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Young Dads Buck the Stereotype When it Comes to Shopping for the Family

posted on April 23, 2012

When you think about advertising aimed at men, you probably think beer, sports, cars and technology. But what about groceries, diapers and household cleaning products? New research from Ipsos MediaCT and Microsoft Advertising says that a man’s role in the home is changing and advertisers would be smart not to ignore what’s happening. Not only are they get involved with shopping, they’re also spending more time sharing their opinions with friends.

The results, which were presented at today’s iMedia iMoms Summit looks at two different categories of men, Pre-Family and Young Dads. Both are big media spenders dropping from $350 to $400 dollars a month on things like movies, games, cable TV, internet and mobile phones but how they spend their money differs.

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Facebook Makes Changes to the Changes in Their Privacy Policy

posted on April 23, 2012

Facebook would like to thank everyone who took the time to carry on and complain about the recent proposed changes in their Privacy. . . I mean. . . Data Use policy. They’ve taken everyone’s comments into consideration and now they’d like to make some changes to the changes, or at least re-explain the explanation of the changes they’ve changed.

I believe this would be a good time to quote Billy Flynn in Chicago.

Give ‘em the old three ring circus
Stun and stagger ‘em
When you’re in trouble, go into your dance
Though you are stiffer than a girder
They’ll let you get away with murder
Razzle dazzle ‘em and you’ve got a romance

Think I’m being too hard on Facebook? One of the biggest complaints about the original round of changes was this line:

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Corporate Blogging Hits the Skids

posted on April 20, 2012

Do you still blog on behalf of your company? If you do, you’re part of a dying breed. According to a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth report, corporate blogging is on the decline.

Of the companies they surveyed, only 37% were blogging in 2011. That’s down from 50% in 2010. If you look only at Fortune 500 companies, the percentage drops to 23%.

Why are corporate blogs falling out of favor? USA Today says, mostly because Facebook and Twitter are so much easier to manage.

Keeping up a blog is a lot harder than people think. I’ve dealt with dozens of clients who jump in with grand plans of updating every day! They soon learn that updating even once a week is a chore. It’s amazing how quickly seven days pass when you need to come up with a fresh blog post.

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Inspiration Alley: Arby’s Thanks Their 1 Million Fans

posted on April 20, 2012

Arby’s hit a milestone this week, they passed 1 million fans on Facebook. To celebrate they made a Facebook header photo to thank each fan personally.

Okay, so they can’t list every name, but it’s a clever idea for two reasons. First, it shows that Arby’s appreciates every person who liked their page. This isn’t a celebration of something the company did (“we sold 1 million sandwiches!”), it’s a celebration of something the fans did and that goes a long way. People like to be recognized, even if it’s only a token show of appreciation.

Second, it’s a milestone. I don’t know why, but human beings love any kind of a time or achievement marker. 10th Anniversary, the first, the biggest, the longest, etc. We’re goal-oriented. We like to check things off To Do lists and rip pages off of the calender. I don’t know the psychology behind it, but it works.

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Microsoft Touts $479M Online Loss in Q3 As Improvement

posted on April 20, 2012

Overall, the results that Microsoft shared yesterday from their 3rd quarter efforts were good. Overall, revenues were up 6% to over $17 billion and net income was just over $5 billion. All in all, pretty darn good.

It appears that in order to fund the company’s efforts in the online world moving forward this performance will need to continue. You see, the online unit lost $479 million in the quarter. But hey, that sure beats the fact that last year’s Q3 results netted a $779 million loss so this quarter is really a good thing. Check out this slide from the Microsoft announcement.

I understand that you have to try to make things sound good even when they aren’t quite that way. But Microsoft consistently produces quarterly losses in their online efforts that are measured in large percentages of $1 billion. That can’t go on in perpetuity can it?

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Google Wants Your Images Through Updated Panoramio

posted on April 20, 2012

Google likes to get information from people any way they can. One thing they are good at, especially in their quest to make maps and places data richer, is getting users to do it for them, for free. It’s brilliant since people like to be associated with a winner so if they can contribute to Google’s greater good they can feel like they have accomplished something.

There’s nothing evil about this at all. It’s just interesting what people will do and how far companies will let them go. They both get what they want but only Google profits from it.

Now Google has updated its Panoramio photo sharing service to make it easier for people to populate Google Earth and Google Maps with photos. Here is a video from the Lat Long blog

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64 Percent of TV Viewers Recall Seeing Social Prompts on TV

posted on April 19, 2012

The concept of social TV is leading us into a whole new world. Instead of just watching a show, we can sync up, interact, like, Tweet, chat, check-in or Shazam it!

I’m a full-time resident in this land, so I speak the language fluently, but I do wonder about those who are just passing through. Surely they’re plexed by the coded messages they see floating in the corner #nbcgrimm, facebook.com/theapprentice, or the graphic you see here. (Mork calling Orson)

People may not know what these cryptic notations mean, but they do remember seeing them. According to a study by Accenture, 64% of consumers recall seeing some kind of social media symbol while watching TV.

Here’s the breakdown:

Facebook “Like” symbol (42 percent), QR codes (28 percent), Twitter Hashtags (18 percent) and Shazam symbols (9 percent).