Author: Sarah Welstead

Online advertising facts, in an easy-to-read diagram

I don’t know what’s happened to me, but in the past few months I’ve become fascinated with infographics. I’m tempted to blame it on the sentience-sucking phenomenon known as ‘Staying at Home With a Toddler’, but I think that’s only part of the problem.  The truth is that these days I spend an awful lot of time writing content for other people/brands, and when you’ve spent the day writing 2500 words on bedbugs plus another 1500 on syndicate mortgages, pictures just seem a lot more appealing than prose.

(I’ve also been doing more blogging on LinkedIn.  Click here to browse what I’ve been posting there.)

So today I give you another infographic that I found appealing:  ‘Digital Advertising by the Numbers’, by SayDaily.  I don’t have a lot to say about it – I think it speaks for itself. Though I do encourage you to look at the $3.6 billion spent on video ads.  Everyone thinks that no one watches them, but in fact if you can get your message across in the first 5 seconds, they’re more powerful than you realize.

 

It’s no wonder you’re feeling a little overwhelmed by social media

I came across this infographic today, outlining just how much information is uploaded, shared or transacted on social (and social-related) media every single second, and the first thing that came to mind was the Total Perspective Vortex from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

In the words of Wikipedia:  

“The machine produces a virtual reality model of the entire universe by means of the axiom that any piece of matter is affected by all other matter. The Vortex reconstructs the universe through computer processing of a high-resolution scan (“extrapolated matter analysis”) of a piece of fairy cake. When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, ‘You are here.'”

And when you are forced, suddenly, to grasp the impossible hugeness of the universe and your own, infinitesimally small part within it, your mind explodes.

It is “…allegedly the most horrible torture device to which a sentient being can be subjected.”

In other words, I know it can be difficult to think about just how much stuff (information, photos, opinions, websites, likes, transactions, pingbacks, videos, songs – etc.) is being uploaded to Teh Interwebs every second of every minute of day, but sometimes we just have to look it in the face and decide that it’s going to make us try harder to be relevant.

And that is my motivational advice for the day.

I found this great infographic here.

 

Annoying Orange is making a lot more money than you think, by the way

It’s no secret that, in the past 8 years, I’ve spent an awful lot of time on YouTube.  I was there for the advent of Brookers (first YouTuber with a TV deal!), I remember when LisaNova was doing movie parodies with her boyfriend (before Disney bought their Maker Studios for a zillion dollars) – heck, I remember when Shay Carl only had 3 kids!  And let’s not forget the drama that ensued when the world found out that lonelygirl15 was actually an actress.  

I also remember how everyone thought it was some sort of dumb site for teenagers, then realized that maybe it was sort of interesting but that the huge amounts of data required to store and serve all kinds of videos was going to prevent it ever being monetized. I remember when the early YouTubers started complaining about how people like MiaRose were ‘exploiting’ the site for ‘commercial’ purposes…

Well, YouTube’s a very different place these days.  The old guard – Smosh, MysteryGuitarMan, iJustine – are monetizing like crazy, the new guard – PewDiePie, Anthony Quintal, Jenna Marbles – never had any scruples about monetizing, and YouTube keeps asking me if I want to become a YouTube Partner so I can make money from the 34 views I get for videos I post of my daughter.

However, you may not realize just how much money YouTube is making, both for itself and for its content creators (that would be people like Shay Carl, Jenna Marbles – and me – who post original videos). The pre-roll video market is booming, and even with the ‘skip this ad after 5 seconds’, YouTube is still managing to get more high-quality, verified eyeballs than most video ad serving channels.

But don’t take my word for it.  Here’s an infographic that might make you wish you bought that digital video camera 10 years ago.

 

Not sure whether to feel like an early adopter or just old

You know, when I post these infographics that I find on other sites, I really try to offer some insightful commentary about them. That way it’s not so much that I’m stealing them as sharing them.

But I don’t have a whole lot to say about this one, except that I – as a person who can remember when we stopped saying ‘social networking’ and started saying ‘social media’ – like looking at timelines like this. I’m not sure why, since it only reminds me just how much time I’ve spent (wasted?) on social media in the past 10 years. (Though I will admit to taking some pride in knowing that I was among the first 700,000 people to sign up on LinkedIn, back when you still had to spend 10 minutes explaining to people what it was.)

And of course there is my usual caveat, which is that it can be dangerous to trust the numbers on an infographic. I mean, MySpace may still have 36 million registered users from people who signed up in, like, 2003, but I’m pretty sure you’d have a hard time finding a single person you know who’d actually visited MySpace in the past 3 years.

But anyway.  

Maybe it doesn’t matter if the twitterverse and blogosphere are alight with fury

You’ve probably heard about Restoration Hardware’s recent infamous catalogues:  Since early May, RH has been sending out bundles of its ‘source books’, each weighing 12-17lbs, depending on the assortment.  (A 12lb bundle arrived here, though I can’t remember the last time we bought anything from RH, and in fact I’ve always hated their insistence on using US dollar pricing in their catalogues.)

Here’s an example – this is the 15lb bundle:

 

Predictably – at least to anyone living in the real world, which apparently excludes everyone on the Restoration Hardware marketing team – the internets were quick to respond with derision, mostly on environmental grounds. The twitterverse has seen a more or less constant stream of ‘WTF?’ and ‘Are you kidding me?’ tweets for 6 weeks or more, and even die-hard RH fans were left dismayed and disappointed by the whole thing. There are several Facebook groups and pages calling for the abolition of RH catalogues.  In Palo Alto, residents organized a mass return of the catalogues to the local store, dumping 2000lbs of the ‘source books’.

All the catalogue bundles were accompanied by a message about how even though they seemed big, they actually had a lighter carbon footprint:

…except Ben Elgin at Bloomberg did some research and discovered that RH’s ‘sustainability’ claims were dubious at best.

With social media buzz this bad, it’s time for damage control, right? Maybe not.

Received wisdom – well, received wisdom amongst marketing and media and innovation and ‘disruptor’ types – is that social media is Powerful and Relevant and Resonant, and that it’s imperative that when you get this kind of negative reaction, you need to start doing hard-core damage control.  You need to get a dedicated Twitter account going to respond to criticism, post a heartfelt and sincere mea culpa on your website, make a large donation to some kind of environmental charity – heck, maybe you should start a whole division dedicated to the elimination of paper-based catalogues worldwide.  Because otherwise people will Abandon Your Brand.

Restoration Hardware has done none of this.  They’ve largely ignored the social media frenzy, and have consistently dodged questions even from mainstream media.

In fact, they’ve doubled down:  In 2012 they were criticized for a 992-page catalogue – which was bigger than 2011’s 600+-page version – and ignored that criticism as well.

Negative social media doesn’t mean declining sales

With 3+ years worth of catalogue criticism behind them, and sustained outrage on various social media channels, Restoration Hardware should be seeing declining sales, as consumers flee from a retailer so clearly out of touch, shouldn’t they?

As it happens, they’re reporting a 20% growth in revenue, beating estimates.  A couple of weeks ago, TheStreet,com reported that “RH stock [was] spiking”. NASDAQ.com says they’re “[Hitting] new high[s] with grand designs”.  And they’re still getting sympathetic coverage in home decor media. (I do think it’s interesting that the Restoration Hardware site hasn’t posted any media coverage in a couple of years, but there could be any number of reasons for that. Even big companies forget to update their websites sometimes.)

What does this say about the power of social media for brands?

Look, I love social media, and I believe in it.  Heck, I get paid to help clients manage their social media and content marketing efforts – and while I may be jaded and cynical, I’m not so far gone that I’d take money from clients for social media management if I actually thought it was a waste of time.  I think social media can be a great way to increase brand awareness, improve brand credibility, deliver long-term nuanced messages, and provide great CRM.

However.

We have to admit a few things:

• People who are prepared to spend $5200 on a sofa tend not to be spending a whole lot of time in the twitterverse or blogosphere – they have assistants who do that kind of thing
• People who are prepared to spend $12,000 on a rug often have more than one SUV in the driveway, which would tend to indicate they aren’t necessarily all that concerned with the environment
• Many consumers are quite comfortable saying one thing (“Restoration Hardware is terrible for sending those catalogues! I’m totally never shopping there again!”) and doing another (“Oh, I got it at Restoration Hardware on sale – I love their stuff!”) when the furore has passed
• Social media can be a giant echo chamber: The people who are on it are really on it, but there are lots and lots (and lots!) of people who don’t tweet, blog, pin or Instagram, so these brand ‘scandals’ just don’t ever turn up on their radar

Now, I happen to think Restoration Hardware is playing a dangerous game here.  I think that in the long-term they’re going to find that a determined refusal to respond to critics – especially when that criticism turns up in mainstream media channels – is going to have an impact on sales.  Their flimsy environmental claims may prove to be their Achilles heel in a world that increasingly demands transparency and authenticity.  

However, in the meantime, I also think we have to acknowledge that perhaps social media isn’t quite as powerful as people with ‘Disruptor’ in their job title would have you believe.