Hitting The Wall

Want to ride your bike in the park? Oh, sorry, that will be $5. Want to ride your bike in the park for more than two hours? That will be another $5.

Ridiculous right? Silly to pay for something that was once free - makes you want to boycott parks all together and just ride on the streets instead.

Why throw this analogy out at you, you might be wondering. Well there's been a trend in the digital world where newspapers are allowing readers a certain number of articles for free but once that quota has been reached, prompt them to pay for a subscription. This trend is called the Pay Wall. 

The image above basically explains it all. Most readers who expect this digital content to be free end up getting stopped by this wall that wont let them pass. Here's my problem with pay walls:

1. Users may be confused that what was previously free content (in the case of the NY Times) is now fee-based content
2. Users may be angered that they can't finish reading an interesting article because they've reached their max viewing time
3. Most users will not subscribe because they are casual readers only
4. The user-experience is different for everyone depending on what source they use (i.e. if they have a mobile device vs a tablet, the price could be different; if a user comes in through Google or Facebook, their viewing quota may differ)
5. Users who have a certain perception of a publisher might think "Who do you think you are, the Wall Street Journal?" That's because WSJ has always been a high end, subscription based newspaper so in the mind of the consumer, digital versions would naturally follow suit. 

Sure, your loyal consumers will probably want a subscription because they've been with you for x number of years or are already a print subscriber but the majority of these readers are casual and if they can't consume on the nytimes.com, they will Google it and find it somewhere else. For free.

A solution that I've seen and actually think is pretty awesome is Ad Wall. This concept is similar to the Pay Wall but the key difference is, the publisher is asking the reader simply to watch an ad instead and then they can continue to read the publisher's content. It's a win for the client and a win for the reader. AND the publisher gets more ad dollars. Best yet, if the user has an opportunity to choose between two ads to watch, it'll make them feel as if they had a choice in the matter, and it wont be such a drag to have to sit through. Just look at Hulu - I'd sit through five commercials just to watch my fave show. Wouldn't you? Oh wait, you probably are already!

Stop hitting your head against the wall. You'll leave a scuff mark.

-D

Just Pull the Trigger!!!

I've come across a very real problem as I've made my way through the "real world."

I participate in mentoring for my undergrad university and I also interview a ton in my current position. A trend I've been noticing lately is that I cannot tell one candidate from the other. Most of my interviews/mentoring sessions end up like this:

I try as hard as I can to bring forth some interesting nugget of information - I ask questions, I look for visual cues, or I sit patiently and wait for a well thought out question to spring forth until I basically end up hearing myself talk to awkwardly fill in the silent moments.

Remember that saying, "Dress to Impress?" Well, ladies and gents, it's no longer looking the part that is expected of you now a days. It's being able to clearly communicate what makes you so awesome and why I want to fight to hire you for my company and have you part of my team.

I recently watched Sally Hogshead's TEDx talk on How to Fascinate. Besides the actual content of the video, please note how open her face is when she talks, the personality she oozes with every word and the way she gesticulates with her hands and moves around the stage:



Pretty...fascinating...right? Sally engages the viewer almost right from the beginning and you are basically sitting on the edge of your seat with excitement wanting to know, YES, how can I too be fascinating? At least I was.

As part of this little exercise, I was able to take her Fascination Test which is about 28 questions long. Each question is designed to figure out what triggers, as she calls them, define your archetype - your bread and butter - your brand.

Her seven triggers are:

1. Power
2. Passion
3. Mystique
4. Prestige
5. Alarm
6. Vice
7. Trust

By taking the test, you learn about your primary and secondary triggers that are the very definition of you.  I have found out that my primary trigger is PRESTIGE and my secondary is PASSION. What does that mean? It means that I'm acute, discerning and detail oriented. I don't settle for average. I'm a combination of ambitious, goal-oriented, social, expressive, and intuitive. Pretty spot on I would say. I fall in with the likes of Ralph Lauren, Oprah Winfrey, JK Rowling, and Lady Diana. Not too shabby.

How can I use this knowledge to create my own brand and to fascinate others? For one, just simply recognizing these triggers is a huge step. It's something I exuded anyway whether I knew it or not but now that I have a knowledge of what this truly is defined as, I already have that much more confidence in myself. For another, I can use my PRESTIGE trigger to get more people at work to recognize and respect my talent by having them share in my own visions. With my PASSION trigger, simply showcasing my personality and my flair draws people in and captivates my audience. This is how I can bring value to my team.

This test reaffirmed what I already knew about myself. It definitely defined it better for me and gave me more direction on how I can use these skills to my advantage and things to look out for (i.e. I tend to be over emotional so toning it down a bit on occasion may not be such a bad thing). Circling back to my earlier comments, I really think each student should take this test their final year of college, before they go out into the real world and interview for jobs. It would provide them with more direction and give them ways to position their own brand. I remember one of the worst things about finishing college was this big gaping hole at the end of it all and I wasn't sure where I would land, if ever. I wish someone had made me take this test so I at least had some paths I could choose from.

I'm one step closer to Branding D and I can't wait for what's in store once I start consciously pulling these triggers more and more.

-D

Verbifying Google

Not many brands can say they are actually a verb. What do you say when someone asks you how you researched something? I bet you say "I googled it." Did you just nod your head? I thought so.

Google has been verbified. It's so deeply ingrained in our culture to the point where it's now actually part of our dictionary. Why did we do this? What has Google done that makes it so special that it can stand along side other brands such as Photoshop, Rollerblades, and Facebook who have also become verbs?

Consider this video:

Cute right? Get's me every single time. Tears in my eyes, goosebumps on my arms. Even now as I re-watch the video to refresh my memory, I start to bawl like a little child.

Google's strategy is phenomenal - provide a service that has multiple extensions that are all extremely useful and if they were taken away the next day, the general populace would probably lose their mind. To top it off, create commercials that showcase the use of the internet not by explaining how the products work but by showing a real life human being (a dad in this case) using all the products Google has to offer to write to his daughter and catalog his memories of her. Scrap booking? Why do that when you can do it ten times better by utilizing the internet to make it happen.

The web truly is what you make of it.

Google does a great job of striking the emotional cord in the consumer. They released similar videos called "Coffee" and "Jess Time" that have a very similar affect on my emotions. They have humanized the brand and for that brief moment, I think to myself, "Yes! I'm going to do this very same thing when I have my own kid one day!" And to be honest, I probably will, thanks to Google. What parent wouldn't want to?

Google may have lost the tech junkies on this one with not enough tech jargon. It doesn't go into the true power of Google and the algorithms that have made it what it is today. But then again it didn't really need to, now did it? The products that Google has created can stand on their own virtual legs.

Besides, we know that the techies are going to still use Google and probably use some forum instead to find out info on all the latest and greatest. They wont need a commercial to tell them. They'll just go google it.

-D

Gaming Woes

I'm all about gaming - casual gaming, heavy user gaming - I think it's all great. It's so easy to get swept up into a story line or something as simple as Candy Crush (by King.com) where you connect similar pieces to move forward in levels.

The latest news to hit the stands has been about Zynga - a gaming publisher that recently let go over 500 employees and announcing the closure of both their NY and LA studios in order to save major bucks. This is HUGE news. Zynga is known for a number of popular casual gaming experiences most notably Farmville.

Hey look, that looks just like me and my farm!!

Zynga is an example of a company that basically had it all and had a competitive market share within the casual gaming experience (this category can be accredited to Nintendo) but lost it rather quickly due to some poor acquisition choices (such as OMGPOP! which, guess what, they also just announced to shutting down). Zynga didn't keep up with the times and produce enough content that interested the end users - people like me! Games like Farmville have a short life span - they take a little while to become popular, have a huge spike in popularity and then fizzle and die once we become bored with tending to our crops. Companies like King.com, I feel, do it the right way where they first beta test a game on their own website. If it receives acclaim and starts to gain traction, they roll it out to Facebook and eventually a mobile application. This is a pretty successful business strategy and why Candy Crush and Bubble Witch Saga are now such popular games and have had a longer life span (does anyone even remember Draw Something?...didn't think so.) 

Branding D

A phoenix, rising from the ashes, this blog has been reborn! The original is but a distant memory. With a new look, a new title and a much needed profile update, I am happy to announce that this, my second foray into the blogging world, has commenced. You might be scratching your head and asking "But Dee, you tried once before! You had about 5 entertaining posts but then you let it fizzle out and die. Why start up again?" 

For my Digital Marketing class this semester (by the way, I started Grad school in the Fall of 2012 at NYU) we are required to write a blog in order to experience the phenomenon of the digital age first hand and to be honest, I hope it forces me to get back into a routine. I've worked in the industry for about 4 years now and have studied marketing all throughout undergrad and am now pursuing my Masters in the subject matter. What I find so fascinating about the whole thing is that it is a field that is constantly evolving which makes it exciting. Hopefully having to post for class will encourage me to continue this after the fact and I can focus on Branding D (that's me!)

Stay tuned for some insightful reading to come and remember, things aren't always what they seem:

-D