A General Motors exec's view on the auto industry and advertising

With my shiny new RSS feed to the print edition of Advertising Age via ProQuest, I came across an interview with Bob Lutz (subscription reqd), retiring executive vice chairman-global product development.

In the interview Bob state's a few telling points - telling because I think it shows that some organisations just don't get it, from products to promotion. Here are the key out-takes from the article:

The entire industry is almost in intensive care, and we are going to be burdened with very, very, very severe fueleconomy mandates from an administration that believes all we have to do is show a little goodwill and we can easily achieve 43 miles to the gallon. Whereas, in fact, technologically, nobody knows how to do that.

Back in the old days, you had ABC, CBS and NBC. If you took three spots on the "Dinah Shore Show," you had a Chevrolet commercial at the beginning, one in the middle and one at the end, and you knew that about 25 million Americans saw those three Chevy commercials. Today, with hundreds of channels, you don't know where to go anymore. I can go a whole month and not see a GM commercial on TV because I am not watching the channels we advertise on. I tend to watch the channels like American Film Classics or something where I am bombarded with ads for medication.

But by and large, the industrial companies definitely no longer have the budgets to where they can rely on advertising. So you see a lot of very effective viral advertising. ... If you do an extremely entertaining commercial to where people will copy it and pass it on, it comes a chain of progression, and that is a very good way to get the message out.

So what we see from Bob Lutz is even at the very head of the organisation, there is no answer, no ideas, no inspiration. Not on the products side of things and not on the promotion side of things.

Let's now mosey on over to the "Social Media" side of GM's business. By any company standard these people should be the real innovators. And it looks promising, GM has covered its bases: A wiki, blogs, YouTube, Twitter. Well done, you're engaging with the people!

Let's take a look at how GM is engaging ...

Generations of GM Wiki is an historical account based on facts ... it is not a discussion forum.

The GMnext wiki

For centuries, Utopians have dreamed of letting the old world burn and building a fresh new world just over the horizon. In the case of the auto industry, which holds a key to solving the global energy puzzle, such dreams are a dangerous diversion from the hard work at hand.

GM Fastlane blog

@GMblogs you guys are killing Saturn just as it was starting to get interesting. I.e., becoming Opel/Vauxhall North America
4:01 AM Feb 20th from TweetDeck in reply to GMblogs

@buffalopundit if the spin-off happens Saturn will essentially get to cut the cord and go back to it's roots
4:15 AM Feb 20th from TweetDeck in reply to buffalopundit

GMblogs on Twitter

Hmmm... me-thinks GM has a nasty case of corporate communications cough, you know, that nasty bug that infects good ideas with yes-men touting the company line.

Oh, but i did find something that was interesting and did want to make me listen. It was an obscure GM produced video that has received a whopping 718 views in just a little over ... a year and a half!

Dr. Lars Peter Thiesen, GM Europe, manager, Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Development, actually sounds like an engaging, well spoken, and informative man, interested in the work he is doing.

So my big question to GM, Bob Lutz, GM bloggers and wiki editors: Why do I have to suffer the pain of Detroit's bemoaning corporate communicators when I could be reading the inspiring words of people like Dr. Lars Peter Thiesen? Where is the Dr. Lars blog?

Bob Lutz, on your way out, maybe make a recommendation to cut a couple of million from the corporate communications division, get your employees to blog about the great work they are doing (they'll do it for free!) and put that saved money back into worthy R&D.

BTW I did actually learn something useful from the GM Wiki! GM made electric cars as far back as 1912. Makes me wonder what happened for 100 years ...

How I tried to appeal to the left brain in a marketing blog

I have recently changed my blog template. It's part template and part me playing around with HTML/CSS or whatever the code is. Granted it's not pretty and I won't be getting a web design job anytime soon, but quite a bit of thought has gone into the layout.

The thinking has mostly been about, 'what is the most effective layout for a blog?' A quick perusal of a blog template page like btemplates will show you there is no set pattern for templates, but you can have a rough estimate that there are twice as may right-hand side bars as left-hand side bars and also three column (left- and right-hand sidebars) are becoming more fashionable.

But from a usability perspective what is the best? Are there rules for blogs? If there are, I haven't been able to find them.

The general wisdom of print publishers, has traditionally been that the left side of the page is more inspirational/pictorial and the right hand side is more informational/factual and the most 'viewed' part of a publication is the right-hand side. An example of this is a QMedia rate card (PDF) for the Qantas inflight magazine where a right-hand side placement commands a 10% loading.

While some might say that more purchase decisions are made by the left side of the brain and that's why there's a load, it also stems from the traditional way (most) people read magazines, the right-hand side is the first thing you see when turning a page. So does this translate to the web?

Like their printed siblings, online newspapers do reserve the right-hand column for advertising. Have a look at these examples taken from today's editions:

Sydney Morning Herald

news.com.au

Wall Street Journal

Guardian

It would seem that the right-hand side is the preferred place for advertising in online newspapers.

But if an online advertiser were to take a look at the F-Shaped pattern for reading online content, they might be a bit miffed to see the right-hand side of a web page is almost vacant of any eyeball viewing.

One more theory to throw into the mix is the left/right brain preference. One such test for this is the HBDI brain quadrant preference test. As seen in the above image, the left brain (therefore right side of the screen) is more anyltical, technical and organised while the right brain (therefore left side of the screen) is more imaginative, emotional and conceptual.

It would seem that the F-shaped viewing pattern and left-brain preference would be contradictory, but this might also provide a possible opportunity. Imagine a news web page that had the travel and lifestyle section on the left side of a page and the business and world news on the right side of the page. In this scenario you would read the section you want to and it would be placed on the most preferable side of the screen to elicit the best response.

In the end with my new blog layout I went middle of the road. I have centralised the main content but by placing my side-bar on the left I have skewed the text to the right so the informational/factual aspects of the content are brought to the fore.

Yes my blog is about marketing and advertising and more right-brain ideas, but I want to explore the technical aspects behind the execution, and that is why I prefer to have my text slightly to the right!

No more hiding election activities

Well, if ever there was a sign that the people of the USA are taking back control of the election process, then I think the Internet has shown us that sign. Here are just a few of the many websites tracking the election process:



Google election results



Twitter #votereport

And, plenty more...

Crikey live blog
YouTube video your vote
Intrade prediction market election predition

And for even more, look at the Read Write Web post.

Social media is still a car with four wheels

OK, I think that I need to get one thing straight - we did not invent the successor to the car somewhere between 2005 and 2008. One of the hardest things to do in the promotion of Web 2.0 thinking in organisations is to remind everyone that social media is still a car with four wheels.

We're not quite in flying cars yet!

So when I go into a meeting and say we can use social media and Web 2.0 thinking to connect with customers it is not green fields, not a flying car. Social media is still just connecting with customers like we always have done, just in a fancy new way.

Bringing everyone back down from Mars and getting them out of their flying cars, I like to remind people that there are plenty of precedents to the things we do in social media. It is not like everyone has been wandering Earth aimlessly in a silent vacuum. People talk, it's natural. People communicate by voice, pencil, pen, computer, phone, mobile phone, text message, gestures, looks, emotions ...

Social media just makes some of these things easier, and sometimes opens a new door to talking to new people you couldn't have previously. What it doesn't do is make conversations start that never would have started in the first place. Social media won't make people do things if they don't want to do them.

An example of a social media tool that has worked is Twitter. Twitter is not a flying car, it is still a four wheeled car. But why Twitter is successful is because it allows conversations to start that previously could not have, not for lack of want, but just because it was too hard. I can now talk to the guys at NASA that operate the Mars Lander if I want. Say Telstra had poor coverage in my area, I could tell Telstra via Twitter and not only would Telstra know, but all my followers too - Twitter is customer service in the public - a powerful tool.

Another example of social media that works are blogs. Back in the 90s it would have been cool to have your own personal web page to tell everyone how much you loved Pearl Jam and were annoyed when a case of beer cost more than $24. But unless you knew HTML and were prepared to put in hours of work and be happy with a pretty average result, it was too hard. Now with blogs, everyone is their own news service and we can all tell the world how ridiculous and dictatorial a government imposed clean feed internet censorship policy is.

Now to leave you with a little history lesson to prove that social media has been around for years, it's just that in the past few years technology has made our job a little easier.

Way back in the 1980s, before MySpace was invented, and MP3s were the stuff of science fiction novels, bands had trouble getting their music to their fans. They had to rely on a wireless receiver, or by then know as a radio. Getting music into record stores meant getting into bed with slimey record companies that would 'own your soul'.

No MySpace! What to do!?

A little New York band in just such a predicament had a solution. Staffed by the members of They Might Be Giants, the band Dial-a-song, recorded songs to an answering machine and told all their fans what the phone number was. Fans could dial up the number and listen to the music whenever they wanted (that is, whenever someone else wasn't calling!). Bypassing radios and record labels and going straight to the fans, that's social media!

So there you go. Even in the 1980s the people were out there inventing the social media cause.

The moral of this story is don't get carried away. We're not in our flying cars just yet.

Status, rank and how to make everyone happy

The mindset of web users is shifting (slowly for most) to the acceptance of the Internet now not only as a tool for viewing information, but also as a tool for creating and discussing information. Marketers are embracing this concept (slowly too I might add) and are now using the web for a variety of interactive promotions or, in some instances, community building.

But of course, as with all promotions, marketers can't get something for nothing. If you want to engage your customers you need to be able to provide a reward. In sales it's usually quite simple, give a discount or some other form of physical or monetary incentive. This works in a transactional sense, but does not exploit the true benefits of what the web is capable of.

Two examples that provide us with an example of what is possible are Amazon and eBay. While the format of these businesses are somewhat unique (their customers are both buyers AND sellers), one of the successful tools that they employ is not overly complicated, but is attractive because it hits us on a largely universal level - and that is status.

Starting even before you know what status means, it's there and people are using it to place you in the pecking order. If you ever did Scouts you'd know your status by your badges. Scouts Australia say it is to:

* Facilitate the young person's entry into the Scout Troop.
* Reinforce or teach basic Scouting skills.
* Provide early recognition, and
* Encourage further participation in the Scout Award Scheme

On a national societal level you'll encounter more status symbols than could be imagined. The Australian Government says that its honours "help define, encourage and reinforce national aspirations, ideals and standards by identifying role models. We give honours to recognise, celebrate and say thank you to those who make a difference, those who achieve their best and those who serve others."

Taking this long standing societal notion of status through rank and honour we can see that it is employed vigorously through many of the web's successful businesses. Coming back to our two pioneering online businesses we can see that rank and status is front and centre and one of the primary shopper tools when deciding with whom to shop with.

eBay uses a coloured star system to rank their sellers, with the highest award being a "power seller". The system is based on the transactional value of your business per month and the quality of feedback you receive from buyers. A power seller badge on your profile is meant to inspire confidence in the quality of service a buyer will receive. However there are murmurs throughout the eBay community about the value in the power seller badge.

A recent blog post on the Romow shopping blog described the anger of many small business eBay sellers to the news that eBay had struck up a deal with the large Buy.com brand whereby Buy.com can now sell its products on eBay, surely gaining instant power seller status. Locally in Australia, the large online auction house OO-Auctions is also an eBay power seller. By changing the level of the playing field in eBay you get the feeling that the small businesses that have earnt their status the hard way have a right to feel poorly when large businesses tread on what used to be their exclusive turf.

At the same time, another example clearly shows how the automated function of status giving can sometimes lead to unwarranted status. eBay seller Violetsaxrayphone, in an eBay community forum described how she was given power seller status after she offered her services as a mercenary in Iraq for $20,000 dollars. The value of her post must have been enough to trigger power seller status and this stayed until the next automated review of status.

eBay seems to be learning many lessons very quickly about the value of status in a community. If you employ a status system ensure that it is level across all users, naturally the bigger you become the easier it is to stay there, but as is becoming the norm on the web - don't forget the long tail.

Amazon more recently introduced the reseller system and has taken a slightly different, less complicated, path. It has a one to five star system of seller status that is based on feedback and fulfillment metrics and leaves out volume or monetary targets. This system seems to keep a more level playing field. Although the status may not seem as grand it is effective in what the status system is trying to achieve - buyer confidence.

Amazon has also taken the status system and implemented one for reviewers of its products. Instead of reviewing only the products, the actual reviewers themselves are "reviewed" through a system that recognises consistent and informed contributions. Much like the badge system of Scouts or the Army, reviewers are awarded badges based on their contributions. The uniqueness of these badges also distinguishes reviewers - I personally like the "The" badge for known industry personalities.

Status is not limited to buyers and sellers though. In Web 2.0-land many people on the web do not buy or sell anything, rather they interact with each other with information and knowledge as the defining features of status. But the question is how to provide status to this new breed of web user?

Technorati has gone some way to solving this question by introducing the "Authority" system for bloggers. In this system bloggers are awarded an authority number based on the number of current links on others' blogs. While the system is simple enough there can also be problems seen in this system, similar to the eBay dilemma. The premise of the Technorati system, while admittedly requiring blogs to have content worthy of linking to, favours those blogs that have multiple contributors. At what point does the blog/newspaper cross-over happen? The Huffington Post is ranked here but the NY Times is not. Technorati does not give a very clear explanation. I would suggest Technorati provides a widget for the Technorati "fans" ranking too as this may give fairer view of the quality of the post rather than the number of posts.

AdAge's Power 150 of bloggers also trys to rank bloggers. While it is a selective list it aggregates a number of ranking systems to try and even out the playing field. However this system by-and-large still revolves around the volume of links rather than quality.

And finally I come to professional status online. Short of taking a photograph of your university degree and widgetising it, a system for ranking the status of professionals online is something that must be discussed. LinkedIn has had a stab at the status badge with its Company Insider widget. It works like a reverse status symbol. By adding the widget to a company name you give a reader the opportunity to see who they are linked to via LinkedIn in that company. I am not sure of the benefits given to the poster of the original content though. LexisNexis' Martindale index of lawyers has had a go at utilising the function and an example can be seen here.

What the Martindale index does show, though, is a well thought out system for attributing status to lawyers through its Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings. Accompanying this is the visibility ranking on each lawyer page which is a simple ranking system based on the number of weekly profile views of the person/firm's profile page.

So, what's the big deal with status!? As we can see from these examples it is a pretty big deal. We live in a world of rankings and status that has been ingrained in us from birth. We search by and feel comfortable when another person has given status to another person. From the preceding case studies we can also take away a few key points to guide us on our way to true and fair rankings:

1. KISS - keep it simple stupid
2. Be fair - make sure that the small guys have a chance of a high ranking as well
3. Keep it relevant - make sure that your ranking system is relevant to your audience and the benefits of the ranking are easily identified
4. Set the rules - Clearly set out the ground rules for your ranking system
5. Make it rewarding - Make the system rewarding for good work, don't penalise people for not keeping up with others

I'm hoping that I've got all the status speak out of my head now, it's a contentious subject, you could spend days cruising through the hundreds of discussion threads on the topic.

Have I missed anything? Are there any other good examples of status or ranking systems out there?

01/09/2008 Update: I've noticed on Flickr you can pay to become a pro Flickr-ist(?) and you get a little "pro" icon at the end of your name. Paying for status? Not sure what benefit the pro icon is, except telling others you can do more stuff than them.

01/09/2008 Update: Wikipedia and the wiki community-at-large have the barnstar recognition system for wiki contributors. That would be a nice thing to put on your CV - and all it takes is some knowledge and hard work.