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I spent almost 15 years of my professional life in the TV and Entertainment Industry in Italy, where I obtained some decent recognitions as Head of Programming at a movie channel. The years spent in that industry have a strong influence in how I think about web marketing now. Much of what I know and share about personas, audience analysis, content strategy and planning, branding, relationship marketing, cross-media marketing, on-off marketing, and engagement is the product of what I learned during those years in the entertainment industry.
The passion I have for the TV and motion picture industry is such that I continue to follow its “inside news,” even after I reinvented myself as an SEO. But it is not just passion that drives my interest. I've always considered the entertainment industry one of the best places to detect the future use of new marketingconcepts that will eventually become mainstream. I also believe that there are no better storytelling teachers than the best Hollywood screen players like, for instance, Andrew Stanton.
Let’s face it: the entertainment industry and its players (actors, directors, singers, etc.) continue to have an impactful influence on our own society and ourselves: culturally, economically, and politically, in a process that feeds itself back. I wrote this post for all of those reasons, and I am going to describe a very peculiar facet of the "Hollywood influence," which can teach us many things about branding and the use of web marketing and storytelling.
Without further ado, let me narrate the story of how a dress in Hollywood can influence the life of many different people and industries.
Beauty and the Brand
Take a close look at the photo below. Here is an actress on a red carpet, dressed in an haute couture gown and surrounded by a crowd of photographers and fans. These are the protagonists of our story, a film that we will call Beauty and the Brand.
Imagine yourself beginning to watch the film. The lights of the theater turn off, the screen lights up, the spectators are silent, and a music starts playing. The film begins:
"Heaven / I'm in heaven / And my heart beats / So that I can hardly speak / And I seem to find / The happiness I seek / When we're out together / Dancing cheek to cheek..."
Sequence one - Beauty meets the Brand
[Interiors, daylight. Medium shot. The music continues in the background.]
Oscar night is approaching, and the Brand is looking for a new face for its promotion. During the year, Brand studied the popularity of trends throughout all the young actresses in Hollywood. They collected data by using the StarMeter by IMDB Pro (aka: Amazon), monitoring social networks and the blogosphere, and they finally made their final decision: Beauty must be the new face for Brand's testimonial.
Beauty is a great choice to represent Brand's targetpersona: young, famous, beautiful but not unattainable, and real rather than imitated. Brand contacted the young star through her agent (or, perhaps, through her stylist) and offered to dress her for the Academy Awards. It is a risky moment because other brands are tempting the young actress, and she always has the option to choose an unknown fashion designer, as others have done in the past. But today is a lucky day for Brand; Beauty, delighted, accepted its offer immediately.
Sequence two - The troubled news magazine board
[Interiors, daytime. Medium to close shots. No music, just ambient sound.]
John, Michael, Eva, and the other members of the XYZ Magazine are worried. The revenues from traditional advertising are falling because they had to cut gross profit for every ad format offered in the newspaper, and people simply are not buying printed press as before. To make matters worse, the online version of XYZ Magazine is not working as well as they’d desire. It's still not clear how to correctly monetize the site (paywall or not?), and the CPM ads model needs a boost as it is also declining.
John, Michael, Eva, and the other members on the board of directors are looking to Marshall to save the day. He is an SEO, who worked at the New York Times, and he is giving the worried board members a bit of reilef with his suggestions. Covering both celebs and movies in their news could be a win-win tactic.
In fact, news highlighting celebs and movies accounts for as much as 10% of the site’s search traffic in the weeks leading up to and after a major movie industry event. With the Red Carpet season getting closer, it's important to focus on both categories.
For this reason, the SEO team has started prioritizing keyword research, archiving the previous year’s content off of the main page, and moving the conversation about fashion and buzz worthy films/actors to the main stage. More traffic means more pageviews, and an impressions ads revenue boost is needed.
The Red Carpet is now XYZ Magazine's major focus.
Sequence three - The fans
[Exteriors, morning. Dolly shot.]
Linda and Kimberly are walking to class, and they are talking about their favorite actresses. Linda loves how Jessica Alba is so close to her fans, and she adores following her on Pinterest and Twitter. And that video with her doing a "staring competition" for Ibeatyou.com - how cool is that?! Linda even convinced her mother to buy the organic baby products from The Honest Company for her little twin brothers, which is the startup Jessica Alba co-founded. Oh, how Linda would love to be like her.
Kimberly likes Jessica, too, as well as many other celebrities. Kimberly and Linda both spend a lot of time talking about their favorite celebs, from the products they love to their movies and what brands they wear to what they promote. Kimberly has even made a donation to the World Food Programme and Feeding America after seeing “The Hunger Games” cast supporting it online. If her favorite stars promote a charity, she feels more compelled to do it, too.
Although Kimberly and Linda may not be aware of it, their celebrity role models inspire everything in their lives.
The night Beauty shined
[Exterior, night. Slow zoom in and then “spaghetti western” close shots. Soundtrack by Hans Zimmer mixed with ambient sound.]
The night has arrived.
It’s the first time Beauty has been invited to the Academy Awards. She knows that the minutes she will walk on the Red Carpet are a big occasion for her. She is already popular, but she wants more; she wants that recognition, which may lead to contracts with fashion and beauty brands. The career of an actress is very short if you are not doing it right, and bigger contracts may offer her the opportunity to be more independent and start choosing the projects she really wants. Did any other actresses choose the same attire? She hopes that the dress Brand offered her will help her stand out from the crowd and make the impression she wants.
Brand looks nervous. Beauty is wearing its dress, and it's time to see how the reporters will judge it.
The XYZ Magazine reporters are also nervous; they are surrounded by competitors and know that practically every news site is live streaming the Red Carpet on Twitter, YouTube, web, and mobile. They must take the best photo, obtain the best quote from the actors, and secure enough buzz from the night to engage their readers the most in order to gain their desired pageviews and ads clicks.
Beauty is nervous, but when the flashes start firing and the reporters shout her name with rows of fans behind them, Beauty stops, smiles, and poses. She then takes out her phone and starts photographing the photographers, who roar with joy. She knows the night is hers.
At home, Linda and Kimberly are following the Red Carpet in their rooms from their tablets, while chatting together on Facebook or Twitter. Their conversation looks like this:
“I'd die for @Beauty’s dress she's wearing at the #Oscars!” “It’s a Brand’s gown” “I want it” “It may cost a fortune” “I don’t care, I will buy something of @Brand at Walmart anyway”
Brand smiles at a job well done. It listened to Linda and Kimberly's conversation thanks to the sentimentanalysis monitoring of the social conversation.
"@Linda @Kimberly we at @Brands would love to see a photo of you wearing our pret-a-porter new collection shirts!" "@Brand Awww! Sure!! :D"
Brand smiles again. The objective of putting Beauty in that dress has been achieved, but for how long?
Idea one for a sequel: Beauty and the Small Shop
Can a small business having success and gain traction from having a celebrity endorse it? Like all marketing, it depends. Surely the small business can contact the actress' agents or publicists, but that process is similar to an outdated cold call and is likely to have a B&W TV testimonial "As seen on TV" flavour.
Small businesses may be better off selecting an easier way. For example, contracting a celebrity on Adly provides an easy way to get a Twitter endorsement from a celeb, but it not cheap. You're looking at a $25,000 minimum per tweet, and it's likely that small businesses won't have that type of cash lying aorund.
A third option is to use others' money to endorse your business. For example, check out this tweet:
Note that Jessica Alba is retweeting an advertisement tweet (#adv). Even though this is a retweet of an ad, the tweet is credible and true, which is emphasized by the photo attached. #Smallbizsat is the hashtag of the Small Business Saturday, the shopping event American Express (the brand behind @ShopSmall) is promoting in order to help small, local shops gain traction and customers on the Saturday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. (Small Business Saturday was the 24th of November this year).
Another example is this old-style commercial with Fernando Torres promoting the barber shop of a "friend."
This video generated quite a buzz in Spain. Was the message totally genuine? We came to find out that it was not. In fact, this video was the "teaser" viral campaign of a bank, but the barber shop was real and even operates a (not so good) Facebook page. The shop does not have a website, so Gessbra did not gain huge benefits from this marketing action. However, you can't put a price on having a football star endorse you thanks to Google SERPs blended verticals.
The last option is being able to befriend a celeb, which is hard to do but not impossible. Celebrities aren't human beings made flesh and blood, just like us. There are even "how to" guides that highlight how to get a celebrity to follow you on Twitter (horrible title, I know). At the base of all of these tips, don't forget about relationship marketing, hustle, the six degrees of separation (in social media, the degrees are even less), tools like Followerwonk, and a large amount of patience, honesty, and respect.
Idea two for a sequel: Beauty and the Startup
I have to be honest; while I was preparing this post, I was listing Do's and Don'ts about how a startup should try to find the endorsement of a celebrity.
But Mark Suster beat me to it with amazing post that covers this topic much better than I do. Therefore, let me simply cite him:
Do you have any other thoughts on how web marketing and the entertainment industry can learn from one another? Leave them in the comments below.
If you like Hans Zimmer, the author of the "Inception" Soundtrack here used in the post, you may want to check his Facebook page or listen more of his great music.
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If Congress doesn’t act, a typical middle-class family will see their taxes go up by about $2,000 -- which is why President Obama began calling on Americans to make their voices heard last week, and asked them to share what $2,000 means to families like theirs.
Yesterday the President connected directly with the Americans who are speaking out about these tax cuts. During a live Twitter Q&A from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, President Obama explained why Congress must act and encouraged people around the country to continue to add their voices to the debate.
President Barack Obama participates in a Twitter #My2k live question and answer session in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Dec. 3, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
In Case You Missed It
Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog:
President Obama's Bilateral Meeting with Prime Minister Borissov of Bulgaria Yesterday, President Obama met with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and thanked him for Bulgaria’s strong partnership in NATO, as well as the country’s support in Afghanistan and its cooperation on criminal investigations, law enforcement, and counterterrorism.
Read Some More Stories from the Middle Class Tax Cut Debate In the past week, more than 300,000 people have spoken up about the importance of extending the middle-class tax cuts. More than 100,000 stories have been sent in to the White House website alone, and they continue to make for powerful reading.
10:10 AM: The President and the Vice President meet with governors at the White House to discuss the actions we need to take to keep our economy growing and find a balanced approach to reduce our deficit
12:30 PM: The President and the Vice President meet for lunch
1:00 PM: Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney
4:35 PM: The President and the Vice President meet with Secretary of Defense Panetta
Capitalists take risks. They see an opportunity, an unmet need, and then they bring resources to bear to solve the problem and make a profit.
Industrialists seek stability instead.
Industrialists work to take working systems and polish them, insulate them from risk, maximize productivity and extract the maximum amount of profit. Much of society's wealth is due to the relentless march of productivity created by single-minded industrialists, particularly those that turned nascent industries (as Henry Ford did with cars) into efficient engines of profit.
Industrialists don't mind government regulations if they write them, don't particularly like competition or creativity or change. They are maximizers of the existing status quo.
Of course, they can't abide humanity when it comes to work, because humanity is inconsistent and interested in things other than the last zero. The best employee is a robot that can be plugged into a wall.
The stock market rewards the single-minded industrialist with short-term applause and then the relentless desire for ever more of the same growth and productivity that got them applause yesterday.
Today's industrialists define our economy, but they offer very little promise for tomorrow. They've long bought ads to polish their image, but mostly work to alter the culture in ways that will ensure they'll get just a little bit more yield out of each of us. 64 ounce Coke, anyone?
As long as industrialists are measuring productivity, engaging in scientific management and focused on ROI and predictability, there will always be a gap between the dreams of those they interact with and the demands of their shareholders.
There are lots of ways to justify the work of industrialists, to point to the efficiencies and productivity they create. That doesn't meant that we must aspire to nothing more.
Aggregate consumer debt fell again in the third quarter, by $74 billion, continuing the nearly four-year downward trend in household debt. As of September 30, 2012, total consumer indebtedness was $11.31 trillion, 0.7% lower than its level in the second quarter of 2012 and down $1.37 trillion from the 2008 Q3 peak.
Mortgages, the largest component of household debt, continue to drive the decline in overall indebtedness. Mortgage balances shown on consumer credit reports continued to drop, and now stand at $8.03 trillion, a 1.5% decrease from the level in 2012 Q2.
Home equity lines of credit (HELOC) balances dropped by $16 billion (2.7%).
Non-mortgage household debt balances jumped by 2.3% in the third quarter to $2.7 trillion, boosted by increases of $18 billion in auto loans, $42 billion in student loans, and $2 billion in credit card balances.
Total Debt
click on any chart for sharper image
The deleveraging (deflationary) trend in consumer debt is unmistakable.
Number of Loans
There is certainly no jump in the demand for credit card, mortgage, auto, or home equity loans.
Loan Delinquencies by Type
Deleveraging of credit card and mortgage debt continues. Some deleveraging is via default. The rest is slow, steady debt reduction with reluctance to take on more debt.
The increase in student loans (and delinquencies as well) buck the deleveraging trend for two reasons
Student debt is government guaranteed
Student debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy
Guaranteed or not, students have no way to pay back their debt as real wages for college grads declines while tuition costs soar.
Auto loans have recovered a bit (primarily because cars eventually wear out). Yet, auto loan balances remain below the 2005 peak.
The only item preventing a huge plunge in non-mortgage debt is student loans.
The Fed has been fighting consumer deleveraging with round after round of QE but the above charts show it has not spurred consumer demand for credit. Those rounds of QE have, for now, put a bid on financial assets (stocks, bonds and commodities) but has done nothing positive for the real economy.
More specifically, those rounds of QE have artificially lowered interest rates, destroying those on fixed income in the process.
For a discussion as to how Fed policy is tantamount to outright theft for the benefit of banks and the wealthy, please see Hello Ben Bernanke, Meet "Stephanie".
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Youth unemployment is shockingly high in Greece, Spain, and Italy as shown by Europe's Most Tragic Graph by The Atlantic.
Young workers in Greece and Spain are facing an absolutely egregious work drought, where half of high-school and college-graduates ready to find a job aren't finding one. And 55% isn't the ceiling. Both economies are shrinking and unemployment is a lagging indicator -- as Americans have learned, the rate can keep going up after an economy technically starts growing. This economic tragedy can easily become a social disaster as young promising people either leave their country to work somewhere else or else turn to illegal or violent activities to protest policies wrecking their economies or lash out against a country that's leaving them behind.
EU Wants to Ban Youth Unemployment
Looking for a reason for the rise of the neo-Nazis in Greece? Look no further than economic depression and over 50% youth unemployment. So what to do about it?
The European Commission wants to oblige EU countries to all people under 25 to secure a job. How states are to implement the guarantee, it will not betray.
The Member States of the European Union should guarantee all people aged less than 25 years in the future, within four months some form of employment. These governments should issue a so-called youth guarantee, as stated in a regulatory package that wants the department responsible Commissioner László Andor imagine this Wednesday in Brussels.
Economic Idiocy
It would be nice if the economic illiterates in the nannyzone would stop and figure out why youth unemployment is so high.
The primary answer is work rules, pension rules, and other rules are so harsh that companies simply do not want to hire workers.
Any clear-thinking person should quickly realize that if companies cannot fire workers they will be extremely reluctant to hire them in the first place.
Now the nannycrats want government to take over still more of total output instead of shrinking it, at a time when every country in the EU is struggling to reduce deficits.
Insanity does not begin to describe the stupidity of this proposal, which I might add (the EU offers no way to implement in the first place).
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
The PMI™ registered 49.5 percent, a decrease of 2.2 percentage points from October's reading of 51.7 percent, indicating contraction in manufacturing for the fourth time in the last six months. This month's PMI™ reading reflects the lowest level since July 2009 when the PMI™ registered 49.2 percent. Comments from the panel this month generally indicate that the second half of the year continues to show a slowdown in demand; respondents also express concern over how and when the fiscal cliff issue will be resolved.
ISM at a Glance
Series Data
Nov Index
Oct Index
Percentage Point Change
Direction
Rate of Change
Trend (Months)
PMI™
49.5
51.7
-2.2
Contracting
From Growing
1
New Orders
50.3
54.2
-3.9
Growing
Slower
3
Production
53.7
52.4
1.3
Growing
Faster
2
Employment
48.4
52.1
-3.7
Contracting
From Growing
1
Supplier Deliveries
50.3
49.6
0.7
Slowing
From Faster
1
Inventories
45
50
-5
Contracting
From Unchanged
1
Customers' Inventories
42.5
49
-6.5
Too Low
Faster
12
Prices
52.5
55
-2.5
Increasing
Slower
4
Backlog of Orders
41
41.5
-0.5
Contracting
Faster
8
Exports
47
48
-1
Contracting
Faster
6
Imports
48
47.5
0.5
Contracting
Slower
4
Expect Conditions to Worsen
It's tough to pin this slowdown on hurricane Sandy although I suspect some will try. Others will blame the "fiscal cliff" but that theory does not have much credence either. After all, this is the 4th contraction in six months, long before Hurricane Sandy or fiscal cliff worries.
Instead, I propose global QE in the US, China, and Europe has finally played out for all that it's worth and then some. Note that export orders have contracted every month for six months, and the backlog of orders every month for 8 months.
Eventually, employment had to catch up with those trends and it did. Employment fell 3.7 percentage points to 48.4.
Production is up 1.3 percentage points but with new orders and exports slowing rapidly, don't expect that to last.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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