Musings Of A Marketer

I was writing not so long ago, about Jon Lunetta trying to approach the Russian mobile marketers here in Russia, and how slow (actually zero response) the latter were… This is the tendency with mobile marketing here in Russia: companies open for a certain client - be it a old buddy or good partner from previous business, and that client remains a very major one - if not the only one. Basically, the methods of mobile advertising would focus on text-to-win campaigns.

Just today I noticed a poster advertising a mobile marketing campaign for a beer brand Velkopopovitskiy Kozel. And this is the first campaign that I have in memory, which focuses on something more than simple text-to-win. This campaign attempts to create a certain community around the brand. The technique is as follows: you need to sms 2 codes to a short number (priced at the level of ordinary sms) to be able to create a virtual tavern. Here is where you invite your friends, who need to have a couple of beers at your tavern (i.e. sms a couple of codes to the shortcode). In the end the winner (announced every day, according to the number of friends who visit your tavern) receives a prize. What is not so good about the campaign is that it only lasts 2 months - not so smart if you wish to build a community around your brand. I guess this was not the idea… Another problem is the campaign’s website. It’s nice, cute and has got a bit of humour. But it’s soooo slow - must be lighter, definitely.

Anyway, good to see that the innovative methods are acquired around here. Wether this is a single exception or a tendency - we should see, but anyway. Unfortunately, this cool idea comes again from a beer brand, which means that the major threat for businesses come not from competition but from legislative restrictions. The bonds imposed on alcoholic brands make the players keep searching for new ways of advertising, while the industries where legislation is more liberal are still seeing sweet dreams of prosperity, without having to compete with their peers, the clients or government… None needs to do anything as long as everyone is happy…

Among other things, I have been busy last week completing the content-filling and adaptation / localization process for a website. This is an international company, they have sites for at least 10 countries already, and now they are opening in Russia, too.

So, what is the main lesson one will learn when creating a site (be it from the scratch or just an adaptation – believe me – no difference)? The lesson is that you will never finish with it…

No matter how carefully you check it, serious bugs, or as a best case scenario, stupid mistypes – they are always there. Check it… Double check it… Wouldn’t help…

But this is not something that has to stop you from going online. That is where you need this small lable BETA. Tell your visitors that you are ready to go, but still looking for bugs, and encourage them to help you with it. Leave the contact form and the contact details as visible as possible, let people talk to you, and start collecting wonderful ideas from smart and experienced net-surfers, let alone their comments about the bugs and mistakes you might have missed…

I was posting about the problems one is likely to face when trying to contact for a prospective partner. A couple of months ago I was approached by Jon Lunetta of MyWaves Inc. He was exploring opportunities for connecting to Russian mobile service providers to arrange partnership programmes for their clients, with MyWaves’ technology platform. Since our TeriMobile company was already preparing for a shutdown, I compiled a small list of the industry players who had been most active by that time.

Just now, after 3 months, or maybe even more, Jon has come online again. None of the list would care to give any reply. I mean, hey, this guy is trying to get you in touch from over the ocean - how serious do you think he may be? I believe, pretty serious. If you are not interested - just be polite and say smth like “No, Thanks”. How hard can it be to type these two words? With the speed that mobile marketing industry is developing here (sloooow), I don’t think you have 5000 unread mails in your inbox…

A very interesting idea started up by Starbucks recently.

It is about crowdsourcing - the company has introduced a MyStarbucksIdea.com  website where you can register to share your ideas about just how the company could improve. The visitors can view the ideas by recent, popular and top all-time (which must be the same as popular I guess).

The registered users are encouraged to share their ideas and vote for already posted ones. Behind this are the Starbucks’ employees who are specialists in various fields, and they will respond to the advice - not directly to users but by acting, hopefully.

There’s also a blog page - called Ideas In Action - where the company will most probably describe the way they are acting on the advice received from the community. So far there are just a couple of posts - one welcoming by Howard Schultz, and one from Chris Bruzzo, where he wow-thanks the community participants and encourages them to keep on sharing.

This is a great way to get even deeper into communications with the customer community and have a better knowledge of their preferences. Crowdsourcing is a win-win for the parties, and Starbucks should keep their efforts on this site - more and better communication and, more importantly, show action to the community who take their time to share their knowledge…

I have just come across a video that we’ve made when working at TeriMobile. This was about our Bluetooth marketing platform - TeriZone. If interested, have a look, the videos aren’t so bad to describe the service at work.

Here is another reason to pay attention to the Russian Internet space.

Gazprom Media (part of the Gazprom) has acquired the Russian copy of YouTube - the video sharing site Rutube.ru. The site was started right after the older brother was bought by Google. The Russian site has not received the same amount of money, but the specialists all agree that it was still overestimated ($ 15 mln). This sum is probably nothing for Gazprom, but the deal means a lot not only to RuTube guys, but also to the industry. I don’t know the official statistics, but it seemed to me that the site had been dying out lately, even before YouTube launched their Russian interface. Now the competition will become even tougher on them, and Gazprom’s investements might give them a chance to fight.

I disagree with the analysts who expect RuTube to become just an Internet platform for their more traditional media channels (the holding is strongly represented in TV, radio and print media). The guys there are not stupid, even if they do not have that huge experience in the net. Moreover, none of the RuTube staff are leaving - everybody, including the tops are staying with the company. It looks more like RuTube won a good round of funding, so I believe, content-wise there are not going to be any significant strategic changes.

As for the industry impact, Russian Internet is heating up. We remember the last year’s big news when russian holding SUP bought Livejournal  - the social network most popular with the Russian audience. I also wrote just yesterday about another social networking site - Hi5 - launching their Russian interface, and I believe, more news will be coming from the country.

While MySpace are still looking for their staff, another network - Hi5 - are welcoming the Russian audience with the newly introduced interface in Russian. But even these guys have been late, the Russian extention Hi5.ru being already booked by cybersquatters.

The company quotes the E-marketer’s article expecting Russia to be the 2nd biggest Internet population in Europe, following Germany. Add to this all the Russian-speaking population in the countries of former Soviet Union, and the attractiveness of the audience becomes quite obvious.

Good move from one of the world’s most popular social networking sites. This should add to their network of users, especially considering the slowliness of their competition.

There is a post by Erich Joachimsthaler at Harvard Business Conversation Starter, which is not very new, but I have just been thinking over the same idea lately - where do you lose as a big company with as big a competition, and how do you win as a small company fighting to get into a niche to survive.

It turns out that it is possible for small ones not only to survive but rather win over the niches which are way more attractive than the markets where giants operate. How this is possible? Erich says the big ones would miss stuff because they are so overwhelmed with monitoring what they are doing at the moment, and researching for what competitors are doing. All the minor changes are being noted and acted on accordingly, but when it comes to a big thing that is a little out of the box, it becomes vague and unclear - no time to address to that. That’s where the small ones - those who concentrate on customer needs rather than competitors’ advantages - come and take charge.

I can’t tell how true this idea of the big airlines not paying enough attention to customers is, but you can see the result:

Four chic but cheap business-class start-ups, Eos, MAXjet, Silverjet and l’Avion have launched all-business-class flights on the incumbents’ most profitable routes from London to New York with huge success. They offer new services for business travelers that are so obvious and valuable: extremely late check-in, fast paths through the airport to avoid the masses, guaranteed luggage immediately upon arrival, private departure and arrival lounges, and all-business-class seating at very reasonable prices — even as walk-up fares. Two years into the launch it is clear that business travelers are taking great liking to these new airlines, which are beginning to get a lot more attention.

Ever had a chance to beta test a coffee? Here’s Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company coming up with a cute idea. As a blogging you are invited to beta test a new flavoured coffee.

The main requirements are that you have to be a blogging, testing and coffee enthusiast. Sign up by providing your blog url (which will be published on the net amongst others) and, if you are eligible, you will be sent a trial version of the new-flavoured coffee Jamaican Me Crazy.

Who and how decides on the eligibility is what I am not sure about, but I know for certain that blogging from Russia I may forget about being among of the happy ones

A very neat, cute and interesting launch - idea to my liking. Hope both Joffrey’s and the bloggers will enjoy…

Technorati : beta test, blogs, coffee, internet, marketing, web 2.0

Food Production Daily reports Mars launching a gift service throough Facebook. This wouldn’t be a big deal, knowing how many widgets have been coming out for Facebook. However, this new service takes a step further on, since it is not any longer a virtual giftshop - the chocolates are pretty real and can actually be eaten

What you need as a Facebook user, is choose a gift (for the moment this will have to be a Twix or Galaxy chocolate), and make a payment through PayPal. The recepient then will be delivered a Facebook message, requiring a mobile number to which a voucher code is sent. This code can then be exchanged for the gift at one of 12 500 participating shops through the UK.

The idea looks pretty raw to be, and only UK-based just yet, however, it is a pleasure to see the giants like Mars searching for ways to combine traditional marketing techniques with completely new methods of our digital age.

One might argue that a gift should be, well, gived… Rather than having the receiver search for the participating stores. True, but let’s hope this will be another step further. And… come on, as if you wouldn’t like to get or give a little something to a mate that you might not have a chance to meet every day but rather once in a month, or not even so. And this now becomes just a couple of clicks away.

I don’t know how confidential the information is, and neither do I know how strict the regulations are, but it would be great for Mars if they had a chance to link their cute widget to birthdays or anniversaries info on Facebook, and let the best customers have little somethings from Mars themselves…

Technorati : facebook, internet, marketing, mars, social network, web 2.0