iMedia Columnist Steve Rubel told Summit attendees not to fear consumer-generated media. Part 1.
The following presentation took place in February at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point:
Rebecca Weeks: Steve Rubel is the Vice President of Client Services at CooperKatz & Company. He’s also the author of the Micro Persuasion blog about consumer-generated media. He is an evangelist not only for consumers to be involved with the media they consume, but also for his clients to embrace what consumers are doing. Steve is also -- I’m very proud to say -- a regular columnist for iMedia and his columns are very highly trafficked. I have an extraordinary amount of respect for what he has to say. And the thing about Steve that’s important is that what he’s talking about is happening today. So, Steve, please come up. Everyone please welcome Steve Rubel. Thank you.
Steve Rubel: I’m here to talk to you today about the empowered consumer. And that’s what the theme of this conference is all about. I am so pleased that iMedia has championed this cause because I think it’s one of the most exciting things going on in marketing today.
The media concierge is not only those devices [that OMD's Joe Uva described), it’s humans, it’s the consumers, it's the people you’re marketing to.
Christian Science Monitor wrote a story yesterday about the rise of amateur ads. They said, “In an industry built around buzz the ads humming loudest today are often those that are unauthorized.”
Last month a Nebraska man auctioned his forehead to a snoring remedy company for $37,000 for the right to advertise on his forehead. That is consumers controlling advertising.
The Monitor also said, “The rise in unofficial marketing has ad professionals puzzled.” They want to know, should we quash this or should we embrace this? I say please don’t shoot the messengers…
… love them.
This is not a threat, but an opportunity. And unfortunately not everybody recognizes this. Take a load of this quote: “It’s a real problem …” -- we’re talking about amateur ads -- “… and the problem gets bigger the more people see this stuff. It begins to muddy the message. The ad industry should rise up against these amateurs.”
Well Jack Trout said that. I mean, Jack, I love your books, but I think that’s crazy.
I want to introduce you to somebody who is changing the ad world. Meet George Masters. He’s a school teacher from Orange County, California -- an ordinary guy. He loves his iPod. He doesn’t just like it, he loves it. He’s an evangelist for it. And last November he posted an ad he spent 150 hours creating. Now, he’s not an ad guy, he just, out of love, did this. It received moderate traffic and it started to get picked up by several blogs. A few days later, the ad was viewed 37,000 times and I’d like to show you that ad right now.
George needs a job, so if you’re looking for him, I have his email address. If you want to contact him, just see me after my talk.
The key thing here is that there’s not … I mean, sure it’s easy to be scared of this. It’s easy to say, "Oh my God, the consumers control the message." But you know what? This is an opportunity. If you had a consumer like George Masters who was willing to create an ad for you, would you be willing to embrace that person? The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.
This is not a new idea. Consumers control the products. Right? The smarty-pants companies, they get this. They know the consumers want to be in charge. Forbes wrote a story about how many companies now are asking customers to help them design their products -- "please help us, okay?"
Now it’s your turn. Ask you customers to help you market your products.
Look at all these statistics: TiVo, 3 million ad-skipping subscribers; satellite radio, 4 million; Apple, 10 million iPods. Five percent of online consumers of news are using RSS news aggregators. Okay? And the most popular plug-in for the Firefox browser blocks ads. Jeff Jarvis -- who you may have heard speak yesterday [LINK 5248] -- he’s all over this and he says the people you want to reach through media now are the ones creating it.
Blogging has exploded, right? Eight million bloggers right now; a 4-percent increase from just earlier last year. They’re a credible source of information. They are the media concierge. Video blogging, mobile blogging -- they're taking off also. And the press is also empowering people to blog.
But this is bigger than blogging. It’s all about consumers having a need to share. Consumers have uploaded more than 3 1/2 million photos into Flicker, a photo-sharing site. Amazon now allows consumers to share images they have taken of products, right next to the product listing. So if you’re going to buy a product on Amazon, you could literally see consumers who are sharing images of that product. That immediately might change your perception. There’s a site called Delicious that allows people to share links. Two and a half million links have been uploaded into Delicious. And pod casting is taking off, which is basically audio blogging. There are nearly a thousand pod casts in just a few months, listed on a site called Pod Cast Alley.
If you haven’t read this book, please go read it. It was written in 1999. It’s called “The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual.” It was a visionary book about the future of media and marketing. It’s free online at cluetrain.com. [http://www.cluetrain.com]
They have 95 different theses. I want to share some with you today.
- “Markets are conversations.” It’s not about messages, it’s about conversations.
- “Markets consist of human beings.” There’s a surprise -- not demographic sectors.
- “Conversations among human beings sound human.” Wow, not corporate-speak.
- “Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their language.” And the internet is enabling this.
So now what? You know, audiences control everything …
… then how do we deal with this? You know, what do we actually do to leverage this voice? How do we find those shorts masters out there? And how do we keep our margins high so we can go to these fancy-schmancy conferences?
These are all good questions. I could help you answer the first two, but you need to answer that last one.
Tomorrow: The secret to success (i.e. answers to these questions).