Brad Stewart’s newest installment of Mediapost’s Marketing: Green column published today.

Excerpt:

“A summary of radio then: lack of solid student base; tied to the automobile and consumerism; and right-centric. If this is true, common sense would dictate that radio would not be fertile ground for anything greener than the lettuce on a Big Mac.

A recent success story, however, offers deep insight into how pervasive green is becoming, even across a typically non-green medium.”

The entire article can be found here.

NY based Mediapost is the leading online trade publication for marketing and advertising professionals.

The Annual Exploriem Bootstrap awards awarded Adjoy a bronze medal for best value differentiation technique in a business.

Ironically, the value differentiation technique has not been officially announced, but is being launched in March 2010.

Stay tuned.

On the fourth Wednesday of the month, Brad Stewart’s Marketing:Green column focuses on green media strategies and opportunities within specific media. (October: outdoor; November: print; December: TV, January: online video, February: radio). Creative, strategic, operational and other media pros are invited to brainstorm and collaborate, with the goal of indelibly cementing “green” into media of all types: Ideas ranging from “so-crazy-it-just-might-work” to “as long as no one gets hurt.” This month we explore how online video pioneers have been quietly saving the planet behind firewalls, while daring creative producers are pushing the envelope to get their green messages across in front of consumers.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=121388

I have to admit, I’m glad the last decade is over.

Fate really jammed in a lot of extras over the past year, just to confirm that the Big Zero truly lived up to its name: global pandemic flu, the great recession, the collapse of the American auto sector.

“Fear” and “desperation” were the operative terms of the past year and half. Swine flu in Canada had grown men queue-jumping in front of pregnant women and infants. In the innovation sector, money flew the coop and the big got bigger, while the small got leaner and meaner. This meant an increased reliance on customers as funders, which then turned companies of all sizes against one another. In March of last year, I saw non-web companies developing websites to stay alive, while web development companies were getting into branding in order to keep their customers in their silos. Even some of the big players migrated into service offerings in order to subsidize their product companies.

Google still charges virtually nothing for any of its services. I’m starting to wonder when there will be a ticker somewhere on the web to count all the small companies that the Big G has killed with its freemium philosophy. I’m also wondering when people are going to start paying for only a few small, but aesthetically pleasing and really reliable services.

The good news for innovators is that the customer list of the big companies has grown, but relatively little has changed in terms of product offerings. I’m beginning to notice that these huge companies in new spaces used the recession time very poorly. Rather than forge ahead with innovative new offerings, instead they scrambled for a bigger customer base. This means they essentially wasted 10’s of millions, with little to show except a few dozen more big brand logos on their websites and in their demo videos. Meanwhile, the little guys have come out of the fog, realizing that they have the same (or more) technological capacity as the big guys. Plus, since their focus was innovation (out of simple desperation), they now possess the intellectual property of the future. (NB: I’m excluding Google from the talk of these companies… they innovated and innovated and innovated again.)

I think we’ll see some seriously increased M&A activity as the big players in various innovation spaces buy up smaller startups, either to increase their customer credibility (as these startups are now landing big deals), or to up their innovation curve.

I highly recommend that every small tech company out there revisit any plans it may of had to forego patent filings and to begin taking intellectual property seriously again. This doesn’t mean the emergence of “the stealth startup” again. Just make sure that if you do talk about something that you’re about to launch either a) you know it’s already been launched somewhere else, or b) you already have a provisional or some trademarking around it.

Because, when the money starts to flow again, people start to act quite a bit differently.

Hopefully, we’re moving into more respectful and responsible times.

Here’s to surviving the worst decade of our lives!

Today in the New York times, there was a brilliant article reminding us of the failure of the last decade. I highly recommend reading it.

THE BIG ZERO

The entire article can be summed up in a few words from Socrates:

“The most dangerous person is the one that thinks they know things they do not know.” -Socrates

A few weeks ago, I called one of the most significant companies in Canada’s history, simply because I wanted to do business with them. They did their background check, and called me back. Since then, I’ve been going over the pitch repeatedly in my head… I couldn’t help but escape the single phrase that I knew would come out of my mouth at some point in the meeting… “I do not know the best strategy. No one does. It’s a new world out there.” As suicidal as such a sentence might be, I knew every fibre of genuineness in my being was going to scream it at some point. “I DO NOT KNOW.”

I’ve been seriously struggling with this, because -as much as I love genuineness- I have a family to feed. A management consultant on CBC radio recently stated that his practice consisted entirely in simply offering the feedback that his clients wanted to hear! It would be easy to criticize someone for such a lack of leadership, but his honesty is actually testament to his experience. He’s more than likely had a few bills that went unpaid on the basis of telling companies what they actually needed to hear. No one wants to be in his position! He started his career getting kicked out of boardrooms by providing strategic insights that would help companies. He’s now just doing what every good lawyer does, by charging exorbitant amounts for boilerplates.

After reading that New York Times article (which, by the way was posted on Facebook by one of my most respected mentors and colleagues, Sabaa Quao -thanks mate), it was a stunning reminder of the horrible company you keep if you become “one of the experts”.

The people responsible for trashing entire financial systems, destroying countless families, and eroding the financial wealth of millions are the experts. They cannot do what they do convincingly without thinking that they truly know. They really are the people Socrates warned us about.

My prediction this decade is that it will happen again. People will become experts, get promoted, lead the world up a steep hill of false hope and bring it all down to another crashing heap of ruin. Then the experts will quietly disappear with many millions of dollars to be replaced yet again with leaders who are not accountable for their lack of leadership.

I’ve decided that I’m going to buck the trend in that big meeting. I will tell them that I am not an expert. I will tell them that I only know as much as any other literate human being. I hope that 2010 and beyond brings a higher degree of this sort of maturity and lack of ego. Then we can all get to work, make some money and have some fun.

Perhaps social media will enable us all to become a little more human, and a little less expert. Thoughts?

Happy New Year’s Everyone.

There is much talk about online video, but an amazing level of equivocation and ambiguity in the field. Ask someone what they consider to be an online video, and everyone will have a different answer. Consider all of these examples of online video:

A YouTube Video of guys throwing each other off a roof. (This is maybe the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen).

Evian’s babies roller-blading. (My 1 year old son’s favourite YouTube video… seriously.)

Pre-Roll Ad before a Comedic Mockumentary.

Video Display Banner

Video sharing sites for watching pirated content.

Facebook Videos of friends at a party, or of baby’s first steps….

ETC ETC ETC.

The various media blogs and publications really don’t help the matter. As much as people in the field LOVE these headlines, at the end of the day, there is a harmful level of deceiving hyperbole:

“Video Outpaces Search”

“Online Video is the Fastest Growing Medium in All of History”

“Online Video Produces ROI of XYZ%”

This makes it very difficult for marketers who are in the midst of considering a big spend on video production projects. Such flagrant and ambiguous wording also hurts the entire field of online video. So much so, that I’ve seen reputable video production companies avoid online video as a marketing tool for clients.

What do reporters mean when they say “video is bigger than search”? I happen to know that there is some substance to these claims, and that online video CAN bring a very positive ROI as compared to text ads or static mail-outs. For the uninitiated however, such headlines deceive marketers into thinking that you can point a camera at something, put it on your website, and the dollars will flow. Conversely, such headlines also fool some marketers into believing that they can spend $50,000 on video production and there will be a proportionate return.

Both extremes, in my experience are wrong-headed. You shouldn’t spend too much without understanding your target audience’s touchpoints. Conversely, you also shouldn’t avoid online video altogether, in hopes that waiting will enable you to “figure it out”. As is true with many decisions in life, the answer is not at the extremes and lies somewhere down the middle.

Here is a list of suggestions in order to help find the middle path for online video:

1) Develop a video media strategy and appropriate budget. How will people get to see this video? Are you driving them from traditional advertising? Social media? Viral? Email marketing?

2) Make sure you have measurement tools in place so you can identify success and failure at every step of the attention and marketing funnel.

3) What is the purpose of the video? Inform, entertain, build brand credibility, quick sales conversion?

4) How many videos will you likely need? This is the one question that marketers are simply not asking. I’ve talked to many clients who brag about doing a viral video, without any thought to whether or not it will succeed. Relatively speaking, they are still constrained by experimental budgets, and usually blow the whole wad on one single hail mary.

5) Choose the appropriate service provider for the location of your audience. If your audience is at work or in China, then don’t use YouTube! I had a meeting with a potential client a few months ago who couldn’t believe that a startup had greater reach than YouTube. The next day it was discovered that his own company’s IT department blocks YouTube. Generally speaking, video sharing sites are very very strong candidates for Firewall block lists. The higher the visibility of a service provider, the greater chance they will be on gatekeepers’ radars.

6) Make sure your service provider allows for your content. Don’t feel stupid if you’ve used Vimeo as a marketing tool for a commercial product (one of the most sophisticated CEOs I know was caught on this one). Most people don’t read terms of service, and even fewer believe that the TOS will actually be enforced. In the case of Vimeo, a) commercial content is not allowed and b) they are shutting down violators.

7) Identify what success/failure looks like for a video. Be prepared to say “that video flopped”. Don’t feel bad. It’s a new world of engagement and attention. Very few people know what they are doing at this stage. Every single rule in the book has been broken, and those that have followed every rule have failed.

8) Adapt. For success: scale appropriately. For failure: as long as you’ve taken heed to every other rule here, you’ll be fine. The first video may not work, but one of the next 20 will likely bring about that viral explosion. The good news here is that having a useful, relevant, engaging and entertaining library of content is an asset that you can draw upon. Maybe people will start “getting” that first video now that they’ve been drawn into your channel with video 17 of the roller skating babies!

9) Get the Right People for the Job. You do not need a big agency, and you probably can’t do it yourself. What you need is an affordable, experienced producer with an eye on your long term business, talented videographer(s), well composed and reliable actor(s), a great script, and a solid media plan. Some of these pieces will eventually land in house, but others should be left to the pros. Make sure when you ask for a quote you tell them you’re interested in a video a month for the entire year. It’s amazing what agencies will do for a recurring revenue stream, even if it’s relatively small compared to one big project.

Hopefully, with some of these tips in mind you’ll be able to spend $30,000 – $100,000 on a year’s worth of video collateral, media, and marketing rather than the $240,000 it takes to just to produce one single television commercial.

Adjoy and GeoBeats lauched  their first entirely French-language video today powered by the Adjoy platform’s multi-lingual functionality. Le Moulin de Provence is a historic artisinal bakery in the heart of Ottawa’s Byward Market. The video can be seen on the company’s website here.

Adjoy President Brad Stewart’s most recent MediaPost column can be found here. Green: Print reports on leadership initiatives to mitigate the environmental impact of the print industry.

The Adjoy platform has become a local favorite overnight in the Ottawa region. Within a few months of announcing the Adjoy/GeoBeats partnership, 6 videos have been commissioned by small businesses and medium sized enterprises.

“We’re working mostly on documentary-style videos, according to GeoBeats successful production model. However, we’re now getting requests for affordable and professional viral video production, and will be announcing some updates very soon for such a production and media partnership,” says Brad Stewart, President of Adjoy.

Customers are very happy with the video production quality, process as well as the analytic capabilities offered by the Adjoy platform.

“We’ve already had customers talking about the video at the restaurant,” says Melissa Greco, director of marketing for the Grand Pizzeria only a few days after the launch of the Grand Pizzeria’s marketing-documentary video.

On the fourth Wednesday of the month, Marketing:Green will focus on green media strategies within specific traditional media. (October: outdoor; November: print; December: TV). Creative, strategic, operational and other media pros are invited to brainstorm and collaborate, with the goal of indelibly cementing “green” into media strategies of all types: Ideas ranging from “so-crazy-it-just-might-work” to “as long as no one gets hurt.”

To read the article by Adjoy President, Brad Stewart please visit Mediapost here.