I've moved to isabelleokane.com

My blog has now moved to http://isabelleokane.com/ and this site will no longer be updated.

See you there!

The search engine is dead...

Goodbye "search" engines, hello "decision" engines...

Microsoft are releasing a new engine called "Bing" which provides smarter results and is born out of the fact that 15% of Google searches are abandoned.

Bing claims to be "not just a search Engine - but a decision Engine".

Results are not just ranked by popularity but by logical categories & really excels when it comes to complex searches such as shopping or planing a holiday.

For example you can enter the dates of your holiday and Bing will aggregate results from various airlines & even can show you a chart of when the fares will be cheapest.

When searching for a restaurant you can refine your results by price, parking or even atmosphere.

It's not the semantic web, but it shows us we're well on our way to a smarter web....and I can't wait to try it, but it's not yet unveiled unfortunately.

For more details check out Business Week's article.

How to use Twitter for your business

I've been using Twitter for quite a while now and I think the only way to really understand the platform's dynamics - is to get stuck in.

However if you're new to Twitter and want help understanding how to use it and how to behave, here's a great article that's worth a read.


Personally I can boil it down into some DO's and DONT's

DO:
Be chatty, be real, be personal
Connect with your competitors and employees and help to create a twitter eco system around your industry
Allow your employees to Tweet, sometimes work related, but also sometimes about the great coffee they just went for
Use people's Twitter names, start to build up personalities...Twitter is social
Use Twitter to get a quick snapshot reaction from people about a business problem or idea, it's not consumer research but it's a damn good guide

DONT:
Encourage your followers to send spammy links - or do so at your own peril
Set up automated posts - or your account will look like an impersonal spam feed

How to get your brand into "sponsored conversations".

So you're starting to consider blogger outreach programmes and are not sure about how best to negotiate the area of "sponsored conversations"? Read this AdAge article...

The bottom line is be AUTHENTIC & be OPEN about any sponsorship.

Jeremiah Owyang echoes this thought and provides some very useful examples of sponsored conversations.

My take on the viral chart

I was checking out AdAge's viral chart and first off I must say I find it rather surprising that Vodafone's recent viral has done so well. I don't find them that compelling, and frankly their "voices" are very irritating...I just want to switch them off!



...really, is there anything that special about this series of virals? What it does have going for it is it's length - just long enough to tell a story without loosing interest.

Frito Lay's viral held my attention til the end - & this is obviously helped by my femininity as I am the target market for these clips.


One last observation is that being genuine works and we're wise to special effects making them - NOT funny, and when you're setting out to be entertaining via humour...you need to think again about treatment.

TMobile gets this.



Cadbury didn't



BUT (and this is a very big but) as regards creating buzz on the internet...in the form of various spoofs and takes, and viral "notoriety"...Cadbury's strategy is doing very well as you can see by the likes of this...



So when it comes to making virals, ideas that are bigger than the brands own execution and that inspire or provoke viral responses are a more effective way of generating buzz.

And by the way...Cadbury rocks with this piece of PR on the Saturday Night Project...(embedding was disabled but follow this link).

How App-Advertising is unlocking the power of mobile

Mobile users have for a long time been averse to marketing interruptions on their mobiles...but the birth of smart phones has created a new style of mobile marketing that consumers can't seem to get enough of...

Go Pure Blonde!

This is the type of marketing that really gets me excited. When a brand takes it's core values and extends them in such a meaningful, creative and not only impactful - but beneficial way. I love it!

Convergence of Marketing & PR 2.0

Some friends of mine recently set up a online PR agency called Dialogmix. No this is not a pointless plug for them - it actually threw up an interesting question for me.

Traditionally I have experienced PR as a separate, albeit complimentary from mine. And I took this preconception with me as I
moved into the online realm. However as PR also moves to the online sphere - where is the line between what is marketing and what is PR?

I have been meaning to write this post for some time now but now ended up being the perfect time as they've addressed this notion on their most recent post. Chris Abraham also mentions this notion of "convergence" in his blog posting.

Inside the brain of a shopper

Marting Lindstrom is a very smart marketeer who has been investigating the brain's neuro-reactions to marketing. I've recently bought his fantastic book Buyology which I hope to soon read.

Just came across an interesting piece of live shopper neuro research he did to examine shopper response to promotions - watch it on his website here.

Shorter and sweeter

I haven't been blogging much recently due to a hectic schedule and the time it takes me to write my current style of blog...which have been pretty long - some would say too long for today's reader to read - and clearly to long for today's blogger to write!

As such I am now officially commencing my new - speedier, shorter blogging style. Just so you know. :-)

At the mercy of tribal culture...

I had lunch yesterday with some very interesting people and we were discussing the output from the Portal To Your Dreams scenario planning workshop on the future of social media.

We then got to talking about co-creation of brands - a hot Marketing 2.0 topic. We've all heard that brands can no longer dictate to consumers rather they must engage and involve them in the co-creation of their brands.

But as was astutely pointed out yesterday, what does that mean for brand direction, brand consistency or brand quality - without any control over your brand, how do you look after your brand? How do you ensure that your brand stays true to itself? Personally I feel that this is with dialogue and brand-consumer partnership. I don't think that marketing 2.0 is about handing over the reins of the brand to consumers so that they can do what they will, but rather riding the brand horse with them. It's about giving them a sense of involvement or ownership of the brand, and when we feel that we have a stake in something, we suddenly become the best promotors.

Yesterday at lunch the conversation turned to a jeans company, how could they involve consumers in their design? Could the even start affiliate lines, if the brand were Levis...(it wasn't) could we have Levis by Isabelle? And could I then become an affiliate seller/marketer of my own line of Levis clothing? If I were successful, would I then gain more of a stake in the brand and even more ownership/involvement?

As I fell asleep last night, I got to thinking of recycling and customization of clothes, and also of tribal identities for example Craft Kids in the UK...



Could we see a move towards tribal re-appropriation of brands. Where powerful, influencer types would co-create or customize brands (with or without permission) to create meaning for the brand which is tribally relevant and tribally constructed? In fact is this the way for brands to survive?

With the natural ebb and flow of tribes, trends and fashion will are already seeing a demise of the mega brand as cult brands such as Jones Soda, who involve their tribal followers and have been small enough to be exclusively relevant to that tribe.

Even Jones Soda are experiencing difficulties as they grow. It's difficult to remain cult if your brand gets too big. Historically marketers have wanted brands to grow, to become mass market - but how can they achieve this without engineering their brand's demise when appealing to the masses in a ever fragmented, tribal culture - means appealing to no-one.

Is the answer to focus on one tribe and involve them such that you co-create meaning and relevance? Should today's brand's seek to downscale in order to survive?

Amsterdam Twestival Viral

I said I'd post it, so I have - better late than never, here's the viral that we created for Twestival Amsterdam.


A birdie told me from Isabelle O'Kane on Vimeo.

Striking the balence in viral branding

Spent my day doing the offline edit of my viral to promote Twestival Amsterdam (which I'll post soon), the conversations we had in the editing room got me to thinking about what makes a great viral and where that balence exists to engage people before revealing the brand...and making both elements work...

I think Greenpeace do an excellent job here in this piece, I was drawn in my this thoughtful piece of, what I call, "film-making" the reveal of Greenpeace was an "a-ha" moment that made the meaning of the viral even more poignant and did a supreme job for both the brand and the artistry/meaing of the film-making..

adidas create community via hugely successful mobile campaign

Check out this great campaign from adidas by offering insider information and value they formed a community of basketball fans and provided them with updates and news for the NBA festival.

A nice extension would have been to be help them connect to each other and discuss what was going on and who was going where...

Enter Twitter mobile...

A future of Social Networking...

I'm soon going to hook myself up with a Poken, they're great little gadgets that along with Facebook Connect show us how social networking platforms are becoming engrained in our social structure and the framework for social and professional communications.

Their website doesn't show you precisely how they work so check this out...

This is good news of course for brands, as where there are social platforms trickling into online & offline life there is an increased ability to connect with your consumers in meaningful ways...

We've seen how Starbucks is creating really interesting and relevant ways to connect with their consumers via the iTouch/iPhone so we can quickly imagine (for example) how they will be able to link up with their customer's social network for example to sponsor/offer a coffee meeting through LinkedIn for example...

Exciting times

Getting excited about Twestival Amsterdam

Haven't had much time to blog these days as I'm busy busy busy helping to organize Twestival Amsterdam a charity event which is raising money for charity:water so it's for a fantastic cause and a very interesting event.

Just over a week ago a group of Amsterdam Twitterers including me, met for the first time to organize the Amsterdam Twestival - now we're one of over 100 cities across the globe taking part in "the world's first global (offline) social networking event".

After just over a week it's been an amazing response and we're really starting to get traction as we're tapping into networks, motivating key influencers to get involved and spread the word...it's a fantastic case study for the groundswell effect of social media and I'm really excited to see how many followers we will have on the big day - February 12th.

So here's to Twestival and I leave you with some interesting social network analysis on Twitter.

Getting to the root of things

Been listening to another great Jaffe Juice podcast from Joseph Jaffe. He interviews the authors of the book Answering the ultimate question


The book proposes a simplification of our brand evaluation methodologies by asking one "ultimate" question - "Would you recommend this company to your friend" and pursuing "real life" responses - i.e. not artificially staged, focus groups or sterile interviews. Rather using a "Net Promotor" methodology that exposes and leverages true customer experiences and attitudes.

The authors group 3 types of consumers - promoters (who score a 9/10 on the ultimate question), detractors (who score 0-6), neutrals (who score 7/8). The authors studied consumer behaviours in relation to responses given on this question across a range of product categories and an interesting finding was indeed this scale - which they mention is influenced by "positive bias' - essentially in asking a question, people try to give a positive response - and rating a 6 isn't really positive rather it is "damming by faint praise".

So really in asking this "ultimate question" and then digging deep to understand the drivers and personal experiences that have led to this response, we get a really rich territory to understand how our brands are performing in the real world of consumer experience.

With this methodology of brand evaluation, it's clear that the marketing focus should indeed start with customer experience rather than relying on advertising to drive brand performance.

But in order for organizations to be able to leverage the power of "Net promotors" they need to tackle their own organizational issues. With so much old school "wisdom" entrenched in their business, it's difficult for large companies to adapt to a new way of approaching their marketing. A business' internal branding, it's people, and the collective culture and philosophies and communications networks, need to be addressed before putting innovative strategic communications in place.

As Jaffe succinctly puts it COST = Culture, Organization, Strategy and Tactics.

The way I look at it is this - how do employees relate and communicate with each other? and from there - how do departments? Is there a communications network in place which enables the organization to interact naturally and behave as a community? Is there a flow of communication and ideas? Are we developing and enhancing a rich internal culture and philosophy?

Addressing these important internal issues will enable organizations to benefit from their frequent & rich yet under utilised customer interactions. Customer experience employees have a relationship with the end customer and the knowledge they acquire on a daily basis must not be squandered. Rather these employees could be connected to executive level employees via an internal community. In joining these organizational dots - we empower not only employees, who will feel more passionate about the brand and become far better brand representatives, but also empower customers as they should no longer be frustratedly talking to a bored and disconnected customer service rep.

I could go on, but my blogs are long enough already - listen to this great podcast to get more detail on both the authors thoughts on evolving organizations to leverage "Net Promotor" and focus on the "Ultimate question".