Marketing Pilgrim

When I saw this ‘announcement’ I really wanted to check into what was going on because it involved a brand I have been a lifelong fanatic of (Coca Cola) and one that I have recently started to really enjoy, Posterous.

While I sometimes wonder why people get so attached to brands and think it’s a little weird, I have to admit that I am almost over the top with my Coke addiction (go ahead and snicker and insert silly drug reference here). I actually refuse to drink other soda products unless there is literally no other choice. Also, I just like the logo and the sense of Americana it carries. Of course, with the amount of aspartame I have ingested drinking Diet Coke for years I will likely prove those lab rats correct but, hey, everyone has to check out of here for some reason, right?

In light of the . . . “difficulties” Google is anticipating in China, they’ve decided to postpone the launch of their planned Nexus One phone in China. The launch was supposed to be tomorrow. (Wait, today? Wednesday. Whatever day that is in China. Stupid international date line.)

China has the world’s most populous mobile Internet market, with 700 million subscribers (nearly twice the size of their landline subscriptions). It’s little wonder Google was interested in this market—but will their difficulties with the government over search keep them out?

Google acknowledged that they might be forced to shutter Google.cn and their search services in the country. The government maintains that Google must obey the censorship laws. However, there was still a possibility that they might be allowed to maintain other services, such as Google Voice, Gmail or Maps.

The third annual News Users report from research firm Outsell has some interesting findings. While more and more people are going online for their news, and fewer people are getting their information from newspapers, it seems that many online news consumers are more like . . . well, “grazers.” And this might actually be good news for Germany’s Federation of Newspaper Publishers.

TechCrunch reports that 44% of US visitors to Google News do not click on any headlines, preferring instead to skim article snippets. Unsurprisingly, the Internet is becoming an ever more popular source for news, especially what Outsell calls “news right now,” with 56% of consumers turning to online news sources (up from 33% a few years ago).

…and that’s a good thing! At least for marketers.

Forrester Research has updated its two year-old Social Technographics Ladder–adding a new rung for Conversationalists:

These Conversationalists are certainly on Twitter, but, perhaps no surprise, they’re spending even more time updating their Facebook status. Watching my wife, sister (in-law), cousins, etc, I can certainly see why Forrester is reporting that women make up 56% of the Conversationlist group–and it’s just like in real life. While men tend to have short updates, factual posts, and brief interactions, my observations suggest that women tend to be more engaged, have longer conversations, and prefer the (debatable) privacy of Facebook over Twitter.

With the Conversationlists being just one rung of the ladder below the Creators–those that publish blogs, upload videos, etc–marketers need to pay particular attention to this group. As Forrester suggests…

I realize that what I am about to write is a stretch but just go with it for a minute. In the past week we have seen Google act as if they are standing up to the Chinese government by not censoring their search results and thus risking expulsion from the world’s largest market. A market in which they are getting beat. Now Microsoft is bowing to pressure from an European advisory board to purge all data from their records after 6 months vs. the 18 months that the major search engines usually do. The New York Times report:

John Vassallo, a Microsoft vice president and associate general counsel, said the company would introduce the changes over the next 18 months, aiming to satisfy a European advisory group that has been critical of how search engines collect and retain data on individuals for advertising purposes.

For those of you who have ever been in sales or were trained to sell you may have heard the expression that it is “better to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission”. Nice pithy little saying that simply means, go ahead and do what you want to do to get the job done and if there are any issues they will be worked out. While that is something that produces chuckles amongst the rebel sales force, in practice it often ends up in bad business and forcing people to change things that don’t need to be changed.