Listen to the episode on iTunes
Episode Summary:
On this episode, Dave Silva and I talk about a mixed bag of news from the past week including: the ongoing Playstation network saga, other PR blunders, Microsoft's biggest acquisition yet and some cool things coming out of Google. Hope you enjoy the conversation! (Runtime: 39:10)
Sources for the discussion:
Google has been announcing some pretty cool things over the last few days. One of the biggest and most recent is the launch of Google's cloud music service called ... Google Music.
The more announcements I hear from Google, the more I think about the bigger picture. If you look at what Apple has going for it and then also contrast it directly with what Google has going for it... ultimately, both companies are trying to create an ecosystem.
In this ecosystem there are a series of connected devices (phones, TVs, computers or other hand-held devices) and one unified platform that ties them all together. This raises two pertinent questions in my mind:
1. Will consumers continue to cross platforms? ... or will there be a movement toward buying solely into one ecosystem and having everything you own controlled through that? Undoubtedly this method will have trade-offs but will consumers be willing to let those go, in the spirit of unification?
2. Will these juggernauts keep marketing 'products' or will we see more marketing around 'platforms?' - I can especially see this with Android being open source, thereby making it product agnostic essentially. However, I can also begin to imagine Apple doing this if they begin to focus more on the future of their operating systems and the unification of iOS and OSX. It will certainly be cool to see consumers having platforms marketed to them versus the products that deliver these platforms. I'm sure Apple and Google both will market the two (products/platforms) together; however, I can only imagine how the focus on the platform may tend to eat up more and more of the conversation over time.
I don't think there will be a 'winner' in this battle of ecosystems, because the pie will certainly be cut different ways (e.g. market share vs. revenue share); however, what I do think will be interesting to see is how these ecosystems develop. Microsoft just bought Skype... is Microsoft an ecosystem too?
Which ecosystem do you belong to? Why?
If you're looking for some inspiration ... watch this video.
If you're into tech in any way shape or form ... watch this video.
If you like the Matrix and want to see what it would be like if Neo and Morpheus met in real life ... watch this video.
If you're older than 20 ... watch this video.
I think you get the idea by now. Watch this video.
There are a couple of things that amazed me about Brian:
1. Desire - Many times Brian keeps referring to his intrinsic need to understand why San Francisco and New York were the places to be. What he did when he got to those places was truly nothing short of amazing, I am not going to spoil the story here because I really want you to hear it from him... so watch the video. In summary though, it is truly amazing what you can accomplish (even Kevin Rose was amazed) by simply having the desire to do so. You should always be thirsty for knowledge.
2. Creating luck - Brian's story is a great example of what happens if you work hard enough to create your own luck. At one point, he describes his entire whirlwind of a journey in the past year or so as, "serendipity." You may consider it oxymoronic, but I believe someone can create serendipitous events. Brian understood the power of networking very early on and that played out much later in his life. His story tells me that if you work hard enough and get to know enough of the right people ... you can create your own luck.
The main message that I took out of this interview though, was a trait that both Brian and Kevin exhibited. Brian did so by admitting that despite his overwhelming intelligence (skipped 4 grades in grade school and started University at 14) ... there will always be someone in a room smarter than him ... always. Kevin, despite all his success, exhibited this trait by commending Brian on the brilliance of some of his ideas.
This one trait ... is humility. When you are as successful as either of these two guys, it's so easy to be proud/arrogant/boastful ... but what makes them heroes in my mind, is how humble they are.
One of the most interesting stories I came across this past week was regarding a unique marketing move by Facebook. Here is a quote from a great insidefacebook.com article that sums it all up:
"Facebook has just announced an expansion of its partnership with social game offer provider TrialPay on its DealSpot product that gives users Facebook Credits in exchange for watching branded videos."
This move really caused me to think about how we as consumers view and ultimately consume advertising. I've realized that the consumption of advertising and our reaction to what we see is analogous to the psychological principle of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Facebook here is using an extrinsic model. The dangling carrot being offered are free Facebook credits which, consumers can then use to purchase real items. Seems like a pretty tasty carrot and given the amount of people who play social games on Facebook, this method of delivering an ad - in a social game - combined with the fairly strong reward ... may just work. However, the question still remains to be seen whether these ads will actually be effective.
The problem with offering an extrinsic reward for something like the act of watching an ad, is that consumers would probably be more interested in earning the reward rather than caring about what's on the ad. Who's to say that the consumer can't just hit play on the video and walk away from the screen? Considering the years of training we've undergone through traditional TV ads, this act isn't totally out of the realm of possibility.
There is another model to consider here and that is the intrinsic motivation model. In this one, a consumer would naturally seek to do something and gain pleasure from the very act of doing it, rather than from the reward that is waiting on the other side. One of the best and simplest examples of this would be the fostering of brand advocates. In order to do so of course, a company would need to create a product that is worthy enough to be advocated.
When thinking about applying this to the Facebook/Social gaming model... what if companies tried something truly drastic and gave customers the opportunity to tell their friends about something ... yet not reward them for doing so? Would this prompt customers to naturally want to tell their friends about what they were doing? Is this is a stronger form of advertising?
It'll certainly be interesting to see how the dangling carrot story unfolds.
Listen to the episode on iTunes
Episode Summary:
In this episode I have the pleasure of being joined by my two most regular guests... at the same time! Andrew, Dave and I managed to get together and discuss some interesting news from the past week. Our topics ranged from live interviews with President Obama to the Plum rewards card by Indigo. Hope you enjoy the conversation! (Runtime: 41:51)
Sources for the discussion:
Listen to the episode on iTunes
Episode Summary:
This week, Dave Silva and I talk about the present and future of on-demand entertainment. We discuss some interesting moves being made by YouTube and also mention an unexpected retailer that is making some big moves in the digital entertainment space. Hope you enjoy the conversation! (Runtime: 42:35)
Sources for the discussion:
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how YouTube could be the future of television. Well the actions taken by the company in this past week have made it evident that this future may come sooner than we think. I am going to attempt to entertain you now with a hypothetical future scenario and then end this post with some questions worth asking.
You are a working professional and nothing pleases you more than coming home and spending some time with the family. Tonight happens to be your turn to choose what the family gets to watch! After a nice dinner, you gather the family and sit around the big screen and turn on YouTube (you become slightly nostalgic about the days when there was more than one network on TV). Since it is family night, you scroll over to the 'family' channel and take a look at which show has got the most votes from your friends this week. Turns out it is a show called 'Modernized Family.' You have never seen it but your good friend Steve left a comment that your family will love the show, so you decide to watch it. Twenty minutes into the show it's commercial time and you know this is the kids' favourite time because they get to pick which ads they want to watch! Twenty minutes later the show ends and you make sure to recommend it to more of your friends.
About an hour after that the kids go to bed and now your spouse decides to turn on YouTube again. John Mayer happens to be playing an intimate acoustic set at Eddie's Attic and they are streaming the show live on YouTube. For old times sake, you decide to watch it with your spouse.
Now here are two simple questions: 1. Is this future entirely impossible? If not ... 2. When will it cease to be the future and become the present?
"The principle of scarcity is based on the future unavailability of something, even if we don't need it: Opportunities seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited."
- A quote from Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Caldini.
If you have been following Seth Godin's new publishing platform called The Domino Project, then you may have been just as excited as I was to hear an 'exciting' announcement this morning. The announcement ended up being pushed until later in the day but Seth wrote a wonderful note explaining why and even giving hints as to what the announcement would be. All anyone knew was that it was going to be a deal, but a very limited-time deal.
Seth even went so far as to say that part of the success for the Groupons of the world, is the fact that their business model has scarcity built in. How many times have we been influenced by the scarcity principle? Discounts, deals, limited-time offers... any of these ring a bell?
When the Domino Project finally revealed the limited-time deal, it lead me to discover this wonderful offering by Amazon called lightning deals. According to Amazon.com, "A Lightning Deal is a promotion in which a limited number of discounts are offered on a single item for a short period of time." Lightning deals really are an amazing value for money, but what makes them even more amazing is how they truly epitomize the principle of scarcity. I encourage you after reading this post to just visit the lightning deals area of Amazon's site and take a look at the principle in action. You may find yourself automagically moving the mouse closer and closer to the buy now button, simply because the deal is too good to be true.
So what can a marketer learn from this? (this being the underlying principle of any daily deal business model)... Think rare. Think hard to find. Think the situation with iPad 2's right now. This principle can most easily be applied to an event. Create an event, invite only 50 of the most influential people in your tribe and wow them. This is the idea of a private beta. Think about how much the other x amount of people in your tribe will be hanging on each influencer's every word.
In the past week alone, how much have you been influenced by the scarcity principle? Can we as a society start using this principle as a means of doing good? The clock is ticking.
The Digital Marketing Lounge
A blog and podcast dedicated to the musings and occasional insights of a digital marketer. Written and hosted by Shaminda (Shum) Attygalle.
Topics in the lounge