People read blogs because they are interested in the thoughts, experiences and knowledge that a blogger has. The best blogs also entertain, too. But what they do not do is paid editorial advertising - that’s for the banner ads. When a blog writer gets caught accepting payment for positive product mentions, what follows is a PR disaster, all the worse because other bloggers feel that their world has been tainted.

That’s why TechCrunch quickly made a big deal of it this week when an intern of theirs got caught being rewarded with a laptop for a post: he got fired and all his posts got wiped immediately. No names were given, and reaction seems to be that TechCrunch’s responded well and maintained their credibility. A few bloggers though, traced the guy’s identity and wondered who was willing to pay him - it’s a known rule of the game that any interests must be declared. The unfortunate thing is that innocent startups had posts about them removed and may also come under suspicion of bribery, too!

If a positive blog post is worth getting, it is prominent enough to get some scrutiny too. If the writer gets paid, the truth will comes out, readers will naturally react in three ways:

1. Not to trust the writer again
2. To assume a company paying for positive mentions could not get them any other way
3. Not to trust such a company

This is something that has not really dawned on some European companies, who see blogging as a legitimate form of paid advertising - in fact, one Swiss social media marketing company, Trigami, bases its business on getting paid blogging coverage. It will eventually dawn on their customers, I think, that this is not what social media marketing really is. The fact that their business model is not big news in the blogosphere is probably simply because they are only doing it in German - if they start with English-language ones, wait for the storm! However, regardless of language, the basic rules of SMM - be open and helpful, and network for all you are worth - may mean hard work, but they are there for a reason!

SWR3 is Germany’s favorite radio station, daily reaching 3.82 million people across the country. The program is accessible through FM, cable, the Astra satellite or web radio - so, theoretically, you can listen to your SWR3 everywhere there is internet. But that’s not all. The station also offers a social community to its listeners and fans, dubbed “SWR3land.de”, German for SWR3 country. Currently, there are 39139 members and 1246 groups online there.

Those groups are searchable by activity or by number of participants. Additionally, there are photos, forums, blogs, a chat and a studio webcam available to users. The groups are mostly topical, e.g. fan groups of certain shows and their hosts or numerous groups for lovers of cats, bbq or travel. Among the more unusual ones are one for singles, one to combat smoking and a continuous, user driven story about a character called Alfon Erbsengrill. This group actually is among the most active at the moment. It was started in June 2009 and already features 54 pages of forum posts, together making up one huge story - or fairy tale, as the original poster calls it.

This example shows the whole point of creating a social community and at the same time demonstrates what is needed for it to succeed: People need to be motivated to participate and fill the community with life - and thus be positively inclined towards the brand behind the community. Such a favorable opinion creates positive word-to-mouth advertising, or viral marketing, if you will.

Now, how to make this happen? Well, first of all the platform needs to be as open as possible, i.e. leave people room to express themselves and use the community in the way they want. Because who better to know which topics the users might be interested in than the users themselves? Nevertheless, there are certain to be some fail-safe, premier topics a company can create in order to seed activity in the community. In the case of a radio station these would obviously be fan groups of its signature shows, like SWR3’s “Wirby & Zeus” show for example. Reference the community group in your show, host “bring your own content” competitions, ask for listeners opinions and so on. Once the community gets under way, more groups will start to sprout and the users will “take over management” of the community content and activity.

What else is out there? The very popular KIIS-FM, from Los Angeles, also lets its listeners sign up online. The KIIS VIP club isn’t really a social community, though, more a straightforward means for marketing and marketing research. Users can earn points by participating in surveys, listening to the station and referring friends. Points can then be traded in for special prizes and promotions. In short, there isn’t much interactivity or user generated content. America’s most popular radio station, talk radio WABC from New York, offers a similar insider club, where people benefit from promotions and special alerts in exchange for their personal information. Additionally, WABC has an official fan site on Facebook, though only 1798 fans, which doesn’t even come close to the numbers of SWR3!

So, what can businesses learn from SWR3land.de? Well, certainly that it helps to have a positive and distinct brand to serve as a label for the community. But THE winning arguments for a community are its openness and the liberty of use it offers to users, as opposed to being “just” another marketing platform. People tend to notice this and are more inclined to participate if they feel that their efforts and opinions are genuinely appreciated. And that’s what viral marketing is all about. If people feel they are being coaxed into providing free advertisment or buying stuff, however, they won’t take part and the community won’t work.

Not for the first time, a giant corporation is attracted by the value proposition for online marketing, but gets caught disrespecting its rules, and loses the positive impact it was looking for. According to a recent Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung article Vodafone is reputed to be spending up to €200 million on persuading young people (”Generation Upload”) via placards and via the Web (YouTube, Twitter, etc), to use their mobile phone as their primary Internet access device at all times of day. But they are openly paying bloggers to promote them. One of these bloggers, Sascha Lobo (pictured), has up to now opposed Vodafone’s stance of supporting government proposals about restricting internet access, and his involvement is causing a real storm.

Some of the other criticisms of the campaign in the article:

1. “Generation Upload”  consists mostly of people who’ve uploaded one or two videos in their lives. So is the market really there? At some point, probably, but via paid-for access on their mobile phone? The evidence is at best equivocal - even iPhone users predominantly use wifi access rather than mobile internet.

2.  It’s not at all clear what the value proposition is - the campaign seems to be mostly about image projection. According to Tobias Langner, Professor of Marketing at the University of Wuppertal, getting people to spend more time online is best served by making the tariff more competitive - particularly difficult if ROI means covering a massive advertising campaign.

3. How will glossy posters in train stations convince an audience defined by its adherence to the web?

The fundamental principle in online marketing is authenticity -  products and presence that inspire people to blog about you, not paying them to do so. Vodafone has not convinced yet with its offering, and is paying for blogs, both of which are likely to provoke criticism. But even criticism provides an opportunity for positive engagement. Is that opportunity taken well? This is the comment that Fritz Joussen, CEO of Vodafone Deutschland, made in response to critical blog posts:

“We’re talking about 500 blog contributions, and we make products for 40 million customers. I’m happy to talk with bloggers about our products, but not to discuss my view of the world.” (my translation). In a few weeks Vodafone may realise that they don’t want all the flak that is coming their way and follow the golden rules - listen respectfully, admit problems, be positive, engage. But I’m not betting on it yet.

We have used Filtrbox quite a bit to monitor blogs and news, and been impressed with the customization and flexibility that take it well beyond what you can get with Google alerts. They’ve now stepped up their paid for service, Filtrbox G2 further, offering a bunch of new features including Twitter monitoring, blogs and social media mentions, and customizable levels of reporting and analysis to name just a few.

Along with location-based and other mobile apps, social network search and real-time search of Twitter and other streams, Google is no longer the only touchstone in search, and companies can miss important, even potentially crucial, conversations by ignoring others - Amazon, for example, recently was slow to pick up on a storm of criticism created by its policy on homosexual themes because it didn’t take Twitter seriously enough.

Of course you can combine tools such as FriendFeed (for Twitter and social networking site content) and IceRocket (for blogs), but at the moment this looks to me like the best stand-alone solution short of signing up with all-round social media software or services like those offered by Jive, Leverage or Telligent, who include monitoring in the package.

Once again, Seth Godin has hit the nail on the head, this time making an intelligent and important distinction between publicity and PR.  I’ll just give the essence in these two quotes:

Publicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, make a commotion.

PR is the strategic crafting of your story. It’s the focused examination of your interactions and tactics and products and pricing that, when combined, determine what and how people talk about you.

In a funny way, this post, and its implicit criticism of the kind of follow-my-leader thinking that befalls many companies, reminded me of an interesting recent Slashdot post, The Formula That Killed Wall Street. Slashdot criticized the over-reliance on computer models that produced a single number to characterize risk, which led to investment decisions way beyond brokers’ financial and professional depth.

At Extendance, we often get asked about how we monitor results. It’s a legitimate question, but often I get the feeling that what the client would love is a magic formula or tool that will be the key to measuring PR success. However, the secret of PR is, as Godin says, not numbers of mentions or hits, but the creation of identity, something that just has to be understood and worked at. In reality, it’s much more important to work from the story, and set more store by the relationships and leads that build week on week than quick indications of impact.

When Jakob Nielsen speaks…

Jakob Nielsen is the website usability guru, and when he talks about usability, he is credited with complete authority. May seem strange when you visit his site — it looks like sites of 10 or more years ago. But everyone knew how to use them. His point is not that all sites should be like his, but that they should be as functional: to know when to behave like a user manual (easy to use, easy to navigate, and has all you will need in it) and when like a magazine (visually impressive, surprising, involving).

What Nielsen thinks of online ads

Nielsen’s ideas aren’t based on personal impressions, but on a great deal of observational research of web users behaviour. Now, speaking at the inaugural Web Experience Forum in Boston, Mass. he has some important news for advertisers as reported by Alistair Croll at GigaOm: Forget banner ads, which are purely interruptive, so users ignore them. Go for search ads, which users click more often than generally thought. Nielsen in this case does not give figures for his survey, but according to Croll:

Jakob showed the audience at WEF08 several videos, including heat charts of eye movement, to demonstrate this process. Some testers skimmed picture ads that contained text — but only briefly…Pictures that are content get attention; pictures that are “fluff,” visitors treat as an obstacle course to bypass, particularly when it’s bland photographs of “smiling lady with a headset” or “guy who looks happy with a service.”
…He even produced an example of a gigantic rat on ask.com (celebrating the year of the rat) that testers didn’t recall seeing. And this thing was half the screen!

Is Nielsen right about banner ads?

Mostly, I think. Banner ads can and do work, but only if they draw the eye and are relevant to the user’s reason to be there. Portals are an example, review sites another, and you could find others. But outside of these, when they are interruptive, they are mimicking the display ad world rather than the newspaper classified ads. Even in print media, it’s the classified ads that pay for themselves, and that’s why search-related ads do so well. Even then, billboards and newspapers often attract your attention when you aren’t particularly doing something else — e.g. waiting at the traffic lights or skimming through the pages — whereas web users tend to be more purposive, so the bar is pretty high. So although it’s too much to say they don’t work, they’ve got to be attractive and relevant at the same time.

Where banners win over search ads, though, is in catching people who didn’t already see themselves as potential customers. If a small number of clicks are converted into high value sales as a result, banner ads can pay for themselves many times over. The other important case where banners work is sponsorship, i.e. promotion rather than advertising. Their purpose is brand enhancement, rather than selling, so they don’t have to interrupt, just get the name noticed.

A good PR tip from Nielsen’s site

While it’s worth looking at the resources on Nielsen’s main site, it’s also worth looking at his biography page - which, despite a bit less navigation than I would like, does a very good job of publicizing him- I particularly like a couple of the spoofs he links to: Jakob Nielsen Declares the Letter ‘C’ Unusable and Davezilla’s Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Fighting Styles (as shown above). Not only are they fun to read, but Nielsen’s listing them makes his otherwise rather austere presence much friendlier.

Microsoft has decided to drop the ads with Jerry Seinfeld. Personally, I think this is a big mistake - it looks like the company is messing up the biggest-spending campaign most people have heard of, and that’s going to confirm many people’s impressions that the company are just not getting it right these days. Yes, the adverts were a bit kooky, and Seth Godin may have a point that there is something a little bit fake about it all.

For more than twenty years, Microsoft has relentlessly commodified itself and the software it makes. It has worked to become a monopoly, a semi-faceless organization that cranks out very good (or pretty good) software that gets a job done for the middle of the market. It’s been a profitable strategy. But now they have Apple envy.

But from my point of view, Microsoft had made a good start to a difficult but limited job. Basically, they needed to show the benefits of ubiquity and affordability, i.e. that they had brought computing and communication between computers to huge numbers of ordinary folk. At the same time they needed to defuse Apple’s advertising message without giving Apple more ammunition. I thought they put across the message in a funny and oblique way, even if it was not hugely accessible. They just needed to move it a little further to show that they have done a pretty good job that no-one else could have done, and they will carry on doing a good job for ordinary folks.

Instead they decided to go head-to-head with Apple, which always looked like a no-no to me. It sends the wrong message: That Apple are setting the agenda and Microsoft doesn’t like it. The new ad is trying to imply that Apple ads are disrespectful to the people that use Microsoft. But by doing so, they’ve put the ball in Apple’s court and, on past evidence, I doubt Apple will waste their chance.

I can imagine the Apple guy in the guise of the therapist, for example. A user worries, ‘My friends think I bought my Mac to look cool, but I just wanted a computer I could use without having to call the helpline all the time’. The response could remind them the user that ‘Apple just doesn’t see why you have to do it all the hard way. That’s why we introduced the desktop and mouse to personal computing all those years ago - which everyone else copied. Anyway, why shouldn’t you enjoy looking at your computer? It’s a great machine. It should look good.’ OK, I’m not an ad copywriter, but you get the idea. Apple can just tone down the cool, emphasize reliability and that they see the user as a friend. They’ve done it before, and it worked. Now’s they’ve got the chance to do it all over again.

In a couple of pitches recently I had a problem getting prospects to really see what is meant by participation marketing. So, anticipating that this could be a common problem, I’m going to try in this post, and maybe afterwards I’ll find it easier to explain!

When we talk about participation in an online conversation, some people feel they already do this by creating relationships with specialist journalists, sending news releases, and getting onto blogs published by mainstream news sites. But that is not the same thing at all. Participatory activities are fundamentally different. They’re not a way of broadcasting your message, but of creating a presence. That demands a different mindset, in which dialogue has to be more spontaneous. Normally this is also a method that suits the longer term, not a substitute for news releases.

Participation requires a different idea of speed and scale, and this is where the benefit is hard to see at first, If relationships are initially with a few bloggers whose readership is orders of magnitude smaller than those of TechCrunch and Engadget, why should a limited ‘live presence’ matter? The answer depends on how we see Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is not primarily about social networking - that’s important for young people, but in some ways it has been over-hyped both because MySpace etc. are popular and because they showcase many Web 2.0 features. But the key for businesses is that browser and email are points of entry to lots of different applications and forms of communication (features that the Chrome browser in particular is pointed at). The attraction to business is functionality. In all kinds of businesses, people are spending an increasing amount of time, and engaging in an increasing range of activities.

As business activities move online, ‘live participation’ become more valuable for three reasons.

1. Neutrality is highly valued

Vendor-neutral blogs are highly visible for search terms that are highly specific to them - and that does not just mean for Internet search, but for services like Google alerts, widely used to keep up to date with breaking news in all industry sectors. The well-known blogs are usually not talking about your subject and even when they are they will often approach it from a completely different point of view from yours. The ‘magic middle’ blogs - with thousands rather than millions of readers - can be a powerful presence, because search engines give precedence to what they see as neutral content. Good posts on a new topic (together with comments sent to them) are likely to get referenced many times and stay high in search rankings for a long time, maybe years.

2. Conversation is a two-way process

Dialogue will really show you what works and what doesn’t. Normally, when you talk to PR and advertising agencies, they take your message and convert it into a sales message. They may turn it this way and that first, but they are unlikely to really challenge your information. When you are in a conversation where no-one gets a financial benefit, sales messages don’t work, and you have to be more objective and informative. As that kind of communication acquires added value, you will find out how to make it work for you online. How else are you going to do that?

3. Advocacy multiplies your efforts

When you develop relationships with people who are strongly interested in you, those people will often turn into advocates. If they like you and think you provide a genuinely useful service, they will be happy to help you promote it by providing links to your website and other offerings. That is particularly true if you can help them with insight or expertise. Relationships of this kind can then create advocacy. That advocacy is priceless because you are not directly promoting it, or paying for it, and neither is your PR company. But it depends on risking a degree of directness and openness.

One week on, and another ad from Microsoft, courtesy again of Bill and Jerry, and the long version weighs in at a whopping 4 minutes. I really wanted to see how I’d done with my predictions, and essentially, I think I wasn’t too far off. Except that Microsoft was way ahead of me. I thought the odd couple would end up in a diner talking about the common man. In fact they ended up having dinner with the common family.

I think the new ad is both subtle and funny. They’ve come to stay with a ‘typical’ family to get back in touch with what life is really like for average folks, with all its little moments of awkwardness and embarrassment, of which there are plenty. This episode wrong-footed all the pundits: Jerry, rather than being yesterday’s comedian trying to be today’s, something for which Microsoft was widely ridiculed, actually says, (more or less), ‘look at us Bill, you in your Moon House and me with so many cars I’m driving in my own traffic jam - we both need to get back in touch with everyday folks’. Clever concept, clever casting.

From the comments I saw, the ad people got it, no problem, and commentators from the ITU world, such as Michael Arrington (’I remain confused‘), just scratched their heads and wondered what Microsoft was thinking of. They’re doing something funny, and bits of this one wouldn’t be out of place (IMHO) in the Seinfeld creator Larry David’s own cult series, Curb Your Enthusiasm - of which I am a big fan. In this one, Bill actually takes a real part in the comedy duo. First one, I thought he just got away with being geeky and saying almost nothing; this one I think you fall for his understated wry style.

I think a lot of IT people still hold the opinion that Microsoft is simply trying to rehabilitate Vista. As I said last week, it’s a much bigger exercise than that, it’s about the company. Getting more acceptance of Vista is more than a side-effect, but still essentially a bonus. The ads are making the admission that Microsoft is out of touch, but in a way that actually shows the opposite - i.e. ‘we have been out of touch, but we’re not any more’. Putting the founder in very humbling circumstances really takes the wind out of Apple’s sails, too, because the success of those ads depends on Microsoft’s perceived arrogance. This series - which will have a massive audience - may well succeed in creating sympathy for the Microsoft geek in the Apple adverts and making the cool apple guy look that little bit snobbish. In a way, the ad out-cools Apple in its post-modern sensibility, something few brands manage, including Apple and Steve Jobs (not that this seems to have hurt them so far). All in all, well done Microsoft.

The many reactions to the new Microsoft ad with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld are mostly pretty negative. Some also remark on the other hand that the number of reactions is itself a good thing, especially as a series starts. The fact that the whole campaign is to cost $300 milllion is pretty much guaranteed to make everyone talk, anyway, so maybe that strategy pays for itself!

Add the fact that it is for Microsoft, one of the biggest brand challenges there is, and it’s interesting to speculate where the campaign will go. At least for PR companies like us it’s a useful exercise, too. David Webster, general manager of brand and marketing strategy at Microsoft, outlines the plan:

‘Windows is a product that’s been around for a long time,’ said David Webster. ‘It’s well-known and part of people’s everyday lives. What people don’t know is that Windows has kept pace with the changes in people’s lives today. We thought it was a good time to catch people up with what windows was doing.’

But that last sentence hides a mammoth task — defusing the hostility surrounding MS, establishing some degree of warmth and trust so they will listen, and then presenting the benefits. I don’t believe what commentators say about this being primarily an attempt to rehabilitate Vista, but about rebuilding the brand. Sure, revenues and users are being lost. But the bigger problem is loss of confidence in MS, and though helping Vista’s image will restore confidence, it is not enough, and it is too risky to put it all on one product, no matter how central.

So, taking the hint from Webster, I predict the campaign will point out the positives from the company history and culture, showing how they’ve helped users, getting ‘a PC in every home’ and taking some of the sting out of the bad publicity of Vista. Then they’ll turn to the vision. And even though Webster says they won’t go head-to-head with Apple — which Apple would love — they will be consciously trying to undermine their message of ‘cool guy vs. clueless control freak’, while denying Apple any obvious ammunition. I think the first ad points to how they’ll do that already — showing how ordinary they are. They’ll pitch Apple, by implication, as the computer for the elitist, while the PC, enabled by Microsoft, was the affordable, beige, ‘computer for the rest of us’, that just got on with the job without trying to be creative or win prizes. Perfect for doing the everyday stuff like writing letters and doing the tax returns. The point gained, that’s when we’ll hear just how much Microsoft has done, is doing, will do for the ordinary guy.

So, let’s see how it might execute:

Episode 1: The Teaser

So far it goes - Jerry Seinfeld, the star of a witty sitcom that is purely observational, inconsequential comedy, walks past the Circus Shoe store, spots Bill Gates trying on discount shoes, walks in, and the two have an inconsequential conversation. At one point, Bill Gates shows Jerry his Circus Shoes Clown card. ‘Platinum’, he says, at the same time coy and proud. It’s a sight gag, which no-one seems to have really picked on. Gates is a clown. He’s awkward, he’s nerdy. And he’s a genius. You can’t help having some sympathy. ‘Bill’s just like the rest of us. Give the guy, and his company, a chance. They’re trying.’

Future episodes: Bill and Jerry get talking

Jerry gets really interested, and keeps the conversation going with lots of quirky, non-threatening remarks.

Predicted storyline: They’ll go to a cafe. Maybe a funfair or circus, where Bill’s Platinum Member Circus Shoes Clown card will come in handy. At some point Jerry will see the HQ and get the history. And meet lots of other Microsoft folks (Bill is not going to keep the audience engaged through a whole series). Jerry will then get a privileged look into ‘Bill’s World’ - not the luxury version of one of the world’s wealthiest men, but the geek version with the future vision. He’ll see how in the past, that vision meant offering great value and bringing computing to regular folks, enabling the ‘PC in every home’ and the Internet revolution. And then Jerry’ll see all the stuff you can already do with Microsoft (Vista and Silverlight will be key), but don’t know it. Jerry will be like a kid in a toy factory, and will ask funny questions that give Bill a chance to correct misunderstandings about Microsoft. Then there’ll be the vision of the future.

Final episode: Weird, funny, unforgettable

The last episode will be completely tangential to the rest and is there to create buzz, memorability and maybe even a catchphrase.

My predicted messages:

‘Bill Gates and Microsoft, they’re kind of out of fashion. But remember, they’ve done a lot for us. And they’ll do a lot more for us in the future.’

‘A lot of people hate MS because it’s the biggest and most successful computer company of all time. But that hurts our feelings - we only got to be the biggest by making the most popular software of all time. We can’t help it if people want to buy our stuff!’

‘Microsoft loves the fact that there are so many new Internet companies doing browsers and email and search and who knows what else. We invented a lot of that stuff - and we’re going to invent a whole lot more. But of course we’re more than an Internet company.’

‘So Vista has been misunderstood, and hasn’t worked with all your old stuff first time. But it’s new, and takes some getting used to. There are lots of great things it can do, and it will run great on the new PC you’re thinking of buying.’ Some of the Mojave stuff may sneak in here, but not enough to give Apple ammunition.

‘Anyway, there’s a lot more to Microsoft than Vista. Ever heard of Microsoft Word? How many people do you know that use anything else? Even on the Mac you used in your show. And look at all the other stuff we’ve given you over the years.’

‘Just look at what you can do on XBox3! Look what Silverlight can do for you! And Windows Mobile!! (And, and…)’ At some point Jerry will have to get Bill or whoever it is to calm down so the enthusiasm doesn’t endanger their health.

‘We’ve done so much, but there’s so much more for us to do. So many cool things that no-one else is going to do for you. We thought of it all because we’re nerdy. And if you find that funny, we’re cool with you laughing at us. ‘

Will it work?

This could be perfect timing - Vista has made a humbler more human Microsoft appear credible, and Google has shown that real competition exists. Given the budget, I actually think this could work. The acid test for me will be whether Apple’s ads, which must get under Microsoft’s skin like nothing else, are made to appear snobbish and spiteful rather than witty and creative. That would really be a success. Despite being mostly a Mac user, I wish the campaign well.