360DigitalInfluence

I am not a fan of fear marketing. I have talked before about how I think that it paints marketers in the worst possible light and is a predatory way of convincing a consumer that they need whatever you are selling or else something bad will happen. The thought again crossed my mind as I read Mark Simon’s piece in this past week’s AdAge magazine titled “Beyond the Hype: The 10 Most Asinine Trends Online and Why You Should Ignore Them.” First of all, let me say I am all for going beyond the hype, and there is certainly lots of it these days. Everyone has the latest and greatest solution for just about everything and somehow because I write a marketing blog I’m on the media list to get a press release about at least 50% of them. In the past month, I have had offers to review 5 new video sharing sites. Seriously, does anyone actually need to share that much video in that many places?

But hype aside, I was a bit disturbed by Simon’s article because of a few reasons. Firstly, he is targeting CMOs - the top layer of marketing decision makers. And his counsel to them is that there is too much hype out there so they should avoid doing lots of things that others are jumping into. His points about astroturfing or paying bloggers, the drawbacks of behavioural targeting and the danger of forgetting about search are all spot on. But the reason I started the post by talking about fear is that I believe it is what keeps great marketing from happening. And the problem is that Simon’s article seems designed to instill fear into CMOs. More specifically, it might just lead more marketing pros to stick to what they know online and be afraid to try something new because it might result in some negativity, the lawyers might kill it, or it is different to what has worked in the past.

Innovative marketing requires risk, not dismissing entire channels of marketing as useless things to avoid simply because they are overhyped. Hype is not usually based on nothing … and though I agree that the promise of virtual worlds has been great exaggerated (for example), just ask Starwood whether the early feedback they got on their Aloft hotel concept was worth it. Or whether Pontiac feels their MotoratiLife campaign has helped them connect with their target audience. The point is, doing something strategic always makes sense, hype or not. And virtual worlds are about more than Second Life. Habbo Hotel recently published their own Global Habbo Youth Survey of 42,000 young users of the site on their buying habits, which any CMO who markets to teens or tweens should not miss reading. If you can’t imagine a great marketing opportunity there, you’re definitely missing something.

On the subject of microblogging, I’m no great fan of Twitter, but no one who was at SxSW this year and saw the effect that Twitter had on collaboration and the vibe at the event could say it wasn’t a great marketing channel. I have also posted before about some other “non-boring” ways to use Twitter for marketing that are also worth considering. The point, again, is that dismissing an entire channel of marketing as only hype and therefore worth ignoring seems naive.

Mobile marketing is yet another area with great promise where Simon takes the simple view that because the obvious way of using mobile marketing is to send uninvited text messages, the medium should be avoided because you might get in the way of a user’s “critical tasks.” What if those critical tasks involve finding a destination? Or seeing restaurant reviews. Or finding a place to drop off your dry cleaning? All are critical tasks where relevant advertising could actually help a user’s experience instead of hindering it.

On his point about pre-roll video ads - I agree that they can be annoying, but the suggestion that users will mute their audio before watching a video doesn’t make sense. If you are watching a video, you either have headphones or are in a place where the noise factor is ok. The point with the pre-roll again is relevance. If you run an ad before that users feel is misplaced and must be watched as “payment” for the video the really want, their attention will be low. If, on the other hand, a user accesses a video about automotive reviews for new 2008 models of convertibles, and your preroll ad is for your model of convertible … they would probably pay attention.

I understand where Simon is coming from, but his point of view seems to be that any innovative thinking beyond search marketing is not worth it because other channels are overly hyped. What we really need to do is focus on making advertising more relevant and caution marketers against media buys and ads that are stupid or just non-strategic reactions to the latest hype. As thought leaders, our counsel should be to help our clients find smart ways to avoid hype but still embrace innovation and do something unexpected and engaging … not offer them a quick hitlist of ten things they should ignore whenever anyone mentions them. We need to get away from the fear and think differently.