Marketing Pilgrim Published: “What’s The Future Hold For the Daily Deal Space?” plus 5 more

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What’s The Future Hold For the Daily Deal Space?
Google Profiles Get a Facelift; Mine Just Gets Schizophrenia
NY Times Starting Its Own ‘Daily Deal’ Deal
A&E Uses Augmented Reality to Market New Series
Women Love a Sensitive Man
Geeks Unite! Android Developers Trying Union Approach

What’s The Future Hold For the Daily Deal Space?

Posted: 03 Mar 2011 07:13 AM PST

I guess today is the Daily Deal day here at Marketing Pilgrim since we have already told you about the New York Times foray into the deal a day space.

It just so happens that there has been a report released by BIA/Kelsey looking at the future of the daily deal space. What is intriguing about this report is how the research is divided into a 3 sections. Below is a chart about the revenue prospects for the daily deal industry through 2015. Notice that there is a low-end call, a high-end call and a most likely call (which looks to basically split the difference).

Right now, Groupon has the lion's share of this total revenue while Amazon funded LivingSocial is trying to chip away at that. The rest of the deal space, according to BIA/Kelsey, has about 200 players currently.

One prediction from the group paints the kind of picture that $15 billion valuations aren’t necessarily built on (or maybe they are if there is no reason other than a feeding frenzy for the number).

Volume will increase, but growth rates will taper off:

*With increased volume and industry development, users will be better targeted by geographic and demographic needs.

*The novelty of untraditional deals will fade and e-mail open rates will fall. New users will be more representative of the population but less passionate than the current core of "college educated women."

Hmmmmm. What's your take?

Google Profiles Get a Facelift; Mine Just Gets Schizophrenia

Posted: 03 Mar 2011 05:29 AM PST

Google has announced the upgrade to Google Profiles. The only problem is, I have no idea what’s going on with my profile and why it has multiple personality disorder.

Take a look at the new profile that I see when I log in to profiles.google.com:

Nice, clean, certainly something I’d be happy to have show up in a reputational search for my name. Problem is, this is not the profile that others see in Google. This one is:

Notice that not all of the info from the first profile has made it over.

After digging around, I found how I can edit the second profile, but it’s basically a different interface to the one Google is pushing in its announcement. In other words, I technically have two different Google Profiles.

https://profiles.google.com/u/0/andybeal.marketingpilgrim/about
http://www.google.com/profiles/u/0/andybeal.marketingpilgrim

Seems to me that Google’s right hand is not telling its left hand what the heck is going on with Profiles.

PS. I know that schizophrenia is not the same as multiple personality disorder–I studied psychology in college–but that’s not what the majority of the world believes.

NY Times Starting Its Own ‘Daily Deal’ Deal

Posted: 03 Mar 2011 05:27 AM PST

Ever since the Groupon valuation craze set off by Google's attempt to buy the daily deal site there has been speculation about just how valuable the site can really be moving into the future. Right now it's putting up great numbers. Interestingly enough, the chatter around Groupon has become minimal since their Super Bowl ad shenanigans and valuation talks putting the company in the $15 billion range. POP!

Part of that could be that many people are coming to their senses and realizing that while Groupon has made the biggest splash in the daily deal space the model is far from bullet proof. Other deal sites are cropping up and not demanding the first born of deal providers or asking vendors to jack up prices to make it look like a deal. One such newcomer to the space is the venerable New York Times. paidContent.org reports

The NYT is preparing to debut its own daily deals service called TimesLimited later this month. While a number of newspaper publishers have signed on with either Groupon or LivingSocial, TimesLimited is entirely an in-house production, Denise Warren, SVP/chief advertising officer for the NYT Media Group and the NYTimes.com's GM, told paidContent in an interview.

It's not that every single other entity on the planet is deciding to go it alone. Groupon has inked deals with other major newspaper companies. What this effort by the Times points out is that Groupon is not necessary to make this happen for many. As a result, expect extensions of offerings like this to possibly go beyond just the company offering deals on their own. In a time where revenue is hard to come by in the traditional sense it might make sense to for a company like the Times to expand this beyond their own fence. They certainly are confident that they can pull it off.

The NYT had considered going the route that other newspaper companies like Tribune, McClatchy and Media General have gone in by partnering with Groupon. "We looked at partner options when we began looking at the space a few months ago," Warren said. "But we realized that we have the assets, the consumer reach and the relationships with the advertisers to do this on our own."

This is not a death knell for Groupon or LivingSocial by any means. What it is, however, is a reminder to the suddenly bubble prone Silicon Valley vultures that this model may not be the pot at the end of the rainbow that is being pitched.

Of course, for those organizing any IPO and getting in on the ground floor that is irrelevant. As long as they get in at the right time and get out with their millions they could care less about the later investors left holding the bag when reality sets in after hysteria took up temporary residence in investors' heads. That's the way these things work for the most part if they are rooted in spin rather than reality.

What's your take on the daily deal space? Is it here to stay and will Groupon be the Google equivalent of the space or is this just HUBAR (hyped up beyond all reality)?

A&E Uses Augmented Reality to Market New Series

Posted: 02 Mar 2011 02:04 PM PST

If you’re in NYC on Thursday, March 3 and you happen to see a man in an orange prison jumpsuit, don’t call 911. Just dial up the Breakout Kings app on your iPhone and you could win a prize.

A&E is going all out with an augmented reality promo for their new prison break / conman series and I fear it will be the Mafia Wars incident all over again.

Though I’m sure the actors playing prisoners on the loose will be clearly marked with a Breakout Kings logo, certainly their presence in the city will cause some confusion and spark a few calls to the cops. Right? A&E is ready to take that chance maybe because even if they end up paying a fine to the city, it’ll only help them make bigger headlines.

A&E has also placed 200 orange jumpsuits, sans bodies in locations all over the US, setting them up in store windows, bolting them to bus benches and positioning them inside bars and restaurants. All of the parts of the plan are hooked together via the Catch-A-Con-Sweepstakes app which tests your ability to find both virtual escapees and the psuedo-real ones.

The entire concept is run by a company called GoldRun who specializes in these mobile treasure hunts. They’ve done several for Esquire magazine where folks were asked to snap photos of letters posted around town but this sounds like a massive undertaking compared to their prior campaigns.

The downside to augmented reality campaigns such as thesen is that even with a large budget, they can only be done in a limited number of cities. Breakout Kings is confined to high traffic areas in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia. But if buzz is what your after, the sheer novelty of it is enough to get people talking, even if they don’t have a real live escaped convict in their city.

What do you think? Brilliant idea or is A&E likely to be sending out apologies after a citizen gets a little too enthusiastic about playing Dog, the Bounty Hunter?

Women Love a Sensitive Man

Posted: 02 Mar 2011 11:05 AM PST

Don’t worry, you didn’t accidentally stumble upon a new relationship blog, this is still Marketing Pilgrim, but today we’re going to talk about the softer side of men. According to January’s Women and NBCU’s Brand Power Index, women are warming up to marketing campaigns that show men as emotional and sensitive.

Melissa Lavigne-Delville, VP of Trends and Strategic Insights for Women at NBCU says;

“After a year of advertising that touted the 'alpha male,' with campaigns like Dockers' 'Wear the Pants' or Dodge's 'Man's Last Stand,' we are seeing a noticeable shift in the marketplace as brands break down gender stereotypes in their ads and portray a less traditional and more sensitive, family-centric male.”

Chevrolet rose 27 spots on the index for the first time after they ran their new “Guy’s Night Out” commercial where a dad gets embarrassed in front of his friends when his child’s CD plays over the car stereo. They also gave KIA a bump up 137 places for their “Sweet Dreams” ad that likens driving their car to a boy’s childhood fantasy. Minute Maid’s male, OJ drinking wedding crasher bumped them up 139 notches

But it’s not enough to just show the sensitive side of men, the marketers who added a strong, gender-breaking female to the equation did even better.

Says Lavigne-Delville;

"Brands like Sprint seem to recognize that pairing a stronger woman alongside a softer man balances out the new gender equation. This seems particularly apropos on the heals of recent reports that young women are now out-earning men in the marketplace."

Febreze used their NFL sponsorship to target the women behind the big football parties and it gained them 62 points on the Brand Index. And then there’s Sprint, who came in at 23rd on the list thanks to an ad where a girl dumps her boyfriend via text message. How’s that for role reversal?

What was the brand women talked about the most? Wal-mart took top honors with Target, Verizon, eBay and Ford close behind.

Forget the softer side of Sears, if you want women to buy your product, give them a sensitive man diapering a baby while Mommy heads off to work.

Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Geeks Unite! Android Developers Trying Union Approach

Posted: 02 Mar 2011 08:05 AM PST

And you thought that only Wisconsin was having union issues huh?

According to a report on The Next Web, some Android developers have had enough of trying to get Google to move on certain things so they have formed a union. (If there are any Rush fans reading, I can't help but hum "The Trees" while writing this).

A group of Android developers have formed the Android Developers Union, a movement that intends to protest Google's Android Market policies.

The group has made seven demands and claims that its members will, if demands are not met, move to other platforms and attempt to dissuade fellow developers from working with the Android platform.

The Android Developers Union‘s seven demands are as follows:

Re-negotiation of the 32% Google-tax on application sales
Remedy to the order of entry effect
Public bug tracking
Increased payment options
Codified rules and a removal appeal process
Communication and engineering liaison
Algorithmic transparency

All of these areas are hashed out in more detail at the site.

If Google doesn’t give in? Here’s the proposed action by union members:

If our demands are not met, we will move our applications to alternative marketplaces or the web, cease Android development in favor of other more open platforms, we will dissuade other developers from developing Android projects, and we will work tirelessly to counter any of Google’s hypocritical claims about Openness in the media.

While I think it's a noble idea to demand equal rights I wonder if this will turn into more of a publicity stunt for a few developers or if this would ever stand a chance of getting enough Android developers to drop their work so that Google meets their demands. Most are just trying to make a living so going on a work stoppage right now might make it a bit tough for long term viability of a small business.

It's obvious that the developer communities of both Android and Apple platforms aren't happy for a lot of different reasons. The trouble in the Internet space though is that although it sounds great that anyone can hang out a shingle and start a business, those businesses are more often than not, third party dependent. Even tougher is that Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter represent the only third parties that most are hitching their wagons to thus the balance of power is not so balanced. Much of the success of these companies have been built on the backs of developers but that was the developers’ choice, right? There has been a lot of trouble with all major players and their developer communities but the major players are holding all the best cards.

This imbalance leaves the door open for these four giants to tell developers its their way or the highway. While we love the David v. Goliath stories where the giants are slain I truly doubt that an effort like this would gain enough support to truly impact the marketplace.

Fortunately, there is plenty of room to be wrong and to misread things in the Internet space. Who knows, maybe in the future an army of developers could turn the tables and bring the big boys to their knees. Why not, right?

So good luck to the union organizers. One advantage they may have is that since Google is so human interaction averse these folks might be able to do things the old fashioned way and run circles around Google's algorithm of life. One never knows, do one?