I am sorry but this post is written in support for my male ‘brethren’ … a topic somewhat sensitive to the male ego and one not so openly discussed.
Gentlemen, let me pose a simple question to you….. if you just lost
100 or more twitter followers you just wouldn’t care? … you wouldn’t
feel somewhat dejected or saddened by this loss! You believe a man is
more than a reflection of his twitter size ? Come on… I, as a man know
it hurts to see your twitter size smaller… This is a natural reaction I
guess but nevertheless I am still amazed at some of my mates reaction
and emotion when speaking about loosing twitter followers.. like some
affront has been made on their manhood or a personal assault on their
very credibility as a Twitter user has been waged.
So I guess size does matter.. or put more accurately the bigger the
better…. the anxiety at possible shrinkage goes to prove this theory.
This status insecurity is now a huge problem with twitter uses,
particularly when it is in the open for all to see…. on the twitter
page itself or seemingly each day new tools and applications are being
made available to expose your twitter size.
Another related anxiety is what I call the ‘twitter performance
anxiety’ or ‘TPA’ the pressure to retweet..(RT) … sometimes you just
don’t feel like it but you know it has been a while and you should just
put a RT out their. I am not saying this wrong but when you know your
other male friends going at it all the time… RT’ing day and night… you
know you should try and keep up… you may even pop a few ‘fake‘ RT’s in there… no one will know… but deep down this is something you are not proud of at it will gradually lead to ‘TPA’
This twitter thing has led to a new generation of male anxieties…
So let the silent epidemic facing us men; “twitter size anxiety”
and ‘twitter performance anxiety’ escape the bounds of the closet…. be
open and proud! Size does not matter… RT when you want (and not before)
……… but for those not yet following me on Twitter please start now….. @sinotechian
We have seen a rush from almost all agencies to ‘become’ digital as advertisers are more frequently wanting a digital component in their campaigns. The problem is a lot of the agencies that are claiming to be ‘Digital Marketing’ agencies often don’t have the knowledge or deep understanding to provide their clients with the best digital options. Being a digital marketing is not simply about being clever creatively any more or just brokering media buying . It’s far more than that. The ad agencies generally accept that they need to move from a task based approach but they are not well-structured to take on the new digital marketing challenges with performance, measurement and a fuller digital offering being at the heart of their organizations.
In this year of the ox, agencies are facing advertisers that are more far more careful with spend, taking a shorter term outlook and are questioning of the statuesque. Far more important is the need to provide advertisers with clear and measurable outcomes, have realistic expectations and use multiple channels for integrated campaigns. This is why it’s vitally important for agencies to change their outlook on account management and execution.
As a company, SinoTech Group is used to supporting 4A Agencies and managing blue-chip clients to create them with the business cases strategies and provide digital marketing technology and services. We have a strong understanding of the part search and social media plays in a digital marketing campaign and we are seeing more dependence on metrics and objective measures in determining campaign success. As the larger agencies struggle with the costs of carrying high paid executives and ‘heavy’ operational structures, there is a degree of ‘just to hard’ to start over and it is simpler to just add services onto the existing organization. So rather than re-engineer and adapt their is a slash and burn mentality. I see a lot of new nimble/hungry digital shops getting briefs and being able to address advertisers in a way that is meeting there requirements in this business environment.
This sentiment was also echoed by the Ogilvy & Mather China’s chairman TB Song. As reported in “Media”, he sent a stern memo to all staff that lambasts them for a “collective failure” in 2008 that saw Ogilvy miss financial targets. Read the full text of the email at http://media.blog.brandrepublic.asia/davidtiltman/ogilvy-chinas-collective-failure/
Here is an extract from the Chairman’s memo. 1. We, including planners, account service and creative professionals, must be more active and engaged in our clients’ businesses. This means doing a better job of understanding their operations, strategies and market positions. We must stand alongside our clients in facing business challenges and changing market conditions. We must infuse our creativity – our core competency – into our clients’ businesses. Our creative people can’t simply sit at home, receive the brief, and then “do creative.” Our advertising must be more than just TVCs or print ads, as our creativity should blaze new paths of communication which aims to help our client’s business. The best ideas are still undiscovered. If Ogilvy’s creative people think only about the awards, TVCs and print ads, or even scam ads, I will encourage them to leave. Our creative people should be forbidden from working on scam ads. I’m not against awards, but the focus must always be on our clients’ businesses, and let the chips fall where they may.
2. We must work to deeply understand the client’s business model, especially their financial systems/cycles and the up/downstream structure of their industry. These factors will impact the client’s short-term marketing and communications strategy. We should incorporate these considerations in the advice we give clients and adjust our service accordingly.
3. For our operations, to improve flexibility, speed and efficiency, we should pay more attention to written agreements, such as bill estimates. Keep all written business communications transparent and in neat order to avoid potential payment disputes.
4. Go out into the world with your clients. Directly face consumers, retail stores and dealers in the 2nd or 3rd tier markets. Share your views during these investigations, and form a creative strategy from the insights. This is especially important for our senior creative people. The time to do it is now.
5. There won’t be any opportunities for taking it easy. We will not allow this. We will not be a team of “average performers” who drive out people who are destined for excellence. This only happens to teams who do not transform and adapt during the hard times. This will not happen to Ogilvy. Never. We will not tolerate laziness and complacency of any kind!
6. We should pay more attention to on-the-job training. It’s important to train junior staffers by working with them hand-in-hand. Leaders must be generous with their time. No training is better than working directly with a skilled practitioner. Training junior staff is even more important during the hard times, as it solidifies our foundations and gives our clients more confidence. Training during the hard time makes it easier for us to work together, from A/S, planning, and creative, to media, PR, and action- no discipline is exempt. Creative people may have great marketing strategies, planners could be on the front line of business consulting, A/S may have really creative ideas, PR professionals may have the most creative product branding ideas. In bad times especially, we need to be considering all of the available angles and resources to help our clients grow.
7. We need to remember that we are “Brand Stewards.” And branding is a long-term project. In 2009, clients will be looking for quick solutions to their sales problems. Ogilvy should be focused on being “effective in a short amount of time, but also beneficial to long-term branding.” That’s the key to sustained success in hard times.
So in order to survive the digital age, the “digital agency of the future” needs to evolve and embrace the following points:
Digital Marketing Needs to be Offered as an Integral Services Offering
Digital Marketing Knowledge is Crucial
Have a Measurement and Analytic’s centric Approach
Be Creative and Understand the Brand
Be Proactive, Nimble and Innovative
I expect to see some agencies completely rebuild or at least attempt this. I also predict we will see some new, current ‘unknowns’ (agencies) leap forward and develop a market position as advertisers become less loyal to their agency of record and look at other options.
Given the turmoil in Global markets and nervousness of Brand advertisers in International markets, those of us working in China undertaking Digital Marketing (including Search Marketing) are seeing both opportunity and business threats.
Personally, I see the opportunities falling to full-service digital agencies and casual gaming firms. Although, I think that we will see a accelerated slowdown in the Digital Marketing growth in Q2 of 2009, but those agencies with strong search, web, social media and viral seeding teams are likely to benefit from continued convergence and the emergence of larger budgets heading towards these areas.
The business threats are from falling marketing budgets that push marketing companies to cut rates in turn leading to a downward spiral of in margins to win business. Last November at ad:tech Shanghai we heard a lot of pundits and social commentators stating that Digital Marketing would benefit from the budgets being reallocated from traditional offline budgets. However, we have yet to see this in many of the campaigns being done at SinoTech Group. After having informal discussions with people in a few Publicis companies and Universal McCann we all came to the conclusion that logically it makes sense to see Digital Marketing benefit in times of downturn where campaigns can be measured effectively and ROI is clearly determinable….. but we are dealing with people …..
These people are Marketers … mostly Marketers spending budgets in more traditional channels so when there is increased pressure on their business and their budgets they are taking a path well worn and sticking to the offline channels…. This is crazy right!! Why would they not take a leap of faith and go towards the digital channels.. sure… even try some mobile marketing and some search marketing for good measure….
That said, I do expect some agency’s to successfully draw more budget towards digital, some savvy CMO’s are also reading and being enlightened to get on this path…
The main challenge that I see in China is that Digital Marketing is seem by most as simply a media buy on a tier 1 portal. Lets put the message out that this is a narrow view and using just media buying is not going to get the most effective digital results - use multiple channels (an integrated strategy and plan). This is nothing new. Integrated marketing has been around for a long time. But building a mindset that appreciates the full spectrum of possibilities has been difficult. It’s time to change that.
It is at this time of year when I am taking my vacation that I can sit back and reflect on the past year. This past 12 months for SinoTech Group has been our most exciting (in our short history) when thinking about where we started the year and where we finished it.
In terms of achievements, I am proud that we have attracted some of the brightest digital marketers in China. I know there will be some smiles from Lonnie and David as they too also think they have the ‘best and brightest’… but I really do see the talanted team we have. I talk about passion and ‘fire in the eyes’… when we hire and I have got just that … A CEO could not have a better motivated team… Much thanks to the exec’s at SinoTech that keep this all going. I guess the challenges for 2009 will be to continue to grow the middle management skills as we grow the number of staff… This level of leadership in my view is generally lacking in China.
If I think what was the most challenging projects we worked with in 2008, I guess it would come down to two; Zenith Optimedia who uses our Media Planning & Reporting platform and Sensis, who we did a complex digital consulting project. The challengers where different in each case; Zenith was tough given the timeframes of taking our media planning being used in China and deploying it throughout Zenith Optimedia in 13 countries. Sensis, was challenging because we were doing detailed financial modeling on a number of web sites and exploring new ways of increasing revenue - all this in a very short space of time.
The most rewarding partners to work with have been the folks at Publicitas and DMS. These are both highly professional organizations run by Moritz and Grant respectively. All dealing with these companies have been done in a spirt of co-operation… Thanks guys.
So what did we learn from 2008? What has been the experiences for SinoTech Group?
Publishers:
1. Yet to embrace new ad revenue models (however some bright starts trying new approaches). Almost all still use a cost per day model (CPD)
2. Mostly resisting the move towards standard ad unit sizes (such as IAB)
3. The move towards using site analytics (mostly internally) but some now providing more metrics to agencies and advertisers
4. Pressure on vertical sites/shoulder properties to attract advertisers and increase sell through rates…. Tier one properties are holding steady or growing.
Advertisers/Agencies:
1. The trend for Media Agencies to do search, social and creative & Creative Agencies to move into doing search and social….. becoming harder to differientiate.
2. Consolidation brings oportunity
3. Global down turn brings opportunities- and pain
4. Global down turn also offers an out for many Brands looking to refocus and make change.
Final Thoughts… 2008 was a great year for SinoTech Group. We made some great progress commercially, had a lot of fun doing it and have the team to make 2009 even better.
Digital Marketing is undergoing a period of intense change in China, and 2008 has marked a coming of age for the digital advertising industry in China as Advertisers and Marketers across the country and the region embraced the Internet and the power to connect with consumers through interactive, engaging new online ad formats.
This month, David Temple, the Regional Head of Search Marketing at Neo@ Ogilvy Asia Pacific spoke with Dr Mathew McDougall, Group CEO of the SinoTech Group and contributor to "The Digital Marketing Inner Circle" Blog to find out what he sees as the major online advertising trends will be in 2009 and how marketers throughout the China and the region can tap the vast potential of the online medium.
David Temple: Tell me something about yourself and your position in the company. What were you doing before starting SinoTech? What are some of the other milestones in your life?
Dr Mathew McDougall: Well, I am the CEO of the SinoTech Group; I take on a very hand on approach in the company and try to have a good understanding of all aspects in the organization. I get very energized by being able to work directly with the clients and get a view of what they see as important for them in digital advertising. Before founding SinoTech, I had spent 4 years in China establishing another online media company that was focused on developing tools for optimizing the revenues for the website Publisher.
The most important milestone in my life, aside from my business, is my family. It’s amazing how this effects ones direction in life and ones goals and determination. I am married to a Chinese woman and now consider China my home.
David Temple: Please provide us a brief history of your company?
Dr Mathew McDougall: The SinoTech Group consists of three core business areas: Media Tech & Consulting, Search & Social, Creative & Production. Although these groups have different focus, SinoTech Group aims to provide a complete set of digital services. We were fortunate early on to build a strong relationship with China Media Exchange and be able to provide technologies and services of value to their customers.
David Temple: What is the core focus of the SinoTech Group?
Dr Mathew McDougall: Simple: Be innovative, transform the online advertising market and focus on developing world class products. In China, people tell me that we don’t need sophisticated advertising tools in China, that we are simply behind the West in our thinking and our advertisers are not interested in measuring performance. I just don’t agree with this anymore. Therefore, I founded SinoTech Group to provide media technologies such as ad serving and analytics technologies. You could consider this technology to be a Chinese “Double-click” like technology that was designed and developed here in China specifically with our unique ad serving requirements in mind. Moreover, our partners and advertisers requested we develop a web site analytics platform that could help them measure the online effectiveness and we are excited to say that we launch our 2.0 version later this month.
Another point often made to me was that Search Marketing in China was never going to be successful, that Chinese advertisers did not ‘get-it’ and Chinese Search Engines were not going to support SEO and SEM. This turned out not to be the case and our search organization, called SinoTech Informatics, now has a large team doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Internet marketing (SEM), and web design services. The shift in advertiser thinking and a broad adoption for SEM appears to have been greatest in the past 6 months; more interest from advertisers to help them understand search marketing and more requests to assist with ways to drive traffic to their websites.
Our SEM platform, SinoMaximizer was developed here in China and supports double byte, Chinese language semantics and is integrated at the API level with all the major Chinese search engines such as Baidu, Yahoo! China and Google. In fact, we were the first Chinese company to be granted access to Baidu’s API for search marketing and I believe that this can be attributed to Baidu now understanding the value and increased revenue potential that can be had with growing the revenues from mid- large advertisers. These kinds of advertisers that want to manage 1000-10,000’s of keywords and get the best return from this marketing spend.
David Temple: What is the future of search engine optimization (SEO)? Where will be the challenges in developing of the online SE presence in near future?
Dr Mathew McDougall: There are challenges all the time. The Search Engines’ are changing the way they see websites and that changes the way marketers approach their campaigns. I believe that the future will be very ads based by offering multiple ways to find the site, and niche portals and micro-sites will become more important for visitors to find results.
David Temple: What makes SinoTech different from other companies in the online advertising and search engine marketing industry?
Dr Mathew McDougall: The SinoTech Group has formed a strong relationship in China with the core search engines in China and our consultants provide tools, technologies and services to complement the digital offerings put forward and we are working hard to ensure we understand the scope of each campaign. As we sometimes need to learn the clients business, we keep everyone well informed and make all the constituents a part of the entire process. At SinoTech, we believe that our value is to our partners and increasing the value to their clients.
David Temple: What can we expect in 2009 for Chinese online media?
Dr Mathew McDougall: 2009 is going to be another fascinating year of social and technological developments driven by ever changing digital communications. The Internet and mobile platforms are fundamentally changing the way individuals interact and how “Chinese society” at large leverage communities to wield significant power and influence. Next year, I expect social networking, user-generated content, word of mouth, and video, wireless, advergaming to all have a major impact on our advertising industry.
David Temple: What will happen with social networking and user generated content in 2009?
Dr Mathew McDougall: Over the next year, social networking elements will broaden in reach and role as more Web 2.0 features become available for mainstream content. Homepages will serve as mini sites for the various threads of people’s digital lives and niche community sites will also grow further. According to IDC, China’s Web 2.0 market has shown great development potential and in 2006 the market size was US$62.8 million. By 2011, China’s Web 2.0 market is predicated to reach US$645.8 million.
To that end, brands should become smarter in how they participate and tap into the power of social networking. It must be noted that social networks are also great places for listening to the minds of your audience.
User-generated content (UGC) will become even more prominent and diverse. Expect to see UGC content/spin-offs migrate to mainstream TV, books and newspapers, and more high profile organizations get involved.
The main points to consider:
* Use the UGC sites as an insight into what engages your audience and what encourages collaboration. * UGC is all about creativity; don’t go there if you don’t have a creative purpose.
In the word-of-mouth area, “amplification” will take over from “the long-tail” as the buzz word for 2008. Amplification is about tapping into the power of word of mouth—73 percent of young people say friends are their most trusted source of information. Digital conversations can go on indefinitely and do not follow a fixed time frame. In some cases, it can be self-sustaining, thus:
* All brands should monitor online buzz about their products-any brand serious about building relationships with its consumers should listen to what they say. * Don’t underestimate the audience by spoon-feeding the entire story. * Interesting stunts and events get blogged, and can achieve far greater audience through this amplification than ever before.
Dr Mathew McDougall: We have definitely seen a surge in social networking and UGC in China over the last 12 months. We expect this growth in users to translate into advertising opportunities as advertisers begin to better understand how leveraging social media can empower them to create virtual connections with consumers, opening up a new mode of communication and creating deeper connections with a brand audience.
The development of quantifiable metrics and best practices over the past year will only encourage more advertisers to participate in the UGC phenomenon next year.
At SinoTech Group we believe that the new online advertising solutions need to provide advertisers metrics and measures that they need to understand what the UGC phenomenon, what is important to the consumers in this space, and how to leverage digital marketing to get the most effective marketing impact.
David Temple: What do you see happening with video in 2009?
Dr Mathew McDougall: Next year, the true potential of video will be unlocked as this medium matures with the emergence of new tools to help edit and upload video. Collaborative filtering, RSS, and tagging will “amplify” the best examples faster and more broadly. Although we have seen consolidation in web sharing sites in China the page views will continue to grow and there will be attempts to develop new advertising formats to try and tap into potential advertising dollars.
The Internet will increasingly become a true “entertainment” platform and there’ll be more opportunities for advertising in and around online video, with larger audiences, more legitimate content, and more defined analytics.
Dr Mathew McDougall: The impact of video on the online medium is something we read about in the news almost daily. Video will continue to develop in both popularity and in potential for the online advertising industry next year. I personally believe that we will see a good degree of advertising innovation in this area.
David Temple: What do you see happening with mobile/wireless advertising in 2009?
Dr Mathew McDougall: Time will tell if the growth curve will kick into high gear for mobile advertising in China and I believe that mobile advertising will certainly go through some road bumps as the crucial transition to third-generation mobile telephony, or as 3G, takes shape next year when the new 3G licenses are issued in China. It is rumored that we will see 3G licenses before Chinese New Year and if this eventuates then I expect a scramble next year to utilize this additional speed.
Mobile advertising will simply become another element used in the online digital plan for advertisers.
David Temple: What do you see happening with gaming advertising in 2009?
Dr Mathew McDougall: All very good questions and online gaming advertising (advergaming) is something I am watching. Real video game-makers are the ones that have interaction nailed down. (Advertising with online games) is a very exciting opportunity and we’re quite interested in it. Online gaming communities, where PC users (usually teenagers and the 18-to-30 crowd) connect to play multi-player video games together on the Web, are extremely popular and largely untouched by marketers. SinoTech Group was commissioned early this year by Turner to produce games on the Cartoon Network and we are now selling in advertising. I see this new format becoming adopted more widely with specific Brnads.
I think once we can get ad serving technologies to ubiquitously place ads in multiple mediums that are targeted and measured we will see a significant adoption of digital technologies and rapid increases in online ad spend.
David Temple: Any closing comments?
Dr Mathew McDougall: By now you can guess that I am full of opinions and views on the Chinese advertising market. But just to summarize, I believe Media consumption will become less collective and more individual sophisticated, multiple pathways to individual consumers will develop. All media relationships will become interactive to a greater or lesser extent Consumers will increasingly determine their own use of media in a much more complete fashion, including deciding when they will accept marketing messages and when they won’t Metrics which measure ‘viewing’ rather than ‘engagement’ will disappear.
To date, most innovation has been in the form of ‘media firsts’ – finding new places to stick advertising. Until very recently there has been little progress in targeting here. I think we will see this change in 2009 and advertising targeting in Chinese advertising, such as Geo-Targeted ads, behavioral and contextual targeting will become standard.
