Category Archives: Media

If I Was The NFL Pro Bowl Director

Posted by Andy in Big Businesses, Media, Personal, Sports

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything here.   If only there was a tool that helped people write coherent blog posts…

Well no one asked me, but here’s what I would do if I had to make something out of the NFL Pro Bowl.  Keep in mind the following items:

  • The game is atrocious
  • The NFL needs it as a way to spiff their advertisers
  • Players dig the Pro Bowl because they get bonuses for making the team
  • The game now happens on that dead Sunday between the Championship games and Super Bowl.

So here’s my dumb idea.

High Level: Make the Pro Bowl a week long television extravaganza featuring all the TV shows on the network hosting the game.  Send the producers of all that network’s shows (that make sense) over to Hawaii to film programs that feature Pro Bowl players.  Heck, you can even create shows.

Let’s say that CBS was televising the Super Bowl.  Without doing too much thinking you could have some sort of episode of:

  • Amazing Race, where a bunch of sets of teammates are competing or players get teamed with a regular person.
  • A Survivor spin off
  • A live “taping” of one or two of their sitcoms
  • Plus Pro Bowl specific hows such as a Jeopardy like game show with Linemen vs Quarterbacks. a “teammate” version of the Newlywed game,  skills competitions, etc…

All of these shows could involve Joe Fan, and reach a cross over audience.  But here’s the kicker: You get to charge new advertising dollars for NFL related shows.  Super Bowl sponsors would have more ways to extend their Super Bowl buy into earlier in the week, and companies who can’t afford Super Bowl ads would have a way to invest marketing money into the game.

And really, I don’t really care what they do with the game.  You could still play it, but instead of 3 straight hours of dreadful football, you’d have mini-bites of content from some of the shows that just aired, and some that are going to air that week.

This is a kernel of an idea, not a well thought out plan.  Would love to get your thoughts.

Gaming the Social Media System

Posted by Andy Boyer in Marketing, Media, Social Media

It appears the time has come – or maybe it had already – in which clever entrepreneurial types can more easily game the social media system.

Now that we’re a good 4 to 6 years into companies leveraging social marketing programs, we’ve finally infiltrated the marketing directors who still don’t quite get the concept of building meaningful relationships.  We’re reaching a few decision makers who want quick fix solutions and simple metrics that don’t really correlate to anything actionable.

This article from Social Media Today talks about the proliferation of social scoring.  In concept, it seems like a natural evolution.  Why pay the same CPM to reach everyone, when you can pay a little higher CPM, but buy fewer impressions, to just reach the people who matter most?

But I think the principle breaks down when you take into account that once you use some arbitrary calculation such as “Klout” score, you have – by definition – developed a real world game in which the prizes are monetary.  Rather than spend our time on some casual puzzle game, why wouldn’t we develop ways that we can get on Virgin’s VIP list.  

This “Game-ification” of our online lives is not a new concept.  Scott Dodson talks of it in a very eloquent and interesting manner.  But once we’re using our social profiles, or creating alternate social profiles, to try to game retailers and get on their influencer list, we start to see the business benefits of social media breakdown.  

It seems to me that soon we’ll start to see a separation between companies run by marketing directors who are managing social programs with made up metrics, and those who actually understand their customer base.  And if you find a company with the former, go run up your Klout score and get free stuff…

Rich Barton Explains Online Marketing in 3 Sentences

Posted by Andy Boyer in Marketing, Media

So, my friends and colleagues have been working in the online space for a long time.  Going back to driving downloads and pushing POS items, all the way now to Facebook Apps and QR codes.  We’ve seen a ton of fads and fixtures.  I bet I’ve signed up and tried out hundreds of programs.

Last night Rich Barton spoke to a group of alumni from the UW CIE.  He ran us through a list of his new projects, and a history of Zillow.  But he framed all of his companies under 3 simple tenets, which pretty much sums up the entire history of the internet, no and forever.

  1. If it can be found, it will be found.
  2. If it can be rated, it will be rated.
  3. If it can be free, it will be free.

Find me a company that has been able to break this.  Anyone?

Start your morning with Paper.li

Posted by Andy Boyer in Media, Social Media


There are a lot of semi-useless social media tools out there.  One that I am liking more and more is Paper.li.  

In a nutshell, it takes your Twitter feed, and distills it into a front page of a newspaper, so you can scan all the important topics you care about in one shot.  It even splits them into categories like Sports, Media, Politics, Technolgy, etc….

Now, it only grabs feeds from the people you follow, so if you are one of those “uber important” types that only gets followed themselves, then it’s not going to be much good.  And if you follow a bunch of people that tell you about their sandwich, then you’ll have a boring paper.li as well. 

Here’s part of the Monday morning grab from http://paper.li/aboyer

2 Weeks with the iPad

Posted by Andy Boyer in Media, Personal

(Reposted from the Social3i Consulting blog.)

I’m not necessarily a gadget guy. I like the toys, but I’m generally towards the tail end of the early adopters. For me to spend a lot of money on something, it needs to be good enough to justify replacing the time and energy I’ve already invested on something else.

I usually get pushed over the edge when I see that someone I respect has adopted the technology into their everyday life. So a few weeks ago, after I watched one of our clients taking notes on his slick little tablet, I went forth and joined the iPad nation. 

 Here are some notes now that I’m two weeks in:

  • Super solid notetaking device. Easier and less intrusive than a laptop. Easy to share notes with everyone in the room.
  • Love Keynote. Easy to make presentations on the fly. In fact, I was even able to build a quick soccer field in order to diagram some plays and show my youth team the starting lineup and subs.
  • Love Flipbook. Super cool app for turning my Twitter and Facebook feeds into a mini-magazine.
  • Haven’t downloaded spreadsheet apps yet. This is a glaring hole so far, as I’d love to quickly run numbers.
  • Netflix is fantastic. It’s the easiest way I’ve ever seen for me to just quickly turn on a device and catch up on whatever series I happen to be watching all the way thru.
  • Also, when I’m at my desk I find myself just using it for monitoring email and Pandora, so I don’t have to bother with having it open on my desktop. 

I haven’t really gotten into games or anything yet. Also, I can’t say I use the browser or email any differently that I’d use my iPhone, so that’s not a real differentiator. And I’m just starting to get into the speech recognition stuff, but I haven’t really nailed that yet.

 Overall, it feels like there’s a decent learning curve between making the device a really cool photo album and a fully functional work device. More to come.

 

The Cure For Local News… No Anchors?

Posted by Andy Boyer in Big Businesses, Media

Not many people under the age of 55 would disagree with the idea that local news needs to be reworked.  In previous times, the local anchor was one of a few links between the scary, confusing news story and the viewer who needed it explained.  

But over time, that bond has eroded.  Some would argue the anchor did not evolve with the rest of the news gathering process.  Most of us are more than comfortable being our own editor.  We navigate from website to website, focusing on topics we self-select in filters and rss readers.  

So what role does the news anchor play now? Down in Houston, KIAH is going to see if that answer is, “They don’t have a role.”

Word is that KIAH will try an anchorless newscast.  The concept is still a work in progress, so no other insight is available.  But an anchorless newscast enables a wide range of sweeping changes in the local news.  At the very least, the 4 talking heads could be consolidated into a single one, news magazine and national newscast style.  And managing editors could be guided by popular opinion or some form of viewer input.

Will people watch a TV screen that has no differentiation from a YouTube channel or web site?  Either way, it will be an interesting to story to follow.

And Now Back to Marketing Stuff…World Cup Ratings Soar

Posted by Andy Boyer in Media

Well the U.S. World Cup team is out.  Sad day last Saturday.  

But thankfully, a combination of high drama, strong ESPN/ABC coverage and a Saturday afternoon match provides a nice segue from soccer stories back into the world of marketing.

According to TVBytheNumbers.com:

The 2010 NBA Playoffs averaged a 3.6 U.S. rating and 5.7 million viewers across ABC, ESPN/ESPN2 and TNT, up 3% in ratings and 5% in viewership from last year (3.5, 5.4 mil), and up 9% and 16%, respectively, from 2008 (3.3, 4.9 mil).  A seven-game NBA Finals more than made up for several sweeps in the second round and consistent declines in the Conference Finals.  

Given those numbers, I was interested to find out how many more people would watch the NBA playoffs than a World Cup soccer game.  Well, according to ESPN:

Saturday’s game, which began at 2:30 p.m. EDT on ABC, received an 8.2 fast national rating, ESPN said Sunday. It was seen in 9,455,000 households and by 14,863,000 viewers. Only the 1999 Women’s World Cup final, featuring the United States and China at the Rose Bowl, averaged more households (11,307,000) and viewers (17,975,000) for a soccer game. An additional 4.5 million people watched Sunday on the Spanish-language Univision.

Wow.  To put those numbers side by side:

  • US vs Ghana Soccer Game: 8.2 rating, 14.9 Million viewers (ABC), 19.4 Million viewers total (ABC+Univision).
  • NBA Playoff average: 3.6 rating, 5.7 Million viewers

Now I know it’s not a fair comparison, since the NBA playoffs also included cities like Oklahoma City where only 3,500 of the 10,000 people with electricity actually know how to work their remote control.  So to be fair, here’s data from the most watched basketball games of the year:

  • Game 7, NBA Finals: 15.6 rating, 28.2 Million viewers
  • Game 6, NBA Finals: 10.4 rating, 18.0 Million viewers.
  • Game 5, NBA Finals: 10.8 rating, 18.7 Million viewers.
  • Game 4, NBA Finals: 9.9 rating, 16.4 Million viewers.
  • Game 3, NBA Finals: 9.6 rating, 16.0 Million viewers.
  • Game 2, NBA Finals: 9.2 rating, 15.7 Million viewers.
  • Game 1, NBA Finals: 8.6 rating, 14.1 Million viewers.

So the U.S. vs Ghana game comes in just under Game 1 of the NBA finals.  I expect that’s much more than ABC expected.