Buzz Canuck

NHL & YouTube

I can remember when I used to rush home on Tuesday nights in high school to watch the Hebsy awards on Global. It was pre-TSN, pre-Sportsnet and it truly was the best & the quirkiest in sports highlights found anywhere in Canada. Some great backgroun d music used to accompany the highlights from The Stranglers too.

Fast forward 20 years and we're in a different world now Toto.

NHL just landed a deal with YouTube and apparently will get a share of ad revenues off their video clips. Given NHL's stagnant growth in the U.S., I'm not too sure who should be paying who, but as the first major league to jump on board,  it's likely a benefit to both sides. Now the NHL doesn't have to comb through the YouTube database for copyright infringements and hopefully this will make YouTube community  NHL mashup videos more commonplace.

Notice how YouTube interprets this piece "The NHL agreement is our first with the major sports leagues, but we also have some other exciting conversations going on with other leagues," said Kevin Donahue, vice president of content for YouTube. "The NHL clearly understands the value of the community factor on YouTube. This is designed to help … connect with their fans."

If the NHL is getting this stuff - the league that many have critiqued at length for not making their game exciting, allowing "clutch and grab" ugly hockey for years, alienating the non-corporate ticket holder, not reaching out to the grassroots of the lucrative US market and going for short term money vs. the long term interest of hockey ...then surely other marketing and media properties must fall in line soon too. 

Have a look at some of YouTube's hockey best.

Buzz Canuck Hits the Blogging Century Club

According to Technorati, there are over 60 million blogs, I dare say that most of them, if they're active have yet to break 100 posts ---this is mine today. Break out the bubbly (or the Wolf Blass which is what I'm quaffing as I write this post).

100 is a bit of milestone of success in many fields - it frequently separates the winnow from the chaff. Over 100km/hour and you are our speeding, 100 miles in one day in biking and you have stepped into amateur Lance Armstrong shoes, breaking 100 in golf is something 85% of hackers can't regularly achieve, 100 RBIs is a great baseball offensive statistic, your first 100 days on the job is survival and your biggest test, getting 100 on an academic test is "keener" status.

As a timely post, Church of the Customer served up a great pdf from some of my favorite marketing bloggers on a survey done by CK at CK's Blog on Why We Blog? Have a read...the spectrum of reasons was enough to get my next 100 posts started.

For those that have already achieved the century, thanks for making me into "a made man"  and for those that are thinking "will I ever get there" - take it from one episodic blogger, even if you're not getting comments, people are reading you and you are affecting how they think (as witnessed by my surfing 4 month old blogs today). Don't give up your social media rites and duty!

Hitch 50.com - Fubar Hits the States

Oh, to go back to the wreckless abandon of post-university youth.

Two adventurous lads Scotty & Fiddy from Victoria, B.C. are hitting the 50 state capitals in 50 consecutive days. The caveat - they can't pay for their transportation so they are hitching all the way. 

They are documenting and bringing to life all their travels at Hitch50.com. They've had close to 200,000 hits.

This ranks up there with other Hunter Thompson/Jack Kerouac  road trips - 30 hockey arenas in 30 days, 300 Tim Hortons in 7 days, 40 straight Foo Fighter concerts, 50 Fall festivals in 7 days, 50 ski hills/500 runs in 7 days..

The even cooler aspect - they have all the word of mouth and Web 2.0 tools you would ever want to see in a website -

- social networks - they are My Spaced and Facebooked
- video - they have You Tubed and Flickerd updates of all their travels
- RSS - they have over 200 Feedburner readers and have over 13 news aggregator and RSS chiclets
- altruistic word of mouth - you can phone and email  them directly and  help by driving them for free

I actually tried to reach them from the road but got their answering machine (you can reach them at 310-494-8058 or hitch50@gmail.com), still waiting for a response - will update this post if they call back.

The uber cool thing - they have used the GPS capacity of all new US cell phones and linked it to software by Mologolo to follow their travels from Time Square to currently somewhere in their 40th State in Hwy 55 in rural Indiana.

My brain starts to ache thinking about the fun implications about this in the future.
- Think about a true virtual amazing race in Canada where media and fans can track movements of their favorite teams.
- Think about the "Gawker" factor and fans being able to follow their favorite celebrities
- Think about tracking a Road Rally Race across the desert
- Think about extreme adventure racing
- Think about tracking a corporate scavenger hunt

Very cool stuff, a mash up of the classic road trip and connected life - bravo Fiddy, bravo Scotty...call me back, otherwise I'll wait for the book and movie with Johnny Depp to come out.  One big question - how are you getting to Hawaii? We will wait and see.

Thanks again for Rick from Publicis for tipping me off.

Word Up Conference - Toronto November 14th - Summary

Having just experienced a marathon day of word of mouth at the Word Up Conference and social media with Shel Holtz at Third Tuesday, there is a tonne of real estate to cover here.

Here's a quick "around the world in 300 words" on the Word Up conference held in Toronto:

Andy Sernovitz from WOMMA introduced the day with a solid case for word of mouth, the need to regulate ourselves and root out the bad players (the Honesty ROI), a simple but intuitively smart 5 step process on word of mouth and probably a good enticement for joining WOMMA if you want to be linked to marketing's future

Doug Walker from TBWA and RPS  had an incredibly cool and amazing autobiographical story on the hatching and building of the Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament and the 5 translatable principles of becoming an authority, playing with faux authenticity, mutating what you start with, stoking participation and expecting accretion

Rick Murray from Edelman was the most polished speaker of the day and made a valiant case for PR types and communicators to   mine an army of citizen journalists - some good advice on ethics, a really well polished and thought out Cisco community site and a good litmus test question "if my family and friends were part of this program, would I be comfortable executing it"

Matthew Straddiolo and Patrick Thorburn from Matchstick  laid out two solid cases for word of mouth with their online Nokia blogging experience and  offline Wine Council experience

Andrea Wojnicki from Rotman School gave a much required overview on why people talk and word of mouth that bears repeating - people talk about products and brands for 8 reasons (notice the big freebie is not one of them):
- Altruism
- Policing the Market
- Cognitive Dissonance
- To Connect and Be Social
- Scarcity
- Reciprocity
- Self-expression
- Self Enhancement

Pinny Gniwisch's segment on his company Ice.com was an eyeopener on a large Canadian company using a blog Sparkle Like the Stars to not only get their message out but to also land some runaway sales with little or no controversy

Brent Hill from Feedburner lifted the veil that shrouds RSS and how media and messaging will work and be filtered now and in the future

Maxine Friedman from Brand Intel/Brand Dimensions group provided an option I'll have to follow up on for scouting out your best influencer network

Ted Graham from Hill & Knowlton played anchorman and provided a window to the future with some clever social network maps that have the potential to be a huge and diagnostic tool in the future for a wide range of audiences. Just imagine knowing how influential you are right now at a click of a button with a visual representation of who the mega connecting hubs and regular hubs are in your professional or personal life.

Thanks again for Dave Forde from Profectio pulling this conference together, it sets up the table for more opportunities to "teach and preach" about where word of mouth is heading in Canada...up!

   

Spinglobe, Craphammer & a Social Media Score

I really think there are a lot of interesting people in the social media space but just like my days in advertising and marketing, there are really very few people that can get up and speak and really wow me. Sean Howard is one of those guys.

Beyond the fact that he is a Stephen Baldwin lookalike (I can't forget BioDome) and he is a good juggler (a skill I never learned), Sean is an excellent resource to get into the "cooler side" of social media. Not only does his company Springlobe do a lot of really interesting online development work and has an interesting mission but the guy really does have a sixth sense for how this space works. He has now started up his own blog Craphammer - it's well overdue. Heck, he even knows what a Dunbar Number is.

I've still got to ask for his presentation but a few key takeaways that really resonated with me:

- if you were to talk to your friends like your advertised, you would likely be punched in the face
- social media is a disruption channel - how do you make it look and feel palatable to marketers
- we are moving away from the web as a task-driven thing, sometimes whether we're 12 years old or 52 years old, the web and social media is the new place to just hang out
- what is the benefit of your customer's involvement - shouldn't a brand impression in MySpace count for more than on CBS

I've also enjoyed his follow up post - how to build a Social Media Score. I love the idea of creating the social media equivalent of a Definitely Would Buy Score (concept), Recall (Ads) and Net Promoter Score (word of mouth). A whole bunch of you social media-ites should rally behind this and contribute to this hatch-ling of an idea.

Canada's Best Managed Brands

I always look forward to Spencer Francey Peters best managed brands list each year. By and large, Canadians don't toot their own horns nearly enough about some of their homegrown assets - so overall, a big thumbs up for SFP taken on this project. A full copy of their report attached.

Kudos to Tims for taking the honours again...given the gap between it and Canadian Tire at #2, we could be seeing the same results for awhile. 

The "but" sandwich is that as I look at the list of best managed and worst managed, there really are no glaring misses here --(CT strikes me as high  and CBC and TML strike me as low) but I have to ask myself the question - what are we really measuring here?  Is it equity? is it satisfaction? Is it performance vs. expectation? is it likability? is it good management? is it merely size and awareness?

Besides the fact that I hate the word "management" in this context  (it implies a word of mouth unfriendly, clinging top-down control of brand), I would strongly encourage SFP to look at asking the question "which brand would you recommend to your friends?"

As shown by Frederick Reicheld's work in his recent book, the Ultimate Question - measuring word of mouthability is a much stronger predictor of business growth. London School of Economics has corroborated by showing that businesses that have above average amounts of positive  word of mouth have 4 times more growth than those with below average word of mouth.

Enough blathering, here is the list.

• Tim Hortons - 38%
• Canadian Tire - 20%
• WestJet  - 19%
• Cirque du Soleil - 18%
• President’s Choice  -14%
• Molson Canadian - 11%
• Loblaws -11%
• Bell/Bell Mobility - 9%
• TD Canada Trust 9%
• Shoppers Drug Mart 9%

Worst managed

• Air Canada – 34%
• Bell/Bell Mobility – 16%
• Rogers Wireless – 11%
• CBC – 10%
• Zellers – 10%
• Toronto Maple Leafs – 10%
• Petro-Canada – 9%
• Hydro Quebec – 9%
• Bell ExpressVu – 9%
• Future Shop – 9%
• Telus – 9%

Air Canada's Website Exposed Again on Seth Godin's Blog

For an airline that appears to be goofing up all over the place online, Seth Godin certainly must be using them a lot (see Seth's previous post on Air Canada's website)

In Seth's Blog today, he profiles the attached Air Canada Tango price listing - I've seen this very same chart before....it is confusing but man, is that Tango Plus price sharp at $106.

Word of Mouth Jeopardy - I'll Take Seth Godin for 300 Alex...

Over the weekend, I presented to MBAs in Paul Tedesco's class at the Schulich School of Business on the topic of Word of Mouth (and all its tentacles). Paul, I love you inviting me to teach but I hate you for making me get up early on a Sunday  :).

I got a kick out of the enthusiasm and some pretty good engagement from the students on an "expert level Word of Mouth Jeopardy"-type of contest. Here it is now for your consumption.

Plus, an Influencers coffee mug for the first person to correctly answer and the most entertaining person to answer the top 11+1 terms below from the word of mouth world:

Bad Word of Mouth
(for 100) Astrotrufing
(200) Sockpuppeting
(300) Dooced

Influencers
(for 100) The 1% Rule
(200) Crossing the Chasm
(300) The Dunbar Number

Word of Mouth Catch All
(for 100) Net Promoter Score
(200) Otaku (require two definitions)
(300) Echo Chamber
(400) Network Effects
(500) Weak Ties (not to be confused with Family Ties, a very funny family sitcom from the 80s)

Double Jeopardy
Cialdini's Six Weapons of Influence

Top Eleven Dream Word of Mouth Campaigns

I often wake up in cold sweats at night dreaming about building an online community or word of mouth campaigns for various saliva-inducing, set-up-for-success and amazingly buzzable clients.

Being a new  media and a challenge to old perceptions, requires a lengthy sales cycle but no matter, over the next year or so, I would loved to be faced with the prospect of working on an awrad-winning campaign for the following brands (or types of brands):

1) Beer - having worked for three beer companies, you realize this is my blood. Three types I would love to work on and know WOM would be exceptionally responsive too: a premium brand (like Guinness, Stella or Grolsch) that have real stories to tell with real provenance and a differentiated product/package, a counterculture, independent  brand (like Steam Whistle, Boris or Big Rock) or an obscure retro,  brand of the underdog - Pabst Blue Ribbon or a Labatt 50 in English Canada would be  the sweetspot.

2) Tech - take your pick but haven seen the RIM guys just win CEOs of the year, to create a Blackberry community would have so many different flanges and benefits, it makes me schoolboy giddy with excitement.

3) Fashion and Style - lululemon is the wonder girl of word of mouth , I feel personally vested by telling my wife to  try them and advocate them right when they were just getting a toehold in the  Toronto market - if it makes you feel good and look good then it will make you buzz good.

4) Cars - not just any "it could be a Taurus or Sable me too" brand, working on a car that considers itself a tribe would be a coup - Prius for the greens, Jeep for the mudders, MIni for the show-and -tellers, BMW, Audi or Mercedes for the hiugh flyers or a number of other hungry underdog brands with different automotive cult enthusiasts would be special and bankable as a marketing activity.

5) Retail - what I would give to do a campaign for Mountain Equipment Coop - great values, great fandom, wonderful product and great retail experience and extended experience -- please call me, will work for product.  Holt Renfrew, Lush and Sony Store would be three other prime candidates

6) Books - for a certain audience, books are the escape from the everyday that you just have to share with others -- a literal word of mouth buzz generation factory could be built for a forward-thinking book company.

7) Games - whether they are board based or console-based, there is an underlying instinctive reason why these industries have sucked billions of dollars and oodles of time from all stripes of life - we're obsessed with "play" - within even the straightest living person exists a MMORPG or trivia buff waiting to get out.

8) Beauty Care  -  brands in this space are selling magic in a bottle , believe me when I was a  young punk of a Brand Manager on Noxzema and Clearasil - the product was more than just the brand I worked on ---  when you find a great one like some great mass products - (see L'Oreal and Dove word of mouth success) or great niche products (Body Shop and Kiehls are faves) you will evangelize from the tallest soapbox.

9) Non-Profits - an inherent word of mouth advantage - most causes and charities already have a built up following - you look at the Brest Cancer Walk for the Cure, Pink Ribbon or Team in Training and you'll uncover some of the fiercest loyal flagbearers for any brand that's been invented.

10)  Food - if we put it on our body, we likely  have something to say about it and based on fact that everybody has to eat everyday - word of mouth can even make broccoli sing.

11) Banks - this may appear like "one of these things is not like the other" - I would love to incubate a word of mouth culture and program in one of the most traditional and corporate forms of busienss as a litmus test to prove that if it could work and thrive here, it could work anywhere.

Of course, with a profit-seeking motive...if your reading this and are in another industry, your business is happily invited here.

Social Media - Does Might Make Right?

eMarketer just came out with its September numbers (see chart visual attached).  As you can see,  My Space is the dominant  social network site (what happened to you Friendster?)

I think that the share has been equated amongst the top 20 sites but there appears to be very little "long tail" at play here...if you want to network, by and large you're going to My Space in the U.S..

So here's a question - in books, it's understandable Amazon rules because by being the largest it can offer the most selection at the best prices with the most service.

Ebay it makes sense too - by being the largest auction house  -  it can offer you the best price and biggest audience as an auctioneer and as a buyer, you will get the largest selection with the most trusted reputation.

Ergo, do you believe My Space is the best place to network because it has the most market share?

What does size give you in social networking?

It's dubious whether the larger you go - the better quality audience or more trusted a network is as we have seen from stories about My Space's audience. In talking to tech-heads, the My Space user interface is by no means the best, so additional investment scale, size and investment from Rupert haven't radically improved the user experience.

Outside of eyeballs and the ability to attract old economy media dollars, what is My Space getting by being the dominant player? Thoughts to muse about...

Interesting tidbit on the length of time on social network sites - talk about stickiness - the average site has 27 minutes vs. 10 minutes on tradional, non-networked websites. That's a lot of time spent debating  the merits of Mos Def,   Outkast or 50 Cent.