VENKCHANDRAN.com

I’ve been back in Toronto for a few weeks now, and have been catching up with old friends in the digital marketing industry. It’s impressive to see howthey’re really pushing social media into the forefront of their campaigns. Clients seem to be really pushing for social media / user generated content / twitter/ Facebook world quite a bit (since it’s the fad of the moment), and agents are reciprocating in kind by creating more and more campaigns and leveraging these platforms.

However this is all relatively new stuff for the marketplace and I wondered – how much of their audience is really engaging with these social media campaigns? Is it a really diverse group? The answer was: well yes but not really.

The growing consensus was that all their campaigns were just targeting the same (albeit large and growing) demographic over and over; without much diversity. A lot of the same types of people were typically the ones submitting user generated content.

This often reminds me of a high school buddy who spent most of her days listening and calling into radio stations for their prizes (be the 9th caller etc). I’d be driving around and hear her particular voice call into varied radio stations FTW. For a while, she was the winning (and only) demographic for a lot of those marketing campaigns.

The people that tend to engage in social media conversations happen to be very similar, and perhaps not really that representative of the population that the campaign was intended to hit. Why not?

I argue that its a matter of being incentivized appropriately – nothing new under the sun here. People do stuff because they are incentivized to do it as any economist would say. However the incentives remain woefully similar and only attractive to a certain demographics. ‘Name our new product’, ‘Enter contest X to see Band/ DJ X’, ‘Check out our fan page on Product X’.

There’s gotta be a law of diminishing returns or the value of these contests, and especially the amount of information marketing can glean from this small sample size. As one of my friends in marketing pointed out – ‘we need to hear more from the muggles’.

Some of those ‘muggles’ definitely aren’t going to be people in the same demographic, as pointed out in this rather despondent subject in the New York Times.

As Comscore points out, if the fastest growing segment of Facebook users are over 65 years of age, are they really going to respond to ‘name the new Viagra type pill’, or for those even more senior, to design their own dentures, life insurance policy or adult undergarments. Ok, I know I’m being slightly facetious here – but you get the drift.

Social Media campaigns definitely need to be more stratified – and really have multiple ways of getting to their audience based on their message.

However, the platforms may be there, but if you build it, they might not necessarily come! Just because there’s conversation doesn’t mean that we would innately join in.

Are Jedi Knights Libertarian or Socialist? | The Atlantic Wire.

This is quite a funny article! If people are indeed putting in their affiliation as ‘jedi knights’ in the census, then it’s high time to find out what their political motivations are. I’d say that they are more closely attuned with the Tea Party, given their obvious disdain for the big government agenda of Emperor Palpatine.

Should Coke Execs Be More Hip to Online Porn References? | The Big Money.

Well the Old Spice commercials had it right when it came to knowing their audience, and Coca Cola might have realized this when they had a contest that was pretty much compared to a ‘Facebook porn campaign’.

What’s also interesting is that in this competition, users gave up their capability to enter status updates to Coke in order to win a contest, co-opting their ‘authenticity’ if you will. Leads me to wonder if I can just ‘rent’ my status updates out like banner ads in the near future. What’s the difference between that and carrying the swoosh on my shirt?

So much kinda happened. I moved back to Toronto a few weeks ago and have been way too busy to update, this week, we are officially back on and discussin’ stuff.

Bravo Will Make You a Reality Star if the Web Agrees – NYTimes.com.

Taking a page from the entertainment world: There’s an interesting way that Bravo uses social media to do their research on the success of their programs. Not only do they encourage their reality tv ‘properties’ to engage heavily in social media, but they also use it as research to determine the success/ failure of each of the personalities on their shows.

Digital Domain – World’s Largest Social Network – The Open Web – NYTimes.com.

It’s been an interesting week for Facebook in the press – most of it on the negative side. It looks like Facebook’s  ’walled garden’ premise for collecting social information is under attack for its lack of transparency, and conversely – its issues regarding privacy and security. Randal Stoss’s article articulates how the Internet in itself is the ‘Open Social Web’ alternative that is already a far more powerful social media platform.

As he points out, what Facebook and other social media platforms have pointed out to, is something that we already know and use everyday – the power of the ‘recommender model’ – where we give more weight to suggestions from people we know than other sources of information.

Oddly enough – this important characteristic is what limits his argument,; there is no common capability across the web to reflect the semantic social relationships we have with each other. Even as rudimentary as the ‘Like’ button is in Facebook, it allows us to consider the source of the recommendation from a ‘real’ person. The web may have a plethora of data, but sorting the wheat from the chaff is still a common issue. What might be of interest is to see how the next version of the underlying code of the Web (beyond HTML5) would be able to integrate the DNA of social media platforms and allow us to ‘Like, Dislike, Meh, or whatever’ every component of the web right from the browser, mobile, Ipad, or any other medium itself.

The truly ‘Open Web’ would have to have such social media capabilities built in.

As I’ve been getting knee deep (or in over my head) into social media metrics, I’ve been noticing how nascent this field really is as there is an amazing lack of common agreed upon heuristics to measure social media influence. It’s not surprising, as I believe that the platforms actually have more of a effect on our social behavior (‘liking’ something on facebook, may not have the same value as ‘retweeting’ for example).

As a result, the statistical methodologies and specific ‘weightings’ give to each social interaction has to be affected by each type of platform , but therein lies more confusion.

Additionally everyone has their own particular approach or collection of metrics that they say can accurately measure sentiment.

Is this bunk? Are these accurate metrics we can use? How to sort the wheat from the chaff in terms of these social media heuristics? There’s a lot of questions that need to be answered here as organizations divest more resources into strategies supported by results from social media.

Would you extend your marketing strategy to influencers in Twitter based on their ‘Klout Score’?

Are any of these metrics really stable?

Case in point: This Harvard Business Review article looks at how a ‘follower’ may not be a very stable metric to determine how influential a Tweeter is. Actually, the interview is quite interesting in terms of its suggestions to businesses on using twitter properly.

On Twitter, Followers Dont Equal Influence – Research – Harvard Business Review.

Anyway, just food for thought at the moment – but its something we’re continuing to investigate.

API Scorecard – ProgrammableWeb

I’ve recently become more active on Twitter, and one of the more interesting posts I’ve come across is Tim O’Reilly’s API Scorecard. I’ve always touted that these day’s we aren’t dealing with websites anymore; we are dealing with platforms, and the strength of each platform is really based on their ability to have robust APIs. Sharing is caring after all!

This is a great reference site that really underscores how each current ‘platform’ has specific extensions, APIs and mashups.

I’ll be doing some more analysis on each of these API’s soon

Coffee art,
originally uploaded by BrownMonkey.

I just finished my Barista Course in Sydney, 5 hours of basic espresso coffee making on commercial machines and a course on coffee art. Check out my sad first attempts below.. this shiz is hard to do!

I’ve ben taking pics of good music for over a decade now, but here’s a recent sampling from some of the events I’ve covered for magazines and websites. Including pics of K-Os, Michael Williams (who used be the muchmusic host of soul in the city), London Elektricity, Stacey Pullen, Yam Who, Slayer, Justice, and some crazy Japanese punk bands in Tokyo. Enjoy!

Can good design popularize the approach to sustainability? Puma definitely thinks so by teaming with Yves Behar of FuseProject. I need to see the bags out at the stores first. Perhaps its time for another trip to tokyo to purchase sneakers.

Really Karl? Really? This is getting into even more interesting territory in design I think – then again – you are a man of paradox as Bruce La Bruce (Ah I miss his Now Magazine articles from Toronto) points out in this great interview for Vice Magazine (remember when Vice used to just print fake interviews? hmmm)

This might even put you into Warholian territory; either you are a genius of finding fashion in our everyday consumables, or you are a high art huckster. Let history be the judge.

I think it’s your silhouette that kind of kills the design here in my opinion, it reminds me of the profile of the penguin from Batman, or the art for Steve Carrel’s movie – “Despicable Me”

I know you’re on the Hedi Slimane (New Yorker article by Nick Paumgarten) diet so why not an even slimmer bottle? Guess the 2 liter coke bottle is for when you used to have that oriental fan.

Article below:

Coca-Cola debuts Karl Lagerfeld-designed soda bottles, ads | All The Rage | Los Angeles Times.

Every now and then, there are some brilliant ideas in technology that don’t often get noticed because they aren’t ‘glamorous’ (iPAD anyone?) However, their real brilliance lies in untangling complex concepts and simplifying things.

Take, for example, the simple matter of using your credit card to pay for something. Now as a person who owns a credit card – the complexity doesn’t seem apparent. But try being the business that has to take your credit card. It’s not an easy road.

In another life, I used to help out at a record store (Blackmarket Records in Toronto for those that remember) and I was the technology guy for them (read: resident nerd). I setup the Merchant transaction system, their website, their online transaction system as well as their POS machine. It was a nightmare, not to mention how complicated and expensive the banks (BMO’s Monex) made it. It was also quite costly for us; these micro-credit transactions can really add up.

Then when something like the Square Up solution comes into play. I think that this could be a game changer in retail. It will solve a ton of issues for small businesses, but more importantly, it changes the landscape of being a retailer. First take a look at the video below (weird slim and zoned out Kevin Smith lookalike leads us through):

Done? Ok. So obviously it eliminates costly POS systems, and could possibly cut a better rate of Merchant transfers. By being able to turn any device into a card reader you also eliminate expensive secondary phone lines (or any phone lines at all for that matter if you are in WIFI land) and other items just to support credit card purchases.

Additionally, and this part I think is very interesting – it cuts out the usual middle man – the banks! The banks love to have their taste with their merchant credit accounts, and its an expensive taste. Square definitely has a fixed fee and a percentage, but with all the extra savings in expenditure, it would probably easily make up the ROI for a smaller business.

There is some hyperbole here: – no contracts and immediate uptime.. that hasn’t been truly tested out here.

Ok but here’s the big idea:

Square allows us all to now become retailers. It means we can all use a system to accept credit card payment for anything(small or large) – massage services, cleaning, garage sales, girl scout cookies, charities, and others that we were not able to do before without investing in costly systems. So now I can literally buy and sell you on credit.

Additionally, what Square up is doing is also quite ingenious in creating new market for credit card merchants – the truly mobile personal retailer.

Here’s a bit of the technical description behind how it works:

I do have some more queries on Square up, including how it really interfaces and can determine stock in stores. But that’s another post.

Next Big Thing – Literary Scholars Turn to Science – NYTimes.com.

A new take on ‘Mind Reading’, this is an exciting avenue of research that pairs Cognitive Psychology with Literature. Essentially it asks – why do we like fiction, and what is it about the workings of our brain that lead us to appreciate literature in particular ways. It’s fascinating to think of the ability for us to interpret literature and stories based on the limits and capablities of our brain. Zunshine’s interest in the ‘Theory of Mind’ is really quite cool – I never once thought about how I many narrative perspectives the human brain can hold at once.

There are a lot of similarities to this method of investigation as it is with the brain and mathematics, such as our ability to hold a discrete amount of numbers in our head, and where in the cortex our mathematical reasoning capabilities fire.

A great quote here: ““It’s not that evolution gives us insight into fiction,” Mr. Flesch said, “but that fiction gives us insight into evolution.””

Now about that, perhaps after studying this in depth, is there a way of writing books and fiction that are ‘designed’ for our brains? This might explain why certain certain pulp fictions do so well and others don’t.  It might even explain why Dan Brown is so widely read (seriously, he may be the worst pulp writer I have read – but whatever he and others do seems to stick to other people’s braaaains)

Good lord, what we don’t need is to solve the Da Vinci code of writing like Dan Brown.