Ted McConnell, Procter & Gamble’s GM for interactive marketing and innovation, sent marketing bloggers 
into a bit of a tizzy when he suggested social media was not true media. Speaking at an Nov. 15 event put on by the Ad Club of Cincinnati, McConnell said:
I think when we call it ‘consumer-generated media,’ we’re being predatory. Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant… We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it
McConnell’s money quote was this: “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”
Now, Procter & Gamble is the largest advertiser in the world. TNS pegs P&G’s first-half media spend at $1.49 billion. (read more…)
Ted McConnell, Procter & Gamble’s GM for interactive marketing and innovation, sent marketing bloggers into a bit of a tizzy when he suggested social media was not true media. Speaking at an Nov. 15 event put on by the Ad Club of Cincinnati, McConnell said:
I think when we call it ‘consumer-generated media,’ we’re being predatory. Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant… We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it
McConnell’s money quote was this: “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”
Now, Procter & Gamble is the largest advertiser in the world. TNS pegs P&G’s first-half media spend at $1.49 billion. (read more…)
Niche media isn’t all about blogs.
While it may behoove us to say this, since the core business of SmartBrief is targeted, industry-based e-mail newsletters, it’s true that e-mail has several distinct characteristics as a medium of information and advertising — not least of which is the fact that it’s pushed in front of opt-in subscribers. Rather than wait to come up in search, get Digged, picked up by Boing-Boing or Techmeme, e-mail content goes straight to the reader.
So swallow that grain of salt, and check out this industry profile from MarketingSherpa that looks at three leading e-mail content aggregators — Custom Briefings, FierceMarkets and, yes, SmartBrief — and the e-newsletter strategies that work.
The e-mail experts’ take on social media? The proliferation of information via blogs, social networking sites, RSS and mobile makes the need for filtering and analysis even more critical. The trick is delivering the best stuff and making it sharable. (read more…)
The following is an excerpt from the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s excellent Platform Status Report “User Generated Content, Social Media and Advertising – An Overview” published in A
pril 2008.
Over the next couple weeks, we will serialize this report in collaboration with the IAB to familiarize SmartBrief readers with commonly adopted social media terminology, practices, technologies and platforms.
What is User Generated Content?
User Generated Content (UGC) also known as consumer-generated media (CGM), refers to any material created and uploaded to the Internet by non-media professionals, whether it’s content left on Amazon.com, a professional-quality video uploaded to YouTube, or a student’s profile on Facebook. UGC has been around in one form or another since the earliest days of the Internet itself. But in the past five years, thanks to the growing availability of high-speed Internet access and search technology, it has become one of the dominant forms of global media. It is currently one of the fastest growing forms of content on the Internet. (read more…)
Before last week’s launch of SmartBrief on Social Media, we beta tested a prototype of the brief with a group 
of 200 SmartBrief readers. About 1/3 of them have been following social media for some time, 1/2 understand the basics but want to get smarter on how social media might help their business, and the remainder are getting up to speed as quickly as possible.
The five most-clicked stories during the beta test were:
- Twitter backlash sinks Motrin ad
- Who’s on LinkedIn?
- The Internet’s next 6,500 days
- Social marketing pitfalls
- Finding success amid an “ocean of blog mediocrity”
The general feedback we received is that SmartBrief on Social Media provides “a thorough feel for the subject matter” and is “a valuable source of new ideas and concepts.” But still, our test group told us, “primers on social media would be hugely helpful…although most people who get this probably won’t admit it.”
We’ve turned to our friends at the Interactive Advertising Bureau for help. (read more…)
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