NachiBlog

Sandi Thorn, Webcast Singer and SONY

I bet many of you have already heard this. But this is pretty amazing isn't it? This girl, Sandi Thorn, had an audience of a 100,000 listeners to her webcast ! Wow...Great sign of things to come! And you thought the  iPod was big? Think again!

From CNN.com

LONDON, England -- A British singer has signed up by a major record label after broadcasting live performances from her living room on the Internet.

Sandi Thom, 24, is now on the books of RCA/SonyBMG after signing with the label at her flat on Monday night.

She built up a daily audience of more than 100,000 people around the world.

Speaking on British television, Sandi said she could not believe what had happened and that her life had "changed dramatically."

"I don't think I have quite realized it just yet," she told GMTV.

"It has obviously changed for the better. "I have managed to get massive amounts of exposure through using the Internet and that is something that people have struggled to do for years."

Several record labels had approached the aspiring star following her Webcasts, which were broadcast on 21 consecutive nights.

RCA label director Craig Logan said: "Sandi is a very talented artist with an already unique story.

"We're very excited that we're now going to be a part of that story as she develops into a major artist."

India’s economic optimism as noted in Bombay

Hello all. I spent the first two weeks of March in India and it was fantastic! Most of my time was spent in Bombay, which is showing signs of promise for the first time in decades. Bombay, as you all know is a New York and an LA rolled into one fine cigar. It is the hub of one of the world’s largest film industries (Bollywood as much as I dislike the term), and one of the world’s largest financial markets. For the uninitiated, Bombay is an assault on your senses. Period. There are approximately 17 Million people living in this massive metropolis and they are a huge strain on the city’s infrastructure- although the infrastructure is getting better. This is all old news though. Lets look at the new, fun stuff.

I met an old friend, who is working for a French Shampoo brand. She is a young executive with a US degree in business (marketing) and loving every minute of it. One day she was working on a product launch with a group from another nearby city, the next day (a Saturday, mind you) she was negotiating a possible acquisition with one of the more successful indigenous consumer products companies in Delhi (which is a 2 hour plane ride from Bombay). She works 15 hours a day, usually from 11 a.m. (yes, lots of companies in Bombay start late, due to traffic congestion and coordinating business hours with their European, Asian or American counterparts) until after midnight, including most Saturday’s. And she loves it! That’s your quintessential Bombayite -all work and all play.

Although there are superficial improvements such as shiny towers, newer roads, and nicer shopping complexes, the most striking (and important) improvement seems to be in the attitude of the people of Bombay (and India)- the attitude of optimism, of ‘gogetterness’ which seems very similar to the late 90’s era in California and New York or Boston or (from what I have heard) the attitude in China. Young people in Bombay actually believe that life is going to be great, that they have a bright future full of world-class career and business opportunities and a world-class consumer lifestyle. (“You can get anything you want in Bombay these days” is something you hear a lot)

Although Internet penetration in India is woefully low today, mobile phones are everywhere. Whether your vehicle of choice is a $20 bicycle, or a $500,000, Maybach, you are most likely to own the latest Nokia or Motorola handset and using it every second of your life. Mobile phones in Bombay are truly a blessing- given the rotting ‘hardwired’ infrastructure and the sheer speed of life in Bombay. (When setting up meetings with old friends, they referred to exact timeframes such as 5-6 minutes, as different from 10-15 minutes in most other places, and were always before or on time)

Perhaps Bombay will bypass the inadequate Internet infrastructure, by WiFi connectivity just like it jettisoned its landline infrastructure in favor of Mobile infrastructure. Having wireless Internet infrastructure in the city would open up opportunities for the people of Bombay to devise new business models and capitalize on the natural entrepreneurial quality of the town.

Mobile gaming, anyone?

AdverBlog: Music to my ears.

We already discussed advergaming titled " Yo! you wanna play"? in a previous entry, now lets talk adverblogs! By every indication the model of having "non-professionals" write about their passion and aggregating it in one place on the Internet opens doors to significant advertising revenue.

The central premise here is that that if you are passionate about something, there are at least a few thousand people out there, who share your passion. Which simply means that if you love grandfather clocks and you love writing about them and reading about them and subscribing to publications that cover grandfather clocks, then be sure that there are other like you. To wax philosophical here, humans are not that different from each other. (Considering we share 99% of the human genome how different could we really be?) That doesn’t mean that the 1% doesn’t account for a lot of variety- it certainly does. I mean I am nothing like Shaq, but still we are bound by a common fate. I digress but only to make a point.

Now, take music for example. There are literally thousands of varieties of musical forms and forms of musical entertainment and there are always a bunch of people that like one form of it over another. Some like Rock, some like pop, some like French Hip-Hop (I do), some like Mississippi Delta Blues (moi), some like it live, some recorded, some like to download it to their ipods, some like to rip it, burn it and play it, some like to buy CD’s, some like to watch Music Videos- you get the idea. During my travels in Morocco, we listened to the “latest pop hit in Morocco” and what to me sounded like donkeys wailing – but Moroccans absolutely loved it! I didn’t but there were millions of Moroccans who absolutely loved this stuff – my point exactly. Having established that – we look at the common forums for discussing your musical interests. How about Apple creating an iTunes blog? Why not? I mean there are millions of people coming to your site to download music – something that they are incredibly passionate about. (In the words of one of my favorite cousins “ Dude Coldplay is the greatest band EVER and “Scientist”? Oh my god it is the greatest song ever. I love it. It is absolutely sick!”) And what’s more? You can even pay the writers/contributors. Do you think iTunes will have a problem generating an audience for this “megablog”? I doubt it.

The real question then becomes, one, can I (posturing as Apple Inc.) make a profit on this? The answer is an emphatic yes. How? Well, lets see. Ever heard of Advertising revenues? And with Apple’s brand equity, fuhggedaboutit (did I spell that right?). The next question is for the blogger to ask herself  “Can I write enough and compellingly enough that I can buy my groceries from the blog income?” The answer here, as well, is yes. In fact I have spoken with many who actually make a nice little income on the side on blogging. So, in effect, bloggers are the new freelance writers. You know how freelance writers are portrayed –fairly accurately- in popular culture? This guy living in a rent control studio apartment in the cheapest (rent wise) neighborhoods in Manhattan, carrying a bunch of papers and books in his arms, wearing jeans and a hoodie- throw this image out. That’s done with. The post-Internet freelance writer is writing about what he is passionate about, who may not be technically brilliant, but has a lot of passion and he pours it out on his laptop and by extension on his blog. He “owns” the blog. He pulls his friends blog in to his (thank you RSS) and knows all about pageviews and online advertising models. This is the new freelance writer. Someone who is passionate about his or her interests or hobbies or opinions, and wants to share it with the world- and the Internet covers the world- at least the literate world.

(Disclaimer: I am currently involved with a Live Music related company here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that is driven by a passionate young guy and I am enjoying every bit of it. Consider me, in this instance a biased neutral- biased only by my evolving understanding of this whole new music thing.)

More to come….

Blog Aggregation...Come together! Right Now...

You remeber when Content Aggregation was a very active buzzword in late 90’s? Turns out, it has started happening. It's about time!  It has taken a very different form than you may have imagined years ago. The driver that is driving the change is the people who are producing content. Used to be content was created by “experts” in certain fields and there was a “technique” to it. Now, everyone is creating content and writing about whatever they feel passionate about with very little regard for the “skill” of writing. This is actually an outcome of the social networking trend, in my opinion. Social Networking has been adopted by hundreds of millions of people as a way to stay connected with people with similar interests, on the Internet and many smart companies (and some retailers) have found ways to enable this trend. People figured, if we are going to chat online, put our pictures up, make friends, then why not communicate our thoughts in a ‘one-to-many’ fashion? And it is practically free!

Just like my earlier entry where I talk about “Gaming Based Business Models” there are some very interesting models being explored to take advantage of the Blogging trend. Gather.com is a Boston based company that has a neat concept. Gather believes that if they can bring top bloggers in a variety of topics, it can generate a large user base and therefore a large audience, so the Blogger has access to a wider audience and probably gets to keep some of the ad revenues generated from contextual ads by Google’s AdSense or by Gather itself. 9Rules has a very similar model, which I won’t go into here, for it would be mostly repetitive.

The difference between community based content aggregation and top-down (if you will) content aggregation is that the top down model requires a lot of expensive marketing as well as heavy investments in technology for keeping control of what users can and cannot talk about. Top down models are also agenda based, as in, the ‘aggregator’ has an agenda that may not match the users’ agenda. Community based aggregation on the other hand is very simple. Use basic blog technology that is available for a fairly low price and then let your users do their thing! Turns out, there is no limit to the depth and the variety of human passion! Turns out, given a forum, people will talk about anything they are passionate about!

The irony of this whole thing is that the Internet tends to (and was supposed to) isolate people. This always conjured up an image for me- and it was an image of this kid in his basement “interacting with the computer” and totally ignoring her friends! Turns out, quite the opposite is happening. People are using the Internet to stay in closer contact with each other, talking more, sharing more, doing more, with each other.
For someone who has been closely involved in this whole process, this is a LOT of fun to watch and be a part of!

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

(I should have podcasted this one instead, but do you really want me singing?)

Are Women better at online shopping? Yes. Add that to the list.

I came across this interesting piece of information from Internet Retailer and thought it would be worth passing along. So women ARE better online shoppers than men? They certainly seem to shop more in every category! The last bullet-point is the most damning as far as Internet Retail Sites go.

Women out-shop men online for first time in ’05 holiday season, study says
(From Internetretailer.com)

The 2005 holiday shopping season marked the first time that more women than men were found to have purchased items online, WebSurveyer says in its 2005 Holiday WebShopper Report.

"Our findings show fundamental changes in online buying trends that will require Internet retailers to make a qualitative leap in understanding their customers` needs," says Brian Koma, vice president of services for WebSurveyor.

The survey, conducted among 500 respondents between Dec. 27 and Jan. 3, found that more than half both women and men say they enjoy shopping on the web more than in stores. 74.6% of women aged 31-40 said they prefer the Internet, compared to 56.9% of men in the same age group. Preferences for the web were common in other age groups from 18 to 70, though the differences between male and female responses were not as wide.

Among the report’s other findings:

• Women out-shopped men in every age category, including 75% of women in the 31-40-year-old age group who say the Internet is their preferred purchasing method.

• Large numbers of potential buyers (more than 70%, both men and women) continue to abandon online shopping carts before they complete the purchase process. Among women aged 31-40, the most common reason for cart abandonment was lack of time, for men in the same age group, it was a desire to comparison shop.

• Almost 15% of buyers say they experienced problems in receiving their goods on time.

• Consumers perceive Internet retail sites as less customer-focused than traditional retailers, with more than 65% saying that they buy more unplanned items at a retail store than online. Both men and women in the 18-30-year-old age category were particularly apt to feel this way.

Blog to drive sales…

It is no secret that Blogging improves your search engine marketing effectiveness. In contrast to a relatively static website, a blog is far more dynamic. If you are a smart retailer, you will Blog about topics that are relevant to your customers and do it everyday, sometimes several times a day. Search engines look kindly upon ‘sites’ that are updated constantly and have content relevant to the ‘keyword or term’ topic. For example: if you sell Furniture online, you would blog about quality, design, delivery, convenience, trends, home purchases and so forth, depending on your customer’s interests. All of these ‘terms or keywords’ are more likely than not relevant to the broader context of ‘buying furniture’. Customers are also likely to interact with your site/brand more often if you provide valuable information to them through your blog. That is: valuable information related to things THEY care about. In simple terms, it would be wise to keep your blog fresh, entertaining and one that provides valuable information. That in itself would drive your search engine results higher- see for yourself.

Yo! You wanna play? Gaming Media Business Models: Has the time come?

When I wrote a thesis on Internet Market development (in 1995) there was clear evidence that technologies take decades (and most almost exactly 30 years) to go from the ‘ lab’ to consumer acceptance. Having done a lot of research in the ‘Online Gaming Based marketing’ world, it definitely seems to me that the time for Retailers and Consumer Product Marketers, to seriously look at Gaming Media as the next pretty big thing – has come.

Look at any serious research on the proliferation of Online Gaming and it is clear that more and more people, in all age groups, are starting to become ‘gamers’ and I don’t mean the World of Warcraft type gamers but more in terms of their entertainment ‘instinct’. I would even go out on a limb here to say that people who enjoy the thrills of winning and the disappointment of losing a bid on eBay are kind of gamers. What is auction but a game where you outsmart and out-compete your adversary? (To some, (definitely not to me), relationships are games too but lets not go there).

The question is: how do smart Retailers and Marketers make use of this development? In other words, what is the smart way to approach Gaming Media? Well, the correct answer is “ Depends on what your customer’s want”. In this case, the simple explanation is the right one. According Shar Vanboskirk , an Analyst at Forrester who has had her eye on the Gaming Business for a while now (her expertise is in the entirety of online marketing though) “Marketers are too focused on identifying a game with their brand, rather than evaluating whether a specific gaming solution works for their CUSTOMERS (there’s that word again!) or Asking their customers if they’d be interested in a gaming model” Shar, who is very passionate about this business, also believes that a lot of marketers are missing the point of online gaming, specifically for the reason I just quoted.

Marketers and Interactive Agencies have been obsessed with ‘online branding’ rather than the ‘online interaction’ or ‘online experience’. Experiential retailers will tell you, that providing an engaging experience to a customer, online or offline is the KEY to branding. I remember Martha Rogers talking about ‘branding every customer experience’ in one of her (several and very good) books. So the important thing that Retailers and Marketers need to look at is: How to engage a customer using games not only to extend the brand but to extend the way a customer ‘experiences’ your brand. If you are with me so far, you are getting close.

The online world is a real world as well. If you have spent any time watching your mind – you know that the mind doesn’t fundamentally, differentiate between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ experience. They are both experiences, perhaps in different categories but experiences nevertheless.  If you get this, you are even closer…

Think about it...

More to come…

Back!

Happy New Year everyone! I apologize for being uncommunicative during the holiday season - but what's a holiday season without the 'holiday' portion of the program?  Having said that it has been a busy couple of weeks with holiday stuff and more importantly Internet Retail, Customers, and my upcoming Internet Retail Book Stuff. I have lots to share and starting tonight, I will put it out there...

Segmentation, Clustering and Personalization

Demographics, psychographics, lifestyle factors are all useful in segmenting a set of customers. But what does this tell you about your customers surfing habits or price sensitivity or response to pop ups? Not much. When you start getting to a higher level of granularity in customer information, you start to see that the (still) widely used methods of segmentation are simply not enough.

The good folks at McKinsey have done some great work in this area helping us understand the different clusters of Online Shoppers. According to their classification, we have Simplifiers who as the title indicates simply want to be expeditious and expect reliable service from trustworthy brands. Then we have the Bargainers, who are close to a majority on eBay and who look for the best price, and online coupons and discounts of all sorts. Then of course you have the sportsters (or as I would call them, “gamers”). Sportsters or gamers are interesting because they love being entertained but don’t want to spend a lot of money online, so in terms of spending they are more like bargainers, but they like the thrill of the ‘game’. There are a few other clusters of customers as well and understanding all of these clusters thoroughly would allow you to personalize your offerings and look and feel of your site to each cluster and that would (and it’s easy to intuit this) clearly raise the probability of a ‘purchase’.

The question is, do you have the data and the knowledge to analyze and act upon it?

What would Johnny Damon Do?

During the Sox-Yanks ALCS in 2004 (was it last year? wow) my little cousin (and I use the word little, Very loosely here because this kid is 6’5, 175 lbs at 18!) told me a great story about WWJDD at his Catholic High School.

After the Sox tied up the series with the venerable Yankees, a bunch of high school kids in the great state of New Jersey, who were supposed to extol the word of god and values of Jesus, went to school in the middle of the night and hung a Massive, 30 foot poster, which was hand painted (not exactly from Ofoto), at the main entrance of the building.

The poster said “WWJDD” in HUGE letters up on top and below it stood a likeness of Johnny Damon and/or Jesus Christ. The kids did such a brilliant job of it, you could hardly tell them apart!

Just one indication of the popularity of Johnny Damon and what he meant to Red Sox fans, even closet Red Sox fans in New Jersey.

The Yankees scored big with this one. I for one will be following Johnny Damon’s career, because he is a good player (or as my cousin would say “He is a Baller Yo”). In Baseball (and in) sports there is no greater compliment.

Congrats! Paul Greenberg (the consummate Yankee fan). You got a great Center Fielder to replace a future Hall-of-Famer, Bernie Williams. All the very best Johnny Damon. It will be a pleasure to watch you do your thing at Fenway even as a Yankee!

So WWJDD? It’s a mystery.