Author Archives: Riku Vassinen

Aug 29 2013
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Advertising, Digital Strategy, Planning, Social Media

Why Facebook Allowed Promotions in Page timelines?

Facebook finally updated their promotions guidelines to allow the usage of natural Facebook functions in promotions. Brands can now collect entries by having users post on their page or comment/like a page post. Likes can also be utilized as voting mechanism. So now you do not necessarily need to build 3rd party app to host a competition.

This makes things clearer for brands, because the former guidelines of building the 3rd party apps seemed to be relatively difficult for brands to understand and caused a lot of confusion. Using status updates as competition vehicles has already been a tool, which especially smaller brands have utilized although it has been forbidden. From user´s standpoint this will mean that the newsfeed will be even more populated with promotional content in addition and conjunction with sponsored stories. The recent change is also total turnaround from the rhetoric of pre-listed Facebook about not populating user feeds with commercial messages. Besides the constant pressure of shareholders the reason for this change is super simple:

Mobile.

The biggest caveat of Facebook tabs has been that they are not working on mobile. For some reason, it has been tricky or trivial thing for Facebook to fix. Enabling the contests in normal brand page timeline allows brands to tap into the dramatic mobile usage growth of Facebook. It is also a painstaking proof that traditional status updates do not drive people to like the brands as much as the incentivized ones.

Is this the end of the Facebook tabs?

Now there is no idea to host simple competitions using Facebook tab. Status update competition with appropriate paid media push works totally fine and allows having more smaller competitions outside normal campaign cycle. It is quite limited way for customer interaction. Therefore I would not count Facebook tabs totally off just yet. They provide opportunities for deeper engagement, richer storytelling and more impressive experience than the native Facebook functions. Facebook has not really replaced the campaign microsites due to its limited offering for brands. If you want to wow your audience in Facebook, you pretty much still have to utilize tabs. Which unfortunately do not work in mobile.

Easing the promotion guidelines is a quick fix for Facebook and addresses certain key promotion issues regarding the mobile. If Facebook really wants to replace the still prevalent usage of microsites they either need to fix the tab formats to work in mobile or completely revamp the brand page structure to give more freedom to brands.

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Aug 02 2013
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Advertising, Insight, Planning, Social Media

Anatomy of An Insight: National Day Proposal

Too seldom I am able to highlight Singaporean ads here. Therefore I was delighted when I stumbled upon the new Mentos National Day song by BBH Asia-Pacific. The first Mentos National Day song about boosting the birth rate of Singapore was probably the most shared ad last year in Singapore. For Finnish person who has built his ad career mainly on rap songs and nationalism, this new song is even better:

Insight: Singapore & Finland are similar countries. Small, but highly successful countries which both are high on different international rankings (such as level of education). Singaporean media also regularly highlights news from Finland and has articles about the international rankings.
Based on my experience living in both countries, the mindset of the people is also somewhat similar. Both Singaporeans and Finns are obsessive about what other countries are talking about them. Which will mean that last year´s view counts might double as every Finn wants also to see what is talked about them.

Craft-wise this is definite improvement over last year´s campaign. Song is better (Lonely Island has been on heavy rotation), animation more sharp and the video is filled with more puns to find (also in Finnish). The chorus is nice nod to either strong Heavy Metal –heritage of Finland or to musical mish-mosh of this year´s official national day song.

Although the planner in me has not yet found the connection between Mentos and birth rate in Singapore, that was not as big issue as last year. The concept is already familiar enough. If (and hopefully when) Mentos does new song next year it is already an annual tradition and no one really thinks about why Mentos does National day song urging people to have sex.

Good example if you invent something which works, stick with it. Usually it works next time as well.

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Jul 26 2013
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Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning

Mathematics of Creativity

John Leach on the “Mathematics of creativity” Part 1 from accountplanninggroup on Vimeo.

Stumbled upon this awesome presentation from John Leach. Although technically this is more about calculation than actual mathematics, it is still worth a look. Really entertaining and useful keynote.

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Jul 25 2013
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Insight

Stupidest Possible Creative Act is Still a Creative Act


When seeing something like the Vanilla Ice -remix above, the first “adult” reaction is to start complaining about how people now have too much time on their hands. That reaction is patronizing and also just plain wrong.
Clay Shirky has a great quote in his new book “Cognitive Surplus” about this phenomenon (emphasis mine):
Lolcat images, dumb as they are, have internally consistent rules, everything from “Captions should be spelled phonetically” to “The lettering should use a sans-serif font”.
Even at the stipulated depths of stupidity, in other words, there are ways to do a lolcat wrong, which means there are ways to do it right, which means there is some metric of quality, even if limited.
However little the world needs the next lolcat, the message you can play this game too is a change from we´re used to in the media landscape.
The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act.

Seeing these Vanilla Ice mash-ups and Lolcat actually restores my faith in humanity. The makers of these have freed themselves of the opression of passive media and have become active makers. The quality of the content is secondary issue, although you must at least appreciate the craft in this video.

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Jul 24 2013
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Insight, Strategy

Never Say Sorry

Never say:
“Sorry, I haven´t had time to prepare for the presentation.”
If I would get my money back every time someone has started presentation in seminar with these words, I would be millionaire. Of course not mentioning which currency that would be in and provided I would ever actually pay for seminar attendance. The principle still remains. Speaking to any kind of audience is privilege and it is just impolite to be unprepared.

“Sorry, I haven´t been updating my blog recently.”
Readers can already see that from the timestamps. Majority of them does not even really care. When you are not updating your blog, you fail first and foremost yourself. Blogging is time for thinking and if you skip it, it starts showing. Not immediately, but after a while.

Perspiration & Inspiration
Although I have written two books, hundreds of blog posts, thousands of presentations, documents & mails during my career, I do not enjoy writing, especially the starting of it. Whether I have an idea for blog post or not, the first words are the most difficult ones. After those ones, the process usually starts to work. You either get an idea or start polishing and evolving the one you had. Writing gives necessary boundaries to the thinking. You have to argument your points. In our field of work you cannot separate idea from its argumentation. Putting things in written format forces you to take responsibility of what you are saying.

For me, inspiration starts totally out of perspiration. And that being said, I am aiming to perspire way lot of more in the future. Also in this blog.

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May 21 2013
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Business, Digital Strategy, Social Media, Strategy

Why Yahoo Bought Tumblr?

“F*ck yeah”

Ended David Karp (founder of Tumblr) his announcement about upcoming Yahoo-acquisition. He is not the only one amped up about the deal. Internet has been buzzing about the Yahoo´s recent acquisition of Tumblr. On theory marriage of Tumblr & Yahoo looks rational. Will it be that on practice?

What will Yahoo get from Tumblr?

1. Reach (especially to the young target audience)
Currently Yahoo has over 700 million unique visitors/month and Tumblr with its 300 million unique visitors and over 100 million blogs might help it bypass the 1 billion-visitor threshold. Yahoo is buying growth.
Tumblr user base is also the youngest among the different social media channels. It is stronger than any other social network within 13-18 and 19-25 demographic. As the buying power of teens and tweens increases even more, this target audience becomes more and more lucrative for marketers. It is therefore important to reach them young and maintain that relationship.
2. Gateway to Social Media & Mobile
Like many of its peers, Yahoo has been struggling with social media & mobile. It actually has a more impressive track record with screwing up potential social media opportunities (Flickr-which has been rewamped today as well, Geocities, Del.icio.us) than utilizing them. By buying Tumblr, Yahoo will get healthy social media which has been designed to be mobile-first from the beginning.
3. Street Credibility
Yahoo has not been a flavor of the month in recent years. Tumblr acquisition is exactly the kind of bold move that shareholders love. It is also the most prolific action Marissa Mayer has yet announced after taking the helm of the struggling company last year. Will it be the right move? That remains to be seen.

What will Tumblr get out of the deal?

Coherence & Monetization
Being the most user-friendly blog platform has its benefits, but also certain challenges. Tumblr is also the world´s most NSFW blog platform filled with porn, politically incorrect gifs and one-off-jokes (not even saving the founder David Karp). How Tumblr will maintain its characteristic quirkiness, but become “brand safe”? Currently adult sites are the leading category of referrals for Tumblr. Yahoo, as a household name, will give more legitimacy for Tumblr and probably help to clean up its act.
Tumblr has also been struggling with monetization and its business model throughout its whole existence. Whatever you say about Yahoo, you cannot dispute their skills and strengths on traditional ad sales. With Yahoo sales teams with interactive advertising (Tumblr) on their toolkit, it will be quite interesting selling point. The challenge is to find ad solutions which are seamless and enhance user experience.

What next?

Based on the statement from Marissa Mayer, it is quite improbable to see radical changes with Tumblr in the immediate future. The model for the Yahoo/Tumblr-coexistence will probably follow Instagram/Facebook –route where Instagram has remained relatively independent from Facebook. Many are likely to draw parallels between this acquisition and the quite ill-fated Geocities-acquisition from 14 years ago, but I am not that pessimistic. Tumblr definitely fills certain problematic gaps within Yahoo´s current strategy.

The crucial questions are whether the synergies that look obvious on paper come to fruition in action and was the price right?

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May 20 2013
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Advertising, Digital Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Strategy

Modern Marketing: Are You Throwing Javelin or Shooting Hoops?

I might be biased as a Fin, but javelin throw is the most entertaining track & field sports ever. However, what makes good spectator sports is not necessarily good way to do marketing. Many companies are still stuck in the old ways of doing marketing, which painstakingly resemble the Finnish national sport:

Javelin Throw: Traditional Marketing

Seppo Räty, the best Javelin dude in the world

Seppo Räty, the epitome of no-frills javelin thrower

– Fixed amount of trials: In javelin you get six trials to prove that you are worthy. In traditional marketing you do couple of campaigns a year.
– Individual: You only worry about your own performance.
– No room for improvisation: You do what you have practiced and try to duplicate your practice performance. If things start to go sidetrack, it is hard to make changes in competitive situation. Same with big marketing campaigns, when they veer off-the-track you cannot really save them. When javelin is released, you can only hope for it to be a good throw.
– Make it or break it –situation: You either make the throw or not. Your bi-annual campaign is either hit or not. Success of the whole year is judged based on that single try.

Basketball: Modern marketing

In your face

This dunk is one of the many baskets done on the single game.

– No limit on trials, but limited amount of time: Trials depend on your opportunities you get during the game. The best players seize the good opportunities, but occasionally take bad opportunities as well.
– Collaborative: The success is not only based on the individual, but on how well your team is playing and also the level of your opponent.
– Room for improvisation: Practice is important and creates the core of what you do well. Your core skills also contribute to the average probability of succeeding (among other things). That is why it is important to invent as you go along. Success is about talent, hard work & many trials. More you try, the luckier you get.
– End-result matters: Individual throw can go in or not. Only thing that matters by the end of the day is the total amount of shots you got in and have they contributed to your team win. Some shots are more important than others though. One of the most important skills nowadays is the skill to recognize those important shot opportunities and seize them.

If we want to succeed in this changing world, it is not sufficient to improve our technique in the existing game. We have to totally change the sports we are in.

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May 13 2013
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Business, Digital Strategy, Insight

How Hollywood Studios Predict Themselves to Fail

Due to the combined effect of the cheap movie prices and quite limited indie movie selection in Singapore, I have watched way more Hollywood movies during last year than I should. Based on that empirical research, I have to say that the overall quality of Hollywood films is currently really horrible.

The main reason for that is that studios have never played so safe as now. They have not necessarily been pushing the envelope before, but the shift even from “Spec-script”-era to current “Script Doctors” has been radical and unfortunately radically to worse. Still we see almost the same rate of failures as ever before, even though we are bombarded with lame-ass attempts of creating franchises. At the same time, HBO has proved that you can have compelling and challenging quality content and great revenues at the same time.

Why movie studios are missing the beat?

1. Past success does not necessarily predict future success
We tend to believe that our success is about our own achievement and failures are just a bad luck. In reality, it is mostly about luck. Many people claim to find formula for success, but actually they just extracted the similarities in successful projects and draw correlation from individual instances. That is easy. What is difficult is to find the actual combination and correlation of those extracted elements. This is especially true for surprise successes. The sequel for Blair Witch Project scored way worse in the box office than the original (although still profitable). Things tend to regress towards mean, so after abnormal success you are more likely to have normal success. In relation to abnormal success, anything closer to the average is regarded as failure.

2. Finding correlations where there is none
We correlate high education level with high productivity. According to many experts (such as Alison Wolf), this correlation is not true. It goes other way around: countries with high productivity tend to gain high education levels during time. According to the “script doctor” in the article you should not have bowling scenes in your script as on average they do not score that well. I have only one thing to say for the script doctor: Big Lebowski.

3. Everything unfamiliar scores bad in the tests
Would you have predicted the success of Indonesian Raid:The Redemption or Beasts of The Southern Wild? Fight Club scored really badly in opinion surveys but was highly successful in the box office. People tend to resist everything unfamiliar until they start to like it (case in point: Outkast-Hey Ya). I am not huge fan of tests, surveys and research, because at best they are just a poor reflection of reality. You can predict and test your movie as much as you want, but at the end-of-the-day the box-office is all that matters. Tests do not reduce risk, they just reduce your awareness of risk.

4. When playing safe, you will have only negative surprises.
Every major movie could not be prepared better: they are script-tested, based on existing franchise, have massive social media campaigns and start on more theatres simultaneously than ever before. Still many of the estimated blockbusters fail. They are predicted to be too big to fail, so they can only provide negative surprises.
The abovementioned small budget movies (Raid & The Beasts) have better ROI% than the biggest movie last year (The Avengers). And in the terms of pure cash, they got almost the same profit as the epic John Carter. That movie was considered as the biggest flop last year, although it was eventually profitable (globalization plays in favor of big movies, at least for the moment).
The main catch is that with the budget of John Carter, you could have produced over 200 Beasts of Southern Wild -movies. There are opportunities for 200 positive surprises.

The last point is really important in modern day marketing. We spend too much time predicting on the outcomes instead of actually doing things. As the potential outcomes are unknown in reality, the goal to succeed is the following:

1) Increase the amount of tries: There are no clutch players, just those who keep on shooting.
2) Limit the potential loss: Think like venture capitalist: the probability of success is relatively low, so you do not want to put your eggs in one basket.
3) Make it flexible: When you struck the goldmine, invest more. When it fails, kill it quick.

This is the “Anti John Carter” –approach. You will try more, fail more but win more on the long run.

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Mar 18 2013
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Advertising, Business, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Strategy

Calculate the Success Rate of Your Next Marketing Campaign

Based on years of empirical research in real working environments, I have finally cracked the formula for estimating the success rate of your marketing campaign.

It is the following:

SR=C-(10%*X)

SR= Overall succes rate of the campaign

C= Estimated Concept Succes Rate. Below are the average success rates for different type of concepts:

Great Concept (GRC):100%
Good Concept (GOC): 70%
OK Concept (OKC): 50%

If you even your worst day will do something which is below “OK Concept”, you should probably change profession.

x= Amount of every very adjustment, addition, alternation, modificiation and other mutilation given in the revision routes.

So what we can learn from this formula?

1) If you want to maximize your success, aim always for the great work.
2) Even the greatest of concept can be killed with too many modifications. Five revision routes reduce the success rate of your campaign to the same as flipping the coin.
3) Most often, less is more. When you have simple and effective concept in your hands, cherish it. Those are usually the ones, which will succeed.

Mar 15 2013
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Digital Strategy, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Strategy

Google Reader and the Missed Opportunity of RSS Feeds

Google Reader is now officially announced dead. Slowly it has been dying for quite a while.

I am one of the apparently very few relics, who have been using Google Reader actively for years and years. Personally it has been the most useful Google tool for me right after search and Gmail. Without using Google Reader (and other digital fossil Del.icio.us, which is still alive but struggling), writing of my first book would have been much more tedious process.

Looking from the business perspective and reflecting the overall downward trend of success of RSS feeds, the decision to kill Google Reader is a no-brainer. Everyone gets their news and blog posts either from search or from social networks, who needs separate place to go for their internet content?

Well us professionals and hobbyist, for instance.

I am passionate about few things. Other half is a work related and others are hobbies (basketball, hip-hop music, literature and movies). Google reader was my starting point for getting my daily fix on those high-interest subjects. Additionally I also use social networks and Google search to find stuff, but for me those are not the primary sources of information. When sharing is the only currency, it will be eventually lead to dumbed down content. Just watch any of the titles of your average web publication.

So farewell RSS feeds, the social media sharing is the way to drive traffic these days.

The demise of RSS Feeds, can be summarized to one word: complicated.
Starting with the name: RSS sounds like some kind of disease. Then there was the ease of use, or lack thereof. Although you did not have to be rocket scientist to get yourself RSS feed reader, it required still more commitment than the normal internet user wants to have with their platforms. The adding of the RSS feeds was not intuitive enough and the logo did not really reach adequate awareness. If following and subscribing would have had button something akin to Facebook like, the situation might be totally different.

Personal blogs have been largely replaced by tweets and Facebook status updates. The promise of RSS Feed Reader is still valid. You get the news you are actively interested to one place. People have not stopped consuming content in the Internet, more the other way around. The way to consume it has shifted more towards social, but there are some users who want to have also more curated experience for their content. Those users are not necessarily lucrative target audience.

Like Rob Fishman points out in his excellent article in Buzzfeed, Google Reader was the closest to functioning social network Google has ever been (excluding maybe for YouTube). I am deliberately excluding Gmail, as the nature of it is more 1-to-1 connections. As the “success” of Google+has shown, building it over Gmail was not necessarily the wisest decision. The mass using Gmail does not necessarily convert to more public sharing of social network, although it might make business sense on the paper. If Google would have invested to Google Reader and pushed it organically towards more social experience, they might have really successful social platform in their hands.

I was actually really active in Google Reader back in the day and sharing content like there was no tomorrow. That lasted until it was connected to Google+, which made it too overbearing. I was not the only one. Google Reader really never got a chance to truly try to strive in the marketplace on its own. Like former Google product manager explains in Quora, the Reader developer team was stretched thin and utilized mostly in other failed projects. Google Reader –based social network would have been the social platform, which is still truly lacking in the marketplace. The social network that is built around your user interests and passions. Maybe the new MySpace is trying to fill that gap, at least with music.

I will not shed tears for Google Reader. The decision makes definite short-term business sense. On the long run however, we will never know. Disappearance of Google Reader might have surprising effects on the digital content ecosystem. Although it has not been major traffic driver for the sites, it might alter and shift the readership radically of certain content providers.

Killing Google Reader and betting with Google+ are probably smart decisions. The real question is, are they wise decisions? Meanwhile Google Reader remains as an artifact of the potential social media success Google is still desperately trying to achieve. Until 1st of July, that is. As I am writing this, I am moving my Google Reader subscriptions to Feedly.

Old habits are hard to kill.

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