Earlier this week a prominent NZ blogger who’d bagged NBR’s paid subscription model announced that he’d subscribed. I only know this because he tweeted it. I mentioned this to a friend involved with NBR and he said, “Mike, rich folk will pay to hear about themselves”.  

Made me think.

Basically every Tweet I’m following at the moment is about the announcement of Pacific Fibre. This new venture “aims to connect Australia and New Zealand to the USA with a high capacity low latency fibre cable.” And what a Twitter friendly story we’ve got here.

It’s being backed by Kiwi heavyweights Sir Stephen Tindall, Sam Morgan, Lance Wiggs, Mark Rushworth and Rod Drury and it appears they’ve timed their announcement just right to go gangbusters across a particularly useful crowd of thought leaders.

Bernard Hickey from Interest.co.nz tweeted an hour ago and it’s just exploded. He just told me that his initial tweet has been retweeted over a dozen times in the last hour. Looking at Datascope I can see his name’s all over things. Chris Keall from NBR is doing nicely too.

The story has just been picked up as the lead on NZ Herald and Stuff too.

And this news is welcomed. Pacific Fibre could be something spectacular for New Zealand. As far back as I remember New Zealand’s Archilles heel with Internet business has always been our limited pipes. The opportunity is massive. It’s going to put the crawlers up Telecom – something I’m sure appeals to Sam Morgan!

I’m a little surprised that Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor aren’t in this uber-consortium too. I’d imagine large bandwidth for their large hard drives would be a real boost for their businesses.

Interesting news. And go Twitter for sharing the love so quickly.

Good luck to all involved.

Today Beyonce won the Song of the Year Grammy for “Single Ladies (Put a ring on it)”. If you haven’t heard or seen it yet, have a look. The song’s catchy and it’s quite an impressive bit of choreography mixed with a certain sex appeal. (My oldest daughter asked me why they were dancing in their undies!)

The version I watched had just received 9.6 million views on YouTube. This was the version uploaded on 13 October 2008.

Single Ladies has been around for a long time and it’s recognition today at the Grammys was possibly due more to its gradual infection into social media, or more specifically, YouTube. Here’s how it went for me…

After viewing the video I looked to the side and saw a five star rated Saturday Night Live parody of the video featuring Justin Timberlake donning a leotard. Very funny. Views – 17.9 million. Date uploaded - 18 Nov 2008. Talk about a great launch pad for a song.

Then there’s another highly rated video featuring a chap with a world-class motor thinking he’s Beyonce. Funny-ish. Views – 10.9 million. Date uploaded – 10 January 2009.

Oh and there’s a dance troupe pulling a flash mob dance to Single Ladies in London. Clever considering they do the whole thing in one take. Views – 3.5 million. Date uploaded – 20 April 2009.

And a baby watching Single Ladies on TV and dancing. Cute. Greatly assisted by Dad laughing. There are few things more infectious than laughter. Views – 8.1 million. Date uploaded – 26 January 2009.

But wait, there’s more! Now a grown male in a nappy creating a meme out of the meme of the baby dancing to Single Ladies! Ridiculous. Date uploaded – 28 September 2009. Views 868,029.

So far all the parodies I watched were by people simply trying to make others laugh. It wasn’t until June 2009 when a group actually levered “Single Ladies” to simply promote their own cause.

Enter the Jonas Brothers, a Disney produced boy band who’ve shamelessly lifted the SNL “bloke in a leotard” idea and lip synced Single Ladies to promote their next release. Now I would normally mock this but their video has been viewed 16 million times! Date uploaded – 3 June 2009.

Accepting the Jonas Brothers are already a very successful boy band in the US, it’s interesting to see that successful exposure and marketing in social media doesn’t have to be an original idea to capture people’s imagination. In fact the copying of an idea, execution, and song, with just the slightest individual interpretation, can be more popular than the original. On this wee journey alone the rip off versions have accumulated five times more exposure of Beyonce’s song than the original video.

Perhaps the Japanese were ahead of their time with Karaoke.

Tracking your tweets is one new online metric only a few publishers are paying attention to. This is a shame as it is particularly simple and could prove to be a notable traffic referrer.

The initial tracking complexity stems from Twitter only permitting 140 characters per tweet. If you have a deeplink story that you wish to tell the world about, the URL is likely to contain many characters so you’ll need to find a URL shortener that cuts down the character length.

TinyURL is one of the old players in this market but my current favourite is bit.ly. I like bit.ly for its simple browser installation (which makes the URL shortening a one click action) and more importantly, it provides me with data on who clicked on my tweeted links. This wee snippet of information is gold.

For larger content publishers, it could have a real impact on what we see on their homepages. For newspaper sites, like Stuff or NZ Herald, getting a feel for how many people click on particular teasers/tweets/links in the first hour of tweeting could greatly assist with the hard editorial decisions on what stories or headlines should lead certain sections.

However, there is one gap with these current tweet trackers - they stop tracking once a person’s clicked on the link. What would be really useful would be a simple tracking service that gathered the leap from clicks to conversion within your site. Armed with that information you could really see the value of the tweet referrals vs other forms of online promotion.

Of course there are some ways to work around this but they’re complex to create and, in my experience, if the action takes more than a few clicks most people won’t bother.

This is where Stuff are doing some cool work. With a working title of “Short Stuff” they’ve created their own URL shortening functionality that they’re about to start using for their tweets. This simple action converts their longwinded query strings into 5 character URLs. They can track the clicks and any site activity from there.

That feels smart.

The Peter Jackson produced District 9 film has been sitting on the side of the “trending topics” on Twitter for about a week now. As a movie marketing device that really must be about the best possible place to exist.

At the time of writing this post four trending topics are TV shows, two are movies, two are musicians, and the other two are random topics.  The Internet’s not killing existing film, music and television it’s providing a platform that rewards talent and brilliance in those mediums.

I bought a pair of uggs the other day after my crappy old slippers died. I love them. They’re warm, comfortable and ugly as. Every night I slip them on and they bring instant comfort. It could be that it’s particularly freezing in Wellington at the moment but overall I think they’re superb.

These uggs have got me thinking about other things that make a difference to everyday life and how important new innovation and ideas are.

Just think of the progress in the financial services sector in recent times. If we go back to credit cards, then Eftpos, then phone and online banking, now services like Wesabe or Xero – these are all tools and services that have created or are creating a real benefit to users’ everyday lives. Transactions are simpler. The benefits to the user are absolutely obvious.

The successful business or product formula in today’s world is:

How does this benefit everyone, everyday?

A friend just sent me a link to The Great NZ Songbook online. He mentioned “I imagine you won’t like the page load up!”.

He’s right, I didn’t, but I like this idea so I managed to survive it. I’ve already read two PR pieces on this books so I appear to be in its target audience!

The resulting site is very Salted Herring. It possesses buckets of a ‘typical NZ’ personality which aligns with this brand. Feels very Black Seeds to me??

I like the volume controls on the car radio for changing the songs. Ironically it was the first thing I looked for when the music blew out at me.

Even at home I want to have control of my computer.

Jeremy Well’s fronting of Meridian’s latest advertising flight is another example of a celebrity taking a risky punt with their personal brand. When Hanover Finance melted last year I commented on Richard Long’s associated brand credibility falling too. As their front man, he couldn’t escape the connection.

For Meridian, Well’s is obviously bringing his recognised charm and wit to make light of a serious change to the Makara and Maniototo landscapes with the impending “windfarms”.

My issue is what’s it going to do for Wells?

I’m not convinced he’s got it right. The educated followers of his humour are also likely to be the well read folk who’re fully aware of the issues with power generation in NZ.

North and South have recently profiled the Mahinerangi windfarm protest following constructive pressure from the Save Central Otago lobby group. This group are also helped by respected celebrities Grahame Sydney, Brian Turner and former All Black Anton Oliver all propping up their scrum.

Having celebrity endorsement in these sort of debates is critical. It’s their involvement that creates instant human interest.

I’m currently doing a series of speaking engagements with Trade me’s “Revolution Tour” and one of my fellow speakers is TaxRefund.co.nz’s CEO, Geoff Matthews. Geoff’s company has arrived on the scene in a matter of months and its growth has been nothing short of phenomenal.

One point Geoff notes in his presentation is the influence celebrity endorsement added to his brand. Having active endorsement from Matt McCarten (General Secretary Unite Union) and Alasdair Thompson (CEO of Employers and Manufacturing Union) in his TVCs has been a huge call for support from two enormously influential people.

The key is, like the Save Central Otago group’s work, the Union leaders’ support is unpaid endorsement. Jeremy Wells, on the other hand, is being paid to bolster Meridian. That lacks credibility.

IAB NZ recently posted an interesting research paper by Nielsen Online on UK online advertising trends. Reading through IAB’s summary of things to consider for the future, I’ve added some thoughts from a New Zealand perpective.

Be aware - standard ad formats and inventory just won’t cut it, experimentation and thinking ‘outside the box’ are key

This isn’t blossoming in NZ yet. That’s not to say it won’t come but integrating mobile, social media, display, SEM, gaming, experiential etc is just too hard, risky, or costly for many agencies. And in many cases, rightly so - NZ’s box isn’t that big.

I still think there’s mileage in using some standard formats like Trade me’s tab and tower or showcase and skyscraper ads to connect with the users. The key for the immediate future is developing the right media buy that integrates context or a very low cost CPM.

It took NZ’s marketing community an age to come around to CPM media buying and many clients just can’t comprehend taking risks with untried media.

Publishers and advertisers have to work more closely together

Absolutely. For agencies this means keeping contacts, managing relationships and facilitating connections. This sort of close integration will raise questions about how the traditional media commission system operates. I see a limited life for the current commission set up in the online space. It doesn’t benefit either side when the ‘time/media spend’ ratio doesn’t equate.

Advertising must be a conversation rather than a push

I like this idea. It’s also a great sales approach. Tom Reidy details the conversation of selling in a recent post which could also hit home with online ads. Talk - don’t sell, listen, use the right language for your audience, keep your look consistent, never be too pushy. These are all useful tips when creating good online ads in the future.

Advertising tone must be more authentic, candid and humble

This is oh so true for a New Zealand audience and it has a lot to do with the user experience that follows the click of the ad. The authenticity of your company/product/message will be surveyed and summed up by the user in a matter of seconds, so that landing point needs to be simple, straight to the point and instantly rewarding to the user. Which brings things to the last point…

Advertising should add value to the customer.

And that value has to be absolutely obvious to the customer.

At the weekend my family participated as a team called “Ray On” in the Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. Our connection to this particular charity event stems from losing my father seven years ago to cancer – which has motivated my ever active 73 year old mother to become chief organiser of a wide team of walkers to raise funds for this worthy cause.

Anyway, the weekend was a great success. Wellington’s dependable weather turned on a superb 24 hours and my wife, kids, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces (and a number of generous family friends) all turned out and did a superb job of walking their way around 205 laps towards our fundraising target.

But what really amazed me (apart from the nice weather) was the enthusiasm of loads of teenagers with HIBS and WEGC on their tee-shirts, who fair sprinted around the course for some 600+ laps.

At 11pm on Saturday night as I did my shift, I felt totally knackered. But their effort never seemed to flag. Aside from youth (and the money they were raising), what kept them all moving at top pace right through the night?

I’d say statistics. Who got the fastest round? Who did the most laps? Did we do better than last year’s team? Standards have been set – how do you beat them? That’s the challenge.

Now it may be a stretch of parallels, but with websites and online advertising it’s similar.

Statistical comparisons are an amazing driver towards getting the best out of what you’re doing. Are we improving? How did that compare with last week, with last month? What worked? What didn’t?

If you have a website, the first thing you should do is set up some site traffic monitoring. Google Analytics is the easiest option and I tell you, the moment you start understanding your site’s performance you’ll begin to appreciate the infectious interest statistical benchmarks create.