Marketing Pilgrim

“By 2017, Millennials – those consumers now in their mid-teens to mid-30s – will have more spending power than any other generation.”

That quote shouldn’t take you by surprise. It’s the circle of life. A new crop of young, working, educated men and women who have discretionary income. In other words, the people you need to keep your business alive.

One hitch, a study by Bazaarvoice says that Millennials don’t make purchase decisions like their mothers did, not even like their big sisters did! Since Millennials are growing up in the social media age, they rely on the opinions of others more than any other group before them.

A year ago, News Corp set out on a new adventure — the launch of a daily news magazine that could only be found on the iPad.

On the content side, it wasn’t much of a gamble. News Corp publishes The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, the UK’s Daily Telegraph and hundreds of other papers around the globe. They also had some experience with paywalls for online versions of their newspapers, but The Daily had to be all that and more.

What they set out to build, was a news source that truly took advantage of everything the iPad had to offer; interactivity, linking, video and audio all working together to tell a story.

I’m a Giants fan so I’ll let Pats fans win this one. It’s Sunday that matters .

The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) put together this infographic (click through to see the full image) and a whitepaper taking a look at the mobile life of Giants v. Patriots fans. It was a close contest for sure and has no bearing on the result for this Sunday but it is fun to consider.

Sports is changing and mobile capabilities are helping to lead that charge. How do you intend to get involved in the game this weekend from an online point of view?

Continue Reading…

We all know by now that Facebook has filed the paperwork for their IPO. If you want to learn who is getting rich and by how much there are myriad blogs etc that will give you that information. I have read a few of these and the takeaway from them all? Zuckerberg is stupid rich while Sheryl Sandberg is “busting through the glass ceiling” and brings home the bacon for her home in a big way. There, I just saved you a toe of time!

What is most interesting is a list of 35 business concerns or threats that Facebook states could throw a monkey wrench into their money printing operation. They include mobile as a weak spot in the business and Zynga being responsible for 12% of the revenue of Facebook. But here is the one that I see as simply a preemptive strike against Congress looking at Facebook as the Google of the social world. It reads like this.

Tumblr is categorized as a social blogging site. That’s a nice title until you realize that there are 42 million Tumblr sites that are generating content (I hope they are not counting my account that I have done nothing with). One would hope that there is something of worth is going on in a community that big.

Combine this with the fact that Tumblr is a free service that needs to turn all of those accounts into revenue and your thoughts probably go to advertising. But how and where? Well Tumblr thinks it may have a solution. Of course, in the name of journalistic integrity the “a” word is not mentioned but we are smart enough to read between the lines.

The New York Times reports

What did you read as you ate breakfast this morning? The newspaper or the back of the cereal box?

It’s a funny bit of pop culture behavior, reading cereal boxes, but Mark Addicks of General Mills says that on average, a person reads the text on their box 12 times. Some of those people are looking for calorie counts and nutritional information, but many are just passing the time as they eat.

I guess it’s a habit we developed as kids, since many cereal boxes came with games and fun facts on the back. Or perhaps it’s because cereal boxes are one of the few packaged items that we actually put on the table when we eat. Think about it. I’m having a frozen pizza, but the box is in the trash, not on the table.

In an ideal Facebook marketing world, fans would like our pages, leave sweet comments on our amusing daily updates, and share their joy with their friends.

In the real world, it doesn’t work that way. You already knew that, but did you know how much it doesn’t work that way?

AdAge recently published the results of a study by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and here’s what they found.

1.3% of brand fans on Facebook are actively engaging with the brands they like. (Meaning I fudged the 99% in the headline slightly, but it’s more about the point than the number.) The study tracked the top 200 brands for six weeks, counting all of those actions that go into the “People Talking About This” number. That means shares, likes, comments, posts and tags.