generally very good, (and were certainly risqué, and ahead of their time), we must assume that the record label failed to engage with consumers through the right channels of the day. Of course there were no websites, social media or YouTube, but a tried and tested formula to create media coverage, gain radio airplay, tastemaker support and gig bookings. But this just didn’t work.

It wasn’t until fans in South Africa, trying to verify rumours of his death, tracked him down through the web that the resurrection of his career began.

The web has changed everything

When you think about Rodriguez’s story in today’s terms, I don’t think we’ll ever see another quite like it.

Gotye’s Grammy-winning song “Somebody That I Used to Know” was no overnight success. It first became popular after being shared on social networks rather than from the more conventional airplay and promotion.

Something as unfathomable as Psy’s Gangnam Style which has driven more than one billion views on YouTube gained exposure from being shared on social networks, again not from mass media airplay.

The world wide web of course changed everything. Indeed, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, was in Sydney last week to wrap up his five city tour of Australia and New Zealand. While he did hint that the web was just part of an elaborate plan to disseminate cat pictures and videos around the globe, his invention has of course become much bigger than that!

Radical transformation

The music industry is not alone in being radically transformed by the invention of the web. As marketers, we can all learn from this industry’s public, painful, but eventually thriving transformation and rethink how we engage with our customers. Rethink your delivery mechanisms, charm and interact with your customers across a broad range of channels, and use mobile to keep connected with your customers any time anywhere. Remember your customers are individuals with diverse likes and dislikes who have a wealth of media options available to them to satisfy their curiosity and tastes. As social marketing evolves and further fragments the media landscape– using the right mix of technology, platforms and channels to connect, monitor, analyze, and engage your customers at different stages of the customer journey is more crucial than ever.

Fans of Rodriguez finally caught up with him via the web. His resurrection will surely be complete with widespread recognition in the US. While I’m not predicting video downloads of Rodriguez’s undemonstrative stage demeanour will reach the same heady heights as Psy’s Gangnam Style, there’s no doubting that the web has allowed us to uncover his immense talent.

This article was first published in B&T.

While last year was something of a bumpy ride for all the usual stars of the digital age, Simon van Wyk contends there are signs that 2013 will be bumpier yet. It’s time to fasten your seat belts and enjoy the ride. It’s going to be fast and furious.

Google

As Google’s stock price continues to slide, analysts are predicting grim times ahead. Google of course relies heavily on search for its primary earnings growth. Yet while there’s a huge volume of searches being made from mobile devices – mobile search now represents Google’s largest single revenue stream, the search giant makes considerably less money on mobile ads than it does on PC ads.Advertising is going mobile, yet mobile advertising is less profitable so far.

The cost per click on ads has been in decline for the last four consecutive quarters. Users are only half as likely to purchase a product after clicking on a mobile ad, as opposed to a PC ad, which further pushes down the cost that advertiser will pay per click.

Right before our eyes, Google’s less profitable business is cannibalising its more profitable sibling. So the big question for Google in 2013 is can they replace PC search with mobile search and remain profitable?

Facebook

Facebook of course was one of the most highly anticipated initial public offerings in history.  On the day of its IPO Facebook’s market capitalization equalled more than $100 billion.

At the time, Facebook shares were priced at US$38, but finished the first day of heavy trading barely above its initial public offering price, at Us$38.23. From then on, the share price plummeted. By September, shares hit a low of US$17.55 – as investors grew concerned over Facebook’s lack of a business plan to monetize its 1 billion members as well as its lack of a mobile presence.

However while initial investors are currently looking at a loss – there’s now improved visibility on the company’s mobile transition, and its move to become a true mobile company, as well as opportunities from new products which were not available at the time of the IPO.

For example, Facebook is promoting Photo Sync, a new feature for its mobile app that allows people to automatically upload every picture taken with their mobile phones to a private Facebook album. They then choose which photos to share on Facebook, but the automatic upload makes that process much faster and easier.

Turning Facebook into your photo repository is a consummate business move. Just think about getting your hands on the new glut of information from the geo-location data attached to the photos. This information will surely become increasingly valuable as Facebook sharpens its ad targeting capabilities.

Facebook is also planning to grow its user base—and mobile revenue—by expanding the reach of its mobile messenger app. Anyone with a mobile phone can sign up for Facebook Messenger, using just a name and phone number and is ideal for users in countries where email or computer access is not so pervasive.

While Facebook doesn’t currently make money from its messenger app, which includes free texting, group chat, and photo-sharing, and it works across devices—so users can message from mobile devices to the desktop, and vice versa. The more people that message on any Facebook platform, the higher the level of engagement, and the more potential ad revenue for the social network.

In addition, Facebook’s ad exchange, FBX is now serving a staggering 7 billion ad impressions daily, and has the potential to become a highly lucrative revenue channel for Facebook. While the beta rollout of Graph Search promises to change the way you find things on the social network and potentially beyond.

With this recent spate of announcements, Facebook’s future looks bright. While its share price still has some way to go to regain its initial valuation, of late the stock has been rallying. While the share price closed at $26.63 at the end of the year, by 24^th January the share price had hit $31.49 which is considerably higher than its all-time low.

Instagram

Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for a whopping US$1 billion last year took everyone’s breath away. While Instagram has a massive number of users uploading a massive amount of data, the company wasn’t (and still isn’t) making any money.

So we’ve all been expecting something to change.  And this came in December with the announcement of new terms of service that allows Instagram to sell your photos. Now you can’t begrudge a start-up from wanting to make money – but the way Instagram went about it has drawn ire. For hooked users, withdrawing from Instagram will be painful – for some it won’t even be an option. But as of January 16 all your precious content is now available for exploitation. It’s a simple matter of Instagram making money off your content without paying you.

How hooked users are remains to be seen. Will users remove their content? Or will they be happy to use the service and have their images exploited? I think the lesson for us all is to beware of start-ups that have lots of users, no business models and sky-high valuations.

LinkedIn

And finally, LinkedIn, the quiet achiever. With more than 200 million members, the professional social network has enjoyed phenomenal success. Since LinkedIn went public in May 2011 with an opening day price of $45, its shares have almost tripled in value and are now trading at more than $122.

LinkedIn has of course been busy during 2012, successfully introducing an influencer network, and redesigned profiles and Company Pages.  The company also launched its much anticipated iPad app for its highly active mobile users. The app features a clean, simple interface and just three options: updates, profile, and inbox.

As to where the company goes this year is up for debate. Almost everyone agrees that the company is poised to make a huge acquisition and there are a multitude of potential candidates to choose from. According to Forbes, LinkedIn has tremendous opportunity to expand in the job postings market though its fast growth may be slowed down by potential competition from Facebook and Google.

This article was first published in Technology Spectator.

Simon van Wyk , Founder of HotHouse, explores the promise of the new Myspace

While Justin Timberlake may have been hugely successful in bringing sexy back, he is now attempting to bring sexy back to Myspace and make it relevant in a Facebook world. Of course, Timberlake bought MySpace with Specific Media last year from News Corp. for just $35 million (a real bargain basement price considering News Corp. had paid $580 million for MySpace just six years earlier). At the time, Timberlake had declared that there was a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favourite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect.

One billion Facebook users will probably tell you that they already have that place.

Music centric

But Timberlake and Specific Media’s intent is to make Myspace your music-centric online space again. Indeed, back in the early years of the last decade Myspace was the place for teenagers and 20-something hipsters to hang out and express themselves online. However, heavy use of banner advertisements eventually took its toll. Users got bored hanging around waiting for pages to load and quickly jumped ship to Facebook.

So what’s going to lure users back? Can Myspace reclaim its lost glory?

Featuring a heavy music component, with radio and playlist sharing, the new Myspace promises to continue its entertainment focus as a place to play and discover music, add photos, videos and playlists and connect with artists. It promises to be the space for artists to stay in touch with fans.

And judging by the company’s promotional video in which Timberlake features heavily, the new Myspace certainly looks like it’s got its mojo back.

Pinterest-esque feel

The site looks slick and enticing with a Pinterest-esque feel. There’s an entirely new design with a clean looking interface, lots of white space, photos, horizontal scrolling and seamless integration with Facebook and Twitter. From the video, it seems that you can populate MySpace with your photos and videos from other social networks, as well as update your Facebook and Twitter statuses right from the new MySpace.

Unfortunately, we can’t try this for ourselves at the moment as the new site is currently closed to the public. A message on new.myspace.com declares: “Welcome. This is Myspace. We’re hard at work building the new Myspace, entirely from scratch. But we’re staying true to our roots in one important way—empowering people to express themselves however they want. So whether you’re a musician, photographer, filmmaker, designer or just a dedicated fan, we’d love for you to be a part of our brand new community. Please leave us your email below and expect an invite very soon.”

I’m sure there will be a lot of initial interest, but one in seven of our planet’s population is already addicted to Facebook, busily sharing, socialising and just hanging out on the social networking site. Facebook users upload something like 300 million photos every day, play more than 60 million songs and have racked up more than one trillion likes. It’s become part of our everyday experience. So how will Myspace fit into your Facebook world?

Interestingly, while Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg courts his next billion users with forays into Russia and Africa, you can’t help feeling that there’s a growing disquiet amongst long term users. It may just be a matter of saturation, but perhaps the Facebook tide is turning? Perhaps the Myspace timing is just right? Attracting just one tenth of the Facebook population would be a staggering achievement.

Mobile experience

While it would take a migration of biblical proportions to render Facebook impotent to marketers, Facebook is struggling with how to deliver an optimised mobile experience and adapt its business model to the small screen. While its advertising revenue is largely derived from displaying ads and other commercial content for users accessing the site from PCs, there’s no meaningful revenue from mobile. There’s no meaningful experience for users.

Yet as beautiful as the Myspace site looks in the promotional video, there’s nothing in that video that showcases the site on smartphones and tablet devices and how users will interact with the content when they’re on the go. As mobile usage starts to outstrip desktop usage, this has to be a major priority. Mark Zuckerburg admits that his hardest job right now is figuring out how to adapt Facebook to mobile devices in part because the user experience is so different than on desktop computers. Surely Timberlake and Co have thought about this?

This article was first published on Technology Spectator.

Simon van Wyk, HotHouse Founder, contends that there are huge differences between the mobile and desktop web and they each require very different strategies, tactics and technologies. 

Felix Baumgartner’s awe-inspiring jump from the edge of outer space this weekend has been a massive media coup for sponsors Red Bull. Thankfully, back here on planet earth, as a marketer, you need not go to those lengths to get consumers engaged with your brand. That said, I think it’s imperative that you do tackle the complexities of mobile head on.

Take a moment to look at your site from a mobile phone. If you are a brand marketer who has no mobile presence or a poorly optimised mobile site – just a shrunken down version of your website – then you have got a problem. You can’t continue to ignore the shift to mobile everything that’s happening all around if you want to safeguard the potency of your brand.

Clearly, mobile isn’t easy, but you’re not being asked to jump out of a balloon at the edge of space. Sure, mobile is a complex environment fragmented by multiple operating systems and literally thousands of devices, with varying screen resolutions and sizes. But the consumer shift to mobile is real. Technology research firm ­Telsyte estimates that there will be 12.5 million smartphones in this country by the end of 2012, representing close to two-thirds of Australia’s mobile phones.

Data released by Kantar Worldpanel in July shows that smartphones running Google’s Android software account for 56.9% of the smartphone market, while smartphones running on Apple’s iOS represent a 30.5% market share. With Android and Apple commanding the lion share of the market, Nokia’s Symbian platform holds just 3.8%  share while BlackBerry usage plummeted to just 0.1% of the market.

Mobile has enormous consequences for your brand. The future of your brand equity rests with how well you adapt for the mobile environment.

According to research from PwC and Frost & Sullivan published earlier this year 26% of online purchases are now made on mobile devices, compared with 21% last year which is expected to drive continued growth in online shopping.

Source: Google/Sterling Brands/Ipsos: Q2/2012

Google recently teamed with Sterling Brands and Ipsos to study the media habits of 1,611 people across the US in the second quarter of this year. While it’s a small study, the research found that the mobile device is the most common accompaniment to other media consumption and that a majority of online tasks get initiated on a smartphone and are continued on another device. So you not only need to be everywhere that your customers are but you should present a consistent experience between platforms.

Source: Google/Sterling Brands/Ipsos: Q2/2012

Mobile commerce is growing and the habit of using a mobile phone to aid a purchase decision is becoming commonplace. According to AIMIA’s Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index, September 2012, approximately 40% of their respondents use their mobile phone to compare prices online and to look at product or service reviews before making a purchase decision.

Meanwhile, mobile search traffic is increasing five-fold. Consumers are searching for your business from their mobile phones, so you need to engage them with a mobile experience designed for completing on-the-go tasks from the small screen, whatever the device.

This major shift in consumer behaviour is simply too large for brand marketers to ignore, yet brand marketers continue to stall their move to mobile. And I think this is because they don’t know where to start and how go about it.

Without doubt, just considering the additional resources needed to run a separate mobile website is a major challenge. But a responsively designed website that simply scales your website for the small screen is not an optimal experience. Indeed, pinching and zooming in on tiny links is a poor user experience.

There are huge differences between the mobile and desktop web and they require very different strategies, tactics and technologies. To deliver an optimised mobile experience, you need to recognise that mobile users have different needs than desktop users. It’s an “on-the-go” environment where your needs and device constraints are very different from a desktop user.

While it’s a myth that mobile users don’t want access to all of the information and functionality available to desktop users, they really don’t want it served up to them in the same way. They don’t want endlessly scrolling pages and big images that take forever to load.

Divorce desktop from mobile

In a mobile world it’s not enough just to have great content. You have to accommodate the limitations and opportunities provided by the mobile web. It not only improves the user experience, but it makes the site stickier and increases conversions. To deliver an optimised user experience on a mobile, it’s a pre-requisite to display content in a way that is tailored for mobile devices.

Remember, mobile is not just an extension of desktop. As a brand marketer, if you’re displaying a shrunken down version of your main website for mobile users, you’re not on top of the mobile game.

Simon van Wyk caught up with Jonathan Salem Baskin following HotHouse’s Social & Mobile breakfast last week. The pair have a fascinating conversation that touches on authenticity, community, engagement and the need for truth in marketing.

 

 In conversation with Jonathan Salem Baskin [41:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Jonathan Salem Baskin, brand strategist and author, discusses why truth matters for brands in today’s social and mobile world.

The future of social communication is mobile, at least if you believe the latest round of evangelism coming from the technopunditry. I actually buy it, mostly, and I think the idea of being immersed in a web of background, insight and opinion at any given moment is kinda cool in a cyberpunk consensual hallucination sort of way

Though, like William Gibson’s sci-fi, it’s the vision of a future that is probably a bit further away than most folks would like to admit. But the implications for brands and marketing are truly far-out.

The very nature of mobile is dependent on ‘right here, right now’ experiences; what you call up on your smartphone needs to matter at that moment, first and foremost (not to negate the likelihood of non-circumstantial browsing, but to put the activity and its product into context). That means the immediate future of mobile is price and location/availability.

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Brand marketers – join us as our guest at the sumptuous Ivy Room for a scrumptious breakfast with mouth-watering presentations and stimulating discussion on everything social and mobile.

We’re flying out US author and leading brand strategist, Jonathan Salem Baskin to give the keynote address which will focus on the truth in marketing. Jonathan asserts that as a brand marketer,  you should ask yourself how involved you are in contributing to truths, not merely “content” or engagement, whether about your brand, your industry or the world in which your business operates. What makes your social involvement necessary? How do you propagate truthful information that empowers and inspires your consumers to use P2P media to make better, more durable decisions?”

HotHouse Founder Simon van Wyk and Bill Kearney, Senior Sales Director at Oracle Corporation will join Jonathan on stage to explore how you can best optimise your marketing activities to seamlessly interact and engage with customers across mobile and social channels.

This event is fully booked.

By Simon van Wyk

I have a background in marketing, but my understanding of branding seems at odds with the 2010 opinions I see from social media commentators, marketing and advertising agencies.

I read LoveMarks, but I don’t love brands. I read the definition which says: “Lovemarks reach your heart as well as your mind, creating an intimate, emotional connection that you just can’t live without. Ever.” I don’t actually feel this way about any brand. My life is busy and I reserve that level of investment for the important people in my life, not the stuff I buy. I assumed other people felt the same.

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Determining the success of word of mouth marketing activities, like measuring social media campaign success, is best done on a case-by-case basis. Importantly, it needs to integrated with the measurement of other marketing activities, particularly since so much word of mouth activity happens offline.

Having said that, there are a few general guidelines to follow when attempting to measure word of mouth. Larry Freed from US website satisfaction agency Foresee Results has identified what he calls the six truths of word of mouth measurement:

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