What drives online - Nick Leck's blog

2009-10-26T07:54:00.000-07:00

This Forrester study (How Marketers Can Transform Their Business With Online Marketing) commissioned by Omniture emphasizes that strategy skills are the most important skills for an organisation to consider when interacting with clients or prospects online. "What’s clear from this study is that online marketers must go beyond their traditional role as the owner of the online presence and content to focusing on customer behaviour and insight generation. This requires marketing organizations to bolster their current skills portfolio to include strategists and analytically-focused talent that can understand consumer behaviour and generate insights to support changes to go-to-market strategies and create operational efficiencies that impact the top and bottom line."

2009-10-22T01:45:00.000-07:00

Business networking Internet is still in its infancy as a business discipline. It is starting, however to create formal inroads in many large and small business strategies, processes and procedures. South Africa is also starting to use the Internet to keep in touch with likeminded professionals and unify businesses with common challenges. It’s used as a platform to network effectively to efficiently gain impetus to lobby to the government and other organisations. Internet Communication Professionals Africa is a very new example of a professional network that intends to grow into a representative voice for business. A shining example of this a global professional network is LinkedIn.com. It is a professional networking tool that is free and has 45M users (August 12, 2009), has had 331M page views (June 2009) and is valued at $1B (2008), it has been profitable for 2 years. It has been noted as a site with a younger, more affluent, more influential and harder-to-find audience than the leading business sites; Wall street journal, Forbes and Business Week.

There are 337,360 South African professionals on LinkedIn. A large number of these are marketers and human resources. There are 11,697 results for ZA, Marketing and Advertising, Market Research professionals and 6,675 in Human Resources. The ability to filter and communicate with specific segments of this community makes it a powerful lead sourcing and research tool.

I recently incorporated LinkedIn into an Internet Strategy for a client. The research conducted into the benefits and opportunities was astounding. Further, the global business network is embracing LinkedIn and business networking lie never before. South Africa has an opportunity to expand their information horizons way beyond what we could ever have imagined. All it takes is a little focus and willingness to learn and cautiously test the waters. Soon South African business could be leading the developing world riding the in vortex of the global business information wave.

What drives online?

2009-09-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

In the two years that whatdrivesonline.blogspot.com (blog.conversion.co.za) has been around, I haven't found a good answer to the question. Until today that is, I found an article by Stafford Masie, ex Google South Africa head entitled "What happens offline drives online".

Stafford says in the article: "Understanding that offline events drive online search, and being able to either predict or react quickly to offline events, is one of the key skills required to boost the results of your online search marketing efforts and capture new market share at astounding rates."

Cheapest channel to world’s most valuable commodity

2009-09-30T05:05:00.000-07:00

Information is the world's most valuable commodity. The Internet is free and funded by advertising rather than levies and taxes. It's the cheapest channel to the world’s most valuable commodity. I dream of South African business using Internet like US and UK businesses, to save money.

The British government have changed their entire service delivery model. Service delivery is often extremely information intensive. It is also quite costly when inefficient. Think about the process of getting a driver's licence; before you start these are the questions: where, how, when, how much, what and why. Each of these things requires an individual touch point, an employee of the state. Ask any UK resident about engaging with a government department. Their answer will be, "it's all done online, it’s great, no standing in line or swine flu". Traditionalists may say, "what about personal engagement?” well, I have never woken up saying, "great I'm going to engage with a home affairs official face-to-face today, fantastic!" Excuse my bad attitude towards our government but I'm sure many people share my frustration. Getting things done at a government office is generally slow and onerous. Much of the time I stand in line simply to be told I haven't followed the correct procedure. This means that, not only have I've wasted my own time, but I'll be costing the taxpayer twice what it should have cost. Someone has to be employed to serve me and the inefficiencies of the system. Have a look at these sites:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/index.htm
http://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digitalengagement/
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk

Social Networks and the Conversation

2009-09-11T02:43:00.000-07:00

Trends shows that Facebook is still the most searched for network. It may well be that Twitter users know to go directly to the URL without searching through Google. Alexa.com ranks (globally); Facebook 2nd, Youtube 4th, MySpace 11th and Twitter 13th. The current search rankings below are therefore quite accurate it seems.

Social Networking technology enables business to speak to and hear from their customers. The word "conversation" is less intimidating than "marketing" or "sales". As the author correctly mentions; business speaks to clients and prospects with the objective of converting them to paying customers or retaining them as paying customers. Any prospect that has conversations with a business should know this in 2009. Marketing is evolving into a more honest and communicative discipline where people want to hear business speak. We all make purchases on a daily basis if not individually, on behalf of a company. It makes sense in that case, for advertisers and marketers to be more direct and frank about their offering. As a buyer, want to be converted by the best product and service offerings in the world. I want to be a client of Apple although I am not yet. I want them to convince me that my money is being wisely spent, they haven't succeeded yet. I don't own an apple but I'm quite certain I will because they have already converted me through the strength of their brand. I'm just waiting for the conversation to happen.

Another step for eBooks

2009-07-21T01:39:00.000-07:00

E-book sales make up about 1%of the $25 billion US book publishing market. It is significantly lower across the rest of the globe. The 25% annual growth rate will probably increase significantly as a result of this move however.

One has to wonder why Amazon's share price increased by $1 on the same day that the B&N eBooks announcement was made. Was it simply that Amazon's E-Book strategy had been galvanized finally by B&N's move?

Yesterday Barnes & Noble announced that they have expanded their eBook store to 700,000 titles, Amazon has 300,000. 500,000 of these are free public domain books. Barnes & Noble's eBooks are compatible with the iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows and Mac. Amazon's eBooks are only compatible with Kindle.

When looking at the total number of books available globally, this is still just a glimmer of light compared to the total number of books published each year (UNESCO monitors both the number and type of books published per country per year). There are roughly 1,2 million book titles published each year. In order to reach the intended audience, each publication requires a surplus that will never be read.

An argument for E-Books
A large percentage of all paper books that are published are returned to the publisher. It's estimated that 2.8 million trees are cut down for books that nobody reads. This may be an exaggeration on the author's part but, let's face it, we are a race of skilled wasters. At least 5 million acres of forests are consumed by the paper industry in the Southern US. These figures are hard to find; During the period 1990–2005 deforestation took place place at a pace of about 13 million hectares (an area the size of Greece) per year globally. The forestry industry probably employs about 12 million people globally. It is a massive industry, worth much more than the book publishing and music industries together. It would be too hazardous to guess the global value of the industry today but employment in forestry declined globally by about 10% from 1990 to 2000 due to increased mechanisation. We therefore have an industry where a million people are losing their jobs every year and small countries worth of foliage are disappearing. Please let this be clear, E-Books is not the solution to global warming. eBooks will likely not make a material difference to the amount of paper produced in the next year. The point, however, is that the wheels are in motion and that electronic communication is not heading for the rocks.

The effects of the Internet on our lives
Studies have shown both the good and bad effects that online has on our lives. Interestingly, however, studies have shown that in terms of time displacement, television viewing is the most displaced medium (Kayany and Yelsma (2000) examined the effect of online media on other household
media and on family communication). In terms of information use, the Internet is increasingly displacing other forms of media.

Cannes Advertising Awards Cyber Lion winner

2009-07-09T03:22:00.000-07:00

The Cannes Advertising Awards Cyber Lion winner campaign achieved 99% ROI, 7 million visits in 56 days using mainly online recruitment sites and free web application service providers to promote the campaign. The campaign is now over and the actual position of "island caretaker" has been filled.

The cornerstone of this brilliant Grand Prix winner idea was to use natural search results to drive traffic to the site. "A search for "best job in the world island" achieves about 52,500,000 listings, 231,355 blogs and 43,60 news stories."

The only South African entry I could find was from DraftFCB "STAR IN THE LEMON LIGHT" for Distell Savanna so well done to them.

Gold Cannes Cyber Lions Agencies included:
OGILVY & MATHER Düsseldorf
DRAFTFCB KOBZA Vienna
CRISPIN PORTER + BOGUSKY Boulder
THE VIRAL FACTORY London
Many from BBH London

The The Young Creatives Cyber Competition was launched in 1999. The International Advertising Film Festival began in 1954. The lion of Piazza San Marcos in Venice was the inspiration for the Lion trophy. The second Festival was held in Monte Carlo and then in Cannes in 1956.

"
Inspired by the International Film Festival, which had been staged in Cannes since the late 1940s, a group of worldwide cinema screen advertising contractors (SAWA) felt that the makers of advertising films should receive similar recognition as their colleagues in the feature film industry.

In order to promote the cinema medium, SAWA established the International Advertising Film Festival. The first Festival took place in Venice in September 1954 with 187 film entries from 14 countries competing. The lion of Piazza San Marcos in Venice was the inspiration for the Lion trophy. The second Festival was held in Monte Carlo and then in Cannes in 1956.

After that, the Festival took place alternatively between Venice and Cannes. The films in the competition where split into two categories: TV and Cinema. They were judged according to technical crafts. There were, for example, categories for commercials of different lengths, live action and animation.
"

Internet Companies and Ad Agencies in Competition?

2009-07-05T02:33:00.000-07:00

The conversation between ad agencies and internet companies has been a strained one. In ad agency strategy sessions I have been received as a villain and a hero. In reality I am neither, but I would appreciate being treated as a business person. Many of us were subjected to Bear Stearns' ridiculous valuations. We believed that a our business could be worth a billion after two years of operation, and so did our investors. We believed we would change the way the internet worked. Those days are gone, and we've grown into business people that know one thing in today's economy: Your offering has to show tangible financial benefits to your client. The days of speculation are over, the recent economic recession has taught us this. So, when I see articles from the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival "Internet Companies and Ad Agencies Go From Old Enemies to New Friends", I am heartened. This has happened before when Omnicom Group invested in Agency.com, LiveTechnology and Razorfish at the turn of this century. Interestingly, nine years later, (WPP and Omnicom Group are arch rivals) WPP is now rumoured to be acquiring Razorfish from Microsoft. The difference in 2009, is that we have learned a lot more about the true value of the internet.

Cloud Computing - business is changing

2009-07-01T02:16:00.000-07:00

How many companies, large and small, do you know that rely on the Internet? Some people may have never heard of the term "Cloud Computing". It refers to "a computation or storage offered as a service supported by a pool of distributed computing resources, also known as utility computing or grid computing". But if you have heard of the term, you probably disagree with this description. Many people think that Cloud Computing refers to online services such as SalesForce.com and Google AdWords. They are not wrong. The term has only really been around since 2007. It isn't surprising that some of the brands that appear on the search "Cloud Computing" include Sun, Salesforce.com, IBM and Amazon. These brands made the term popular or placed themselves strategically under this search. Either way, if I could invest in this term right now I would. There is a massive amount of advertising and research money being spent on the term. There are about 110 research articles on BusinessWeek's Business Exchange Cloud Computing research topic. The Cloud Computing Journal offers a glimpse into the world of defining Cloud Computing through it's attack on McKinsey and Co's controversial study.

Who will benefit from Cloud Computing and is it a fad?
No it isn't a fad, it is what the internet always promised to be. The rise and fall of the internet in late nineties and eary 2000 has not been forgotten. Some of the businesses that lost money during the crash are the same ones re-investing in SaaS (Software as a Service) and cloud computing. The interesting trend here is that Cloud Computing has stolen SaaS's meaning and the techie's are not happy. What we need to realise is that small and medium businesses don't have time to research the semantics. SME's don't have Gartner accounts. They have IT costs that are killing them. They want to pay less for IT and get more. Enter Cloud computing.

Even more interesting is that the search term Cloud Computing is most popular in India. Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of India and they are the winning Cloud Computing search city.

Traditional media and online to merge

2009-06-23T01:14:00.000-07:00

At the risk of being completely wrong, my forecast for the next big thing is Google E-Books. Amazon's Kindle E-Book sales are projected to be $612 million in 2010. Google knows how to reach the international market so my estimate is that Google E-Books will overtake Amazon some time next year. The positive side of the E-Book market, as Amazon puts it is, "For books that are available on the Kindle, sales are already 35 percent of the same books in print"

There are some interesting articles to be written on this subject. The peer-to-peer phemomenon has hurt the traditional music industry so much that "retail value of the music industry slipped $7 million last year to $12.27 billion". The significantly larger $35-billion-a-year book business will want to know who is sharing their books but are unlikely to ever find out. Whether knowledge sharing of this magnitude is a good or a bad thing, for the global economy, has yet to be seen.

Have we actually learned from history: "E-books sparked a flurry of excitement in 2000 when best-selling author Stephen King experimented with the format. Since then, however, analysts said the format has largely disappointed, both in terms of sales and in the technology used to access them."

I'll let history decide.

Global hero

2009-04-26T01:12:00.000-07:00

Susan Boyle has just overtaken Barack Obama in terms of search popularity. This comparison shows that the search term "Obama" is less popular than "Susan Boyle". She was virtually unknown until her recent performance of "I dreamed a dream" from Les Miserables on the TV show Britain's got Talent.

The red line is Susan Boyle and the blue is Obama.

Before the web existed, a dramatic increase in popularity like this wouldn't have been possible. Admittedly it was the medium of television that provided the tipping point. YouTube.com allowed users across the world to experience the phenomenon on demand rather than waiting for the 5 minute window at 7.30 pm GMT.

The salient fact here, however is not the technology: it is that an unknown person with something of value could reach so many. This principle will apply to business in the near future. A business offering incredible value will be able to engage with audiences on a similar scale. Currently 2% of businesses in our economy hold 80% of the capital. The internet was designed to level the playing field. Unfortunatly the internet is still very disorganised but the Susan Boyle phenomenon proves one thing: the common person/business with talent will soon rely less on the mass media for tremendous success. This would be a good thing for the global economy because financial resources would be spread diversely as opposed to sitting in the hands of a few that can afford to market to the masses.

Online Advertising Grows by 27 Percent

2008-02-13T03:29:00.000-08:00

The IDC in the US reported that "If you picked a career in Internet advertising you made a wise decision. Online advertising grew 27 percent last year, making it a sector unlikely to be affected even if the U.S. economy capsizes this year, according to an IDC analyst."

Relative to other media types, online marketing is good value for money right now. Many larger companies will be cutting their traditional marketing budget whilst increasing their online spend. This won't guarantee success but the learning process needs to start somewhere. Smart companies will learn less by trial and error rather be careful in developing their online strategy. Other companies will learn over time and waste plenty of in the process. Almost certainly, online marketing will continue to grow steadily for the next couple of years.

Google Adwords is mainly responsible for this huge growth rate. Google leads search marketing. I did a little comparison on Google Trends beta and compared the search terms and you can see that the word "Adwords" is fast becoming a houshold name.

South Africa features at 4th on average for these types of searches.

South Africa in 2008

2008-02-04T23:38:00.000-08:00

I received this in an email this morning. You have to love how good ideas make their way around the internet. It's a unique take on positivity and recognition of the power of the internet.

Power, human nature and balance

2008-02-03T21:38:00.000-08:00

A discussion I had on Friday with a colleague from Mpowered Business Solutions reminded me how important it is to regulate yourself. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lets look at it from the South African perspective, we have a great constitution and the first founding provision states "...South Africa...founded on the following values: ...Human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms".

The internet is founded on the same principles. Information is the most valuable resource available to human society. IT is so valuable that the founders of the internet have always fought to maintain an open sharing policy, to not commoditise information. This information educates, empowers and promotes understanding between cultures, religions and nations: it helps alleviate the single biggest problem on the planet, intolerance and ignorance. Google takes their responsibility seriously when it comes to sharing and neutrality.

Some people predict that Microsoft's $44.6 billion hostile bid for Yahoo will be forgotten, diluted and scoffed at in two years. When considering historical moments like this I ask myself what the checks and balances are.

South Africa has the anti-corruption unit called the Scorpions. This was put in place by the government to ensure they they themselves did not fall victim to themselves. We are all human and fallible, you know it and I know it. Google also sticks to their philosophy and they're completely different to traditional businesses. They realise that they have a responsibility (Point # 8) to each and every human being needing access to information; Information that may change the world.

Define above the line, below the line and on the line

2008-02-01T00:34:00.000-08:00

It's good to see big ad agencies making a real effort to understand online. From what I've seen, traditional ad agencies and marketing companies are sometimes loathe to tell their clients to go and do something online. These agencies are gate keepers to a all of the media platrorms; newspaper, magazine, film, TV, outdoor, below the line above the line on the line, telephone line and washing line. Ad Age says of the Google/Publicis initiative: "...introduce a plan to exchange talent, embedding Google engineers within media-planning and -buying groups and bringing agency executives to the Googleplex to get a crash course in internet technologies". The article is not overly positive but AdvertisingAge often takes a fairly skeptical stance on these things. The point is that an ad agency is taking online marketing seriously. This is seriously cool.

Technorati Profile

Positive energy

2008-01-28T21:33:00.000-08:00

In light of the recent lack of lights in South Africa, maybe Eskom should be chatting to Google.org about their Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal (RE < C) and RechargeIT Initiatives.

Back to earth

2008-01-28T07:06:00.000-08:00

Opinions and freedom of expression make blogging powerful but the art is in getting the balance right. I found some balance in this post on Ego and Opinion.

Online Technology in Economic Transformation - South Africa

2008-01-22T04:18:00.000-08:00

Today businesses need information technology. A farmer wouldn’t plough their lands by hand but rather use technology. Something which was quite advanced in its day, a tractor and a plough. Similarly, organisations process large amounts of data using tools. Information technology tools such as software turn data into fertile and actionable information. Accountants use accounting software to track and process financial data. What information technology systems do we use to track and measure our BBBEE compliance? The amount of data required for skills development or procurement scorecard is similar that of an annual accounts report. Does reporting and managing BBBEE have to feel like ploughing a field by hand?

Using Technology to aid economic transformation

The ANC’s National Policy Conference of 2007 a Gallagher Estate the Commission Reports and Draft Resolutions made it clear that the ANC is relying greatly on information technology to assist economic transformation; http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/policy/2007/conference/econ_transformation.html

“Our vision of the economic transformation takes as its starting point the Freedom Charter's clarion call that the People Shall Share in the Country's Wealth! Since 1994 we have made substantial progress in transforming the economy to benefit the majority, but serious challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality remain ... National prosperity through rising productivity, brought about by innovation and cutting edge technology, labour absorbing industrial growth, competitive markets and a thriving small business and cooperative sector and the utilisation of information and communication technologies with efficient forms of production and management.

It isn’t only South Africa who approaches transformation in this manner; an article on the Cisco website, http://www.cisco.com/web/EA/press/ea_press_240907.html “Cisco Engages Angola Government on Economic Transformation through Technology” their opinion is IT is a valuable tool in education and the competing in a global economy: “Around the world the Internet has been the engine behind the spectacular growth of the global economy, enabling the sharing of skills, knowledge, expertise and creating local wealth.” Anthropology states that the human race’s success over other animals is the ability to adapt to the environment. Humanities direct environment today is society, economics and politics. Humans in general are affected more by these than the ecology, yet find it difficult to manage them effectively. An economy cannot strive unless there is political and social stability but we are able to analyse a situation, learn, plan and respond in the best way. Is information technology becoming our way of adapting to our changing environment? New technology and sociological development in human history has been met with skepticism. This is healthy for South Africa’s economy, neglect is not.

Information technology as a tool in business

There are maestros who slice information into beautiful edible pieces like a butcher uses his cleaver to create a French trimmed crown of lamb. These craftsmen and women come at a high price, or do they? Actually, they are the majority of every office. The MD’s assistant types an elegant email on behalf of the boss and sends it to a mailing list, calling recipients to action, possibly changing the known universe forever. Information technology is a common tool. Today it is as easy for humans to use as it is for a primate to dip a blade of grass into a termite mound to retrieve valuable nutrition. Some can do it some can’t but IT really isn’t a very complex technology anymore.

Failures of information technology

Has money been wasted chasing information technology fad? ‘The bursting of the dot-com bubble marked the ... lengthy early 2000s recession in the developed world. http://www.stock-market-crash.net/nasdaq.htm explains “By early 2000, reality started to sink in. Investors soon realized that the dot-com dream was really a bubble. ...One high flier, Microstrategy, slid from $3500 per share to $4! Numerous accounting scandals became known, showing how many companies artificially inflated earnings. ... Millions of workers were now jobless and had lost their life savings.”‘ Is the internet is simply a landscape which is too difficult for the average South African company to navigate or could it be it be tool to help to even the new playing field?

Successes of information technology

In developing countries, the internet is often used less for greed but rather for saving money. SARS has successfully used it to collect taxes, The SARS eFiling website explains; “While the benefits for taxpayers are simplicity, speed and convenience, it is really companies that stand to gain the full benefits”. This website is a direct indication of the technological advancement within government. Over 3.8 million returns are submitted via eFiling each year. Secure payments of over R155 billion are made each year via eFiling. The eFiling website was met with a healthy skepticism when it was launched in 2003. Users we confused that it had been built by a 3^rd party, an ASP hosted solution and not by SARS themselves. However, SARS had more pressing requirements; Manual reconciliation, cheque fraud and postal service delays have become some of the main reasons why SARS had been experiencing late and “non payment” of taxes. This was addressed on a large scale by the eFiling website. (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/20/35395550.ppt )

Broad Based Transformation

There is significant risk that our economy will fail in the next ten years unless The Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) strategy (http://www.dti.gov.za/bee/bee.htm ) is executed correctly in our economy. It states that in order for our economy to grow we need to absorb more black people into our economy. If more than 20 million people outside the economy became useful contributors and beneficiaries of our economy, some other socio-economic problems may be alleviated.

South Africa can transform in a cost effective manner:

Contributions to BBBEE initiatives are largely recoverable to any given entity, both in the long term and short term. The measurement of BBBEE is not the same; it is labour intensive and onerous. It is more the volume of reporting rather than the complexity which is costly. One may have some difficulty interpreting some of the Codes’ definitions but the calculations are Grade 9 mathematics. Implementing a bespoke or cusomised BBBEE management information system in ones business may be a way to address the measurement and tracking issue in the long term. Once businesses have control over their contributions and targets they are able to make informed decisions. The more we learn about empowerment, the better we will become. Should we be looking at integrating our CRM’s, risk management solutions and procurement databases into a BBBEE MIS?

Large companies often have thousands of suppliers whose BBBEE scorecards need to be collected. Skills development measurement is extremely granular level of measurement, when trying to recoup skills expenditure over a given twelve month period; by individual person spend by gender by race by program. Attempting to process this information by hand or on paper is a labour intensive task. Above all it requires the attention of individuals who understand all aspect of the business. It is expensive to engage people such as this in tasks a menial as measurement.

The DTI and industry associations responsible for driving transformation need this information in order to make informed decisions. There are around 2.5 million registered companies on the CIPRO database. Individual entities, industry associations and the government require a BBBEE strategy, transformation and implementation plan and measurement planning. I know of at least six large industry associations, other interest groups and organisations that have taken the lead on automating transformation measurement and management. They provide their members with information technology solutions to speed up and reduce the costs of compliance.

The DTI is in the planning phase of creating an online solution and various other companies and organisations have built OLAP (On-line Analytical Processing applications) scorecard solutions, however the there are only a handful of people that understand how best to tackle the challenge. Using a standardised data capture method in order to return meaningful information is the first step to tracking transformation. It need not be complicated.

The baseline BBBEE presidential report shows that the “Broad based” part of South Africa’s BBBEE scorecard is frighteningly lacking. This report looked at 2000 businesses in South Africa as a sample base. The “broad based” elements of the scorecard that will help provide education and hopefully a glimpse to the economy for the majority of black South Africans. An opportunity does exist whereby SARS could publish all small back owned businesses on a single website to promote them.

BBBEE is either an opportunity or a threat. It could be a costly era for our economy or it could be a catalyst for national business intelligence. The next ten years in information technology history is unique. Business and government will work together as they have never done before. Will we be able to look back at BBBEE and say: “South Africa revolutionised the use of information technology in economic transformation; South Africa became a leading global knowledge economy spurred on by black empowerment; Leading economies look to South Africa for knowledge on economic transformation; The miracle of peace in 1994 was only a glimpse of the unprecedented national growth and prosperity achieved during the ‘broad based empowerment’ years of 2007-2017.”