The Age of Meaning
Originally printed on October 26th, 2011 in Mediapost. Mediapost is the largest online trade publication for media and marketing professionals. To see the original article, click here.
by Brad Stewart, CEO Adjoy Inc.
My dad worked as a director for the largest grocery chain in Canada for most of his life. On our morning commute in the early 1990s, he didn’t impose many of his visionary opinions on his impressionable son. Every once and a while though, when he was absolutely confident that he wasn’t leading me astray, he’d look me right in the soul, the way only a father can.
“Quality will be the next big wave. Quality will be everything.”
Retail industry insiders may have been predicting this for eons. But, in my version of the tale, I prefer to think that my dad knew what was coming before everyone else.
What’s arguably visionary about this statement (as opposed to just the romantic narrative of a kid who loves his dad) is that this was a time when Walmart was making its aggressive entrance into Canada, by purchasing 122 Woolco stores.
As it turns out, my dad was bang-on that high quality would eventually become a basic minimum standard for the average consumer. Starbucks turned out to be a raging success, creating the first real competition for Tim Horton’s (a popular coffee chain known more for its 18% milkfat cream than for the coffee itself). Krispy Kreme was a dismal failure in Canada, whereas Whole Foods took off. Apple went from near-bankruptcy to the most valuable company in the world. This is certainly not the world that the suits from the days of the Ford Pinto or Hyundai Pony predicted.
But, what happens when quality is just the minimum qualification for market acceptance? What’s next in the evolution of market consciousness?
In the same spirit that my dad looked me in the eye and said, “It’s all about quality,” I can look my son in the eye today and say, “It will be all about meaning.”
As consumers gain control over media, in an increasingly intimate, transparent and connected world, products, services and brands will survive on quality, but thrive on meaning.
A VP of the one of the largest discount retail chains in Canada once quoted to me: “Marketing is about turning your product into a habit.”
But, in the attention-deficit defined world of online and integrated media, habits can change as quickly as you can … oh, look there’s a squirrel!
So, what’s the practical answer to this problem?
Here’s a test. Try to recall the last time you entered a contest. Now, try to remember the last time something moved you, or you gave money to a charity. The first instance is driven only by powerful shortsighted, self-serving impulse (all great drivers), but also has the psychological lifespan of a gastrotrich.
But, being touched by a lonely abused child, environmental catastrophe, cancer, a suicide, or some other human event, leaves an indelible mark.
We are in a golden window of cause and green marketing. There is still enough unfounded skepticism that your competitors may not be doing it, but the window is open just enough for your brand, service, product or client to make a lasting impression. Oh, and you’ll feel like you actually achieved something…well, meaningful.
Read MoreAudio Tribute to Steve Jobs
Today is the first day that the world is without business, software and computer icon, Steve Jobs. In memory of this great pioneer, we have created a fitting audio tribute to this incredible man.
In 1997 when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he insisted that every computer has a very specific sound. “The good sound”, as he called it, was supposed to be installed on every Macintosh produced from that day on. This sound, more commonly known as The Mac Startup Sound is what the inventor of the sound called “a palate cleanser”: a sound that should not be associated with a crash, but instead associated with a new beginning.
This sound is the perfect basis for our tribute to Mr. Jobs and his legacy at Apple computing.
Despite the fact that Mr. Jobs left an incredible legacy, and improved the lives of many people, we also want to send our deepest condolences to his friends and family. Steve was, after all, a human being. As we all celebrate his life and accomplishments, there are many people out there with very real, very deep grief for the passing of a husband, son, father, and friend. Our deepest sympathies to you.
This small and simple song will hopefully remind people that though a great inventor and innovator has passed, the future is only beginning. Steve Jobs was one of the pioneers of the modern digital world’s foundations. A pioneer in the truest sense, in the days when the internet was not yet born. But today marks the first day of a new era. A strong foundation has been created by people like him.
It is up to us: the young, imaginative, creative and brave to build upon this foundation.
Sincerely,
Brad Stewart, CEO/President and the Adjoy Team.
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Adjoy Demo Video
The video below has been uploaded on the Adjoy platform. The GiveGauge in the bottom right corner tracks the number of dollars and cents raised for the campaign on a “1 penny for every 1 second” basis. This piece of technology is the key to gaining increased views, by encouraging viewers to share the video for a good cause. “Donation” is tracked live during viewership, then the total donation is updated with every new view.
Other features
Customizable “on the fly” pre-roll and post-roll link/description. You can change the pre-roll and post-roll clickable links in the video itself, which will be updated within the Adjoy CMS. This means that you don’t have to re-embed after you make changes. Make this a share call to action, or link to a donation or eCommerce page. Your choice, which you can change across all embeds at any time.
Social media sharing. Social media sharing is included at the end of every video, linking to twitter or Facebook. The meta-description is based on what you put on your campaign page.
Customizable thumbnail. You can upload whatever eye-catching thumbnail you want for your video, in order to increase conversion. This is automatically included in further social media sharing.
Upload once, share many. You can launch as many campaigns as you want from a single video. This means you can pick different charities for different social media segments. Remember: all videos have a date/time/budget limit, so you never have to worry about going over budget!
Campaign down, Video Up. Once your campaign is over, the video will stay up. The GiveGauge disappears, and continued views can still occur in all places where the video has been embedded. Viewers will never be deceived into thinking money is still being raised, once a campaign budget has been hit.
Set Your Own CPM. Perhaps the most revolutionary part of the Adjoy platform is that you can set your own CPM. The amount you decide to pay will increase your chance of your campaign getting the attention it requires.
Fully Accountable Advertising. You only pay the charity once a view occurs. The social masses and the charity are responsible for helping you get the attention your company or product needs! You are not alone with Adjoy.
The Most Cost-Effective Advertising Platform? Whether it’s just a small budget, or from a cost-per-view basis, Adjoy is extremely cost effective. Social media and search costs around $1.00 per click. With Adjoy, that same dollar gives you over 10 full views of your video!
Granular Viewership Reporting Advertisers and agencies have to pay hundreds per month for viewership tracking and reporting with other video content management systems. The Adjoy platform costs a fraction of these platforms, and offers the same functionality. Are people leaving your video at the 20 second mark? With Adjoy, you can answer this question, and get a deeper understanding of your creative’s impact.
Putting the Social Back into Social Media
Putting The Social Back Into Social Media
| by Brad Stewart, 3 hours ago
Originally printed on September 29th, 2011 in Mediapost. Mediapost is the largest online trade publication for media and marketing professionals. To see the original article, click here. With all the talk of the Tumblrs, Groupons, Facebook, Google+, et al., uber-billion-dollar evaluations and roller coaster balance sheets, it’s easy to ignore what truly underpins all social media, and much of the web itself.Take the story of Emmanuel Kelly, a victim of war, multiple amputee and orphan. Or Darcy, a young eloquent boy with lymphatic obstruction who wants to be closer to his family. Of the4,147,200 minutes of new video content uploaded every day on YouTube, these two videos came to my attention through friend-recommendation. In both cases, the reason that these videos were cited as “must-watch” was the same: they are both deeply meaningful. As a startup founder, I’m one of the guiltiest parties in following the acquisition rumor mill, startup infighting, M&A announcements, Facebook’s API of the week, and IPO speculation. But, focusing on technology and the opinions of billionaires distracts from the deeper questions of what drives every corner of the social web. I maintain that there really hasn’t been much new web-technology invented since the dawn of the Internet. Things have gotten faster as a result of infrastructural investment into fiber-optic networks. Storage has become cheaper, hence lowering barriers to entry and opening up creative opportunities for developers and architects. Innovative freemium business models have emerged, giving everyone with a laptop the opportunity to build a new business. But, the core of the web remains relatively similar to what it was 20 years ago when I said goodbye to my BBS and started using Mosaic. There are just lots more tools. Interestingly, though, we constantly focus on “new technologies,” as if there is a magic bullet game-changer around every corner. But, truly, the power of the web is that it is socially driven and interconnected. This is different from other technologies like automobiles, electricity, airplanes, and microscopes whose functions are not primarily social. The web itself, in its essence, is a social creature. But, what does this all have to go with green marketing or cause marketing? Understanding that the web is a place of deep social interconnection will eventually lead to the realization that content and communications efforts must fit this mold at some level if you are to leverage the web for its truly unique power. Bad content will be ignored. Good content will be consumed. Meaningful content will be shared. Cause marketing and green marketing are — in their essence — drivers of social conversation and change. There is lots of room for useful content, like how to bone a trout or how to make a rainbow shooter. However, if you want your content to be shared, there has to be some socially compelling reason to do so. Cause-based and green-based messages perform the double duty of hitting people in their compassion or call-to-action core, while also tying the image of your company to the positive message. This diatribe is shared not just theoretically, but also increasingly from hindsight. I’m becoming progressively more intrigued with how hard (and expensive) it is to gain attention on the web through traditional methods, but how — relatively speaking — even a small dedication to charitable or community initiatives can help a business stand out. My prediction is that the next evolution of cause marketing will be not just defending its validity and effectiveness to CMOs, but prescribing it as a necessary “must-do” in the marketing and communications arsenal. In short, ask not what social media can do for you, but what you can do (for the world). Brad Stewart is the President/CEO of Adjoy, a video platform that entices users to share and watch through charitable donations. He is a regular columnist for Mediapost Marketing: Green and Search Insider. He has a Master’s in social philosophy. |
Case Study Results
Adjoy is proud to announce that The Captiva Farms Adjoy® case study for small business has brought about unprecedented results for small business client, Captiva Farms. Captiva Farms is a horseback riding farm, located about 25 minutes from Ottawa, Canada.
Summary for Captiva-Adjoy® campaign
Total Budget: $250 dedicated to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario
Video Content: A 1:06 minute promotional video featuring horseback riding at Captiva Farms.
Media Strategy: Link to Adjoy® video was placed on homepage. Video was tweeted and shared on Facebook by Captiva and Adjoy staff (3 people).
Facebook “Likes”: The campaign generated 105 “Likes” in 18 days. 99 Likes occurred during the campaign, and 6 likes after campaign completion.
Video Views: 769 engagements of the video, with 703 full views registered
Video Metrics: 8.58% abandonment rate; .91% bounce rate; 1% CTR
Traffic Sources: 86% Social Media; 13% Referring Sites; 1% Search Engines
Testimonial: Captiva Farms plans on launching more Adjoy campaigns. They are extremely happy with the impact that this has had on brand-association and traffic.
“YouTube was not delivering as much traffic as we had hoped. Adjoy® provided a quick and easy solution. We pinched ourselves when we found out that the cost was simply a donation to a charity that we care deeply about.” - Craig Clost Sr, Owner, Captiva Farms.
Highlights
Social Media “Likes”: The video page received 105 likes over the course of the campaign. The page hosting the same video, and also featured on the homepage of the website received no likes. The webpage with the second most facebook likes has a total of 7. This is a 15x (1500%) increase in the number of likes on the next best performing page.
SEO: Search engines are now favouring pages with high social media “like” validation. With over 100 likes on the campaign page, Captiva Farms can continue to feature this completed campaign as a testament to the company’s charitable investment.
Video: Though an identical video was posted on YouTube three weeks earlier and also featured on the Captiva Farms website, the total number of views on YouTube is less than one third the number of views for the Adjoy® campaign. Total YouTube views remain at 215.
Positive Brand Association: The entire campaign was driven by social media sharing, based on emotional attachment to a cherished local institution (Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario). This means high-quality levels of user engagement and brand association.
Ongoing Recommendations: The creative messaging in the video should reflect the intention and nature of the campaign in future efforts. Captiva Farms intends to invest in videos that have a “charitable spin”, in order to make the entire user experience more congruent and more effective.
Read MoreHow Much Is It?
The Adjoy video CMS is a free video platform that gives you down to the second analytic capacity, customizable pre-roll and post-roll click-through, viewership reporting, and other features. It’s a system that’s simple enough for an everyday web user, but complex enough to impress any boss or client. Get more views for your online video today.
Cost and Billing
Get started on the Adjoy video platform right away for free. You can upload your video, and start a fundraiser immediately. We only charge a small commission for successful campaigns.
Read MoreDamon Horowitz calls for a “moral operating system”
Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philosopher, Damon Horowitz, discusses the importance of reflecting on how to make important moral decisions about the application of new technologies.
Green Leadership
Originally published in Mediapost, the world’s leading online advertising and marketing trade publication.To see the article in its original form, click here.
by Brad Stewart, Wednesday, May 18, 2011, 9:00 AM
In a recent Marketing:Green article, Stuart Hickox voiced his concern that the general public may be suffering from some degree of green fatigue. He rhetorically wonders what disaster we need to collectively witness in order to wake up to the benefits of committing to a greener lifestyle:
“With new deepwater drilling about to resume in the Gulf of Mexico just one year after the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, it would seem that the scale of the calamity would have to be truly (unfathomably?) unprecedented.”
I’m optimistic that we don’t have to wait for the “big one” before realizing that we should be a striving for a more sustainable society. What I am fearful of, however, is leadership, or a complete lack thereof. What really scares me is that our so-called marketers and leaders would translate perceived ebb in green marketing interest to signals of “abandon ship.”
I stress “perceived” ebb in interest, because consumers are as enamored as ever with good, honest companies that offer quality products and services with a green edge. If anything has changed, there is just less tolerance with companies like BP.
Here are some important tips for those who care enough to take a leadership role in encouraging greater adoption of genuine green offerings.
1. Don’t get distracted.
There are many competing interests and an equal amount of gamesmanship in the field of green marketing. Facts get thrown around like rice at a wedding, and everyone gets distracted. My main piece of advice here is to admit that you don’t know the answers to some complex debates, then move on. This way, you can get to the substantial conversation without spinning wheels over whether wind is better than coal; global warming is a conspiratorial hoax; or SUVs are greener than dogs.
2. Don’t choose sides.
Your credibility will be seriously marred if you choose sides too readily. At the end of the day, as long as we’re alive (and even for a while afterwards), we’re all consumers. Finger pointing will eventually come back to bite you. Assume that we all essentially want the same things when it comes to the earth: to use as much of a finite resource as possible, while avoiding as many negative consequences as possible.
3. Be civilized.
Conversations about conservation are far from the last place where vitriol and conflict emerge. As a species, we are hard-wired to fight. Social media amplifies this all- too-human tendency. In 1990, lawyer/author Mike Godwin invented Godwin’s Law to describe this fact of life:
“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”
Engaging should not be about name-calling and toppling people’s moral or professional credibility. This is where social media is particularly dangerous. Message boards are a place of conflict, and it takes great skill to maintain reasonable decorum. Think Hugh Grant, not Hulk Hogan (did I just date myself?).
4. Keep an open mind.
Let’s face it: we’re not always right. Most of the issues that we face today are so complex that most of us can’t possibly be experts. Once in a while, we will almost refuse to believe a piece of validated research simply because it doesn’t fit within our own paradigm. How can we expect others to change if we ourselves are closed to new ideas?
5. Invent.
It may well be true that the pioneers take the arrows, and the settlers take the land. Despite this cliché, however, there is much opportunity for visionary leadership. Breathe, sit back for a few minutes, shut your eyes, doodle, collaborate, and share.
Ultimately, we will never be able to go against the tide of the market. With the right leadership, however, we can nudge it in the right direction.
Read MoreYou have a video. Now what?
Adjoy solves this challenging problem. With Adjoy, your video takes on a life of its own, finally giving viewers a real reason to share. By focusing on the “social” in social media. Adjoy is all about the human factor……
The problem. Online veterans and newbies alike know exactly what we’re talking about: getting views for a video is next to impossible. Unless you have Evian-Baby sized production budgets, chances are your video will end up like 90% of online videos, with under 100 views. Adjoy is an extra tool in your toolbag to help you get views for your video.
1. Your Video
You can use existing videos or we can create one for you very affordably. The other option to consider is whether you want to produce a video highlighting your company’s specific social investment effort, or whether it’s simply a generic commercial video. Our suggestion: to maximize your chance of getting views for your video, do both!
2. Company Logo
Company, product, service, or initiative. Your choice. Upper left is recommended for maximal brand association. Place your logo front and centre so that viewers will know who should get credit.
3. Adjoy Logo
This is 100% optional. We appreciate the exposure, but want to insure that your campaign is created entirely to your specification. By default, our platform is entirely white-labeled.
4. The Adjoy GiveGauge™
This is an extremely technical, but simple aspect of the platform, which links viewership directly to donation. Our servers crank away at a million miles a minute to track every view at the 5 second interval. We associate these intervals with your donation amount, and the ticker rises accordingly for viewers. For every view of an entire 30 second video, you can pay as little as only 6 cents: a fraction of today’s pay-per-click costs.
5. Charity Logo
Chooses your own charity, or go with one of Adjoy’s partners. We are available to consult on best practices in terms of finding a charity that matches your organization’s CSR and branding goals. To maximize views of your video, you will want to pick a brand-appropriate and reliable charity.
Read MoreThe Benefits of the Adjoy Platform
Adjoy does everything a video platform should do (viewership tracking, monthly reports, transcoding from multiple formats, etc.), and it also gets you views for your video.Everytime a viewer watches your video, they feel better about your company!
It’s not too good to be true, it’s just the next logical evolution of online video, developed by an experienced and conscientious core of developers, business leaders, visionaries and customers.
Here’s what charitable donation gives you. It’s a pretty impressive list, and might just make you think twice about your next big media buy.
1) Permission Space.People hate marketers online and everywhere. By people, I mean “them” as well as you and me! No one wants to be interrupted and told what to do. However, being asked to donate to charity, or -even better- donate a tiny bit of time to charity is a fully tolerated and respected action. In social media, a cause media campaign enables your brand to literally go anywhere: walls, discussion forums, emails, blog postings, comment fields, etc. “We are raising money for Haiti” is much more tolerated than “Check out this vacuum”. Particularly when you’re in a Haiti relief forum!
2)Positive Brand Association Our market research shows significant difference between positive brand association linked to charitable giving, and association with other loyalty programs. The same holds true with negative brand association. It’s pretty simple, really. People are skeptical of the quality of your product if you discount or bribe them to buy it. However, if you don’t talk price and focus on the good you’re doing for the world, people just feel good.
3) Reach. Word of Mouth. And More Reach. Have you ever seriously thought about the reach that a major charity has in their database? The numbers would surprise you. And talk about a loyal and powerful database! In any major charity’s database, there could be dozens or hundreds of influential, and passionate bloggers. Pass them the embed code so they can become publishers, and watch the ticker grow!
4) Accountability.* Your media buy is 100% accountable* and goes 100% to charity. You only pay us a small percentage of a successful campaign. Also, you can alter your CPM to whatever you want, depending on your strategy, target market, product or service, etc. 1 penny for every 5 seconds of engagement perhaps?? Any budget. Any duration.
*Our definition of “accountability” differs from other media outlets. Rather than “per view” or “per thousand potential views”, “accountable” to us means “down to the second”. Another reason to feel the joy!
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