July 21, 2010
Comments by Guillermo Kopp / @GuillermoKopp
Chairman, GUAU Corporation

PLUGGED IN – FOLLOW UP THOUGHTS

1. Real-Time Value: Amid a proliferation of online information, publishers such as the Wall Street Journal operate two-tier business models that prompt customers to pay for premium content.

 Comment: We find that both businesses and consumers value the immediate access to creative and unique content. Live information, such as mobile location and real-time analytics, will provide dynamic insights on customer behaviors, enable a swifter online business flow, and optimize marketing.

2. Electronic Content: Companies monetize real-time data by delivering electronic transactions with intangible, time-sensitive items such as stock trading, and travel and entertainment reservations.

 Comment: Faster, smarter, and increasingly viral online multimedia content will converge with broadcast media, entertainment, fashion, music, movies, and games. Creative services will monetize real-time data such as location and time-sensitive pricing, yield management, and online prestige.

3. Social Media: As humans are inherently social, a properly managed identity and online presence will help in building relationships. Real-time habits (e.g., to mingle and share) will modify social interactions.

 Comment: The power to engage people in personal, as well as many-to-many online interactions, will drive cultural changes. As individuals opt in to share personal information, we believe that flat (one- to-many) electronic delivery models will give way to more participative and pervasive social dynamics.

4. Adoption: Changes to purchasing interactions entail massive learning curves. Promoting online services will require market segmentation that attends adequately to lifestyles and behaviors.

 Comment: Brands and advertising agencies should mind evolving online behaviors and shifting loyalty patterns. To capitalize on the accelerated take up of online commerce and viral growth of emerging niche markets, companies should also direct marketing resources to focused offerings.

5. Interaction: Opposite the mere automation of “back end” processes, real-time interactions will integrate live media such as voice and video, and presence information (e.g., mobile location).

 Comment: Real-time media will gradually transform social interactions. We believe that innovations in location-based content, context-sensitive information, and recognition of verbal and non-verbal cues will enrich broadcast and online channels and open new business as well as lifestyle dimensions.

June’s PluggedIn Roundtable focused on “Trans Media” and how content is intersecting and distributed among platforms  from mobile, video, television, real time,  ans social media. The ability to access the content you need on multiple platforms is more comprehensive than ever before and it’s time that we took a step back and examine how this has happened so quickly and how we think it will play out in the future.

Catch Media: Catch Media has developed Play Anywhere® a business-to-business registry, routing, tracking and clearinghouse platform. Developed by digital pioneers who brought the convenience of mass market photo sharing to the Internet. Play Anywhere® provides convenience for the consumer and profitability to industry partners. With key relationships with the major and independent record labels as well as backing by leading broadcast companies and Hollywood talent agencies, Catch Media will begin a global rollout of the Play Anywhere® platform in mid 2010.

Attending Mark Segall

Critical Media: Critical Media Inc., founded in 2002* and run by a team out of the leading text syndication company Screaming Media, (now a part of Dow Jones, Inc.) is a company at the forefront of real-time broadcast video capture, search, syndication and information services. Dedicated to making broadcast video search as ubiquitous as text search, the Company provides tools and services to content consumers, providers, distributors and advertisers that leverage its real-time media capture infrastructure. Every day, our media capture infrastructure, the largest in the world, processes in real time over 10,000 hours of broadcast content on 4 continents, making every minute of it discoverable and monetizable within 60 seconds of airtime.

Attending: Sean Morgan

Triplay: TriPlay is a mobile life company – the only media delivery platform and services suite for sharing personal digital content across multiple devices. TriPlay’s patent protected media delivery platform was built from the ground up as the first truly cross-platform integrated messaging system, empowering users to send and receive media anywhere in the world, from any online device.

Attending: Tamir Koch

LiveU: Founded in 2006 by industry leaders in the area of wireless telecommunications, LiveU creates, develops and markets real-time video technologies and solutions that enable video broadcasters to uplink and transmit live instantly, anywhere, and at anytime.

Attending: Ariel Galinsky

May 20, 2010
Comments by Guillermo Kopp / @GuillermoKopp
Chairman, GUAU Corporation

PLUGGED IN – FOLLOW UP THOUGHTS

1. Shifting Consumer Habits: Video, social media, and text content will add value synergistically to meet budding customer needs. Digital magazines on portable tablets will open creative innovation avenues.

 Comment: We find that multitasking viewers will rather glance at several screen areas than read. Video will be a key means to capture the viewers’ attention and prompt them to buy. Wise advertising will mix video with text ads, and give consumers better control. Effective filters should avoid overload.

2. In Contempt of Content: Smart ads double up as useful content and customers love it. People are curious and want to stumble into novelties. Consumers will know when ads are disruptive to them.

 Comment: We welcome short video clips (less than 30”) with relevant infomercials from credible sponsors. Fairness and integrity of the brand, fun, independence of opinion, and transparency in the advertised facts will establish credibility at par with the deeper content of specialized articles.

3. Demographics: Facebook fans endorse or subscribe to innovative concepts and features. Small social ecosystems interwoven across common behaviors and interests will lead to more granular segmentation.

 Comment: We look forward to strong growth in emerging segments. Growth should overcome the marketing inertia of big firms that stick with the purchasing power of established audiences. Advertisers must tap the exploding number of Twitter and other social media interactions with a localized focus.

4. Personalized Interaction Experience: Purposeful integration of current facts, opinions, music, video, text messages, animation and live interaction mechanics will be instrumental in engaging customers.

 Comment: Consumers will spend significant time interacting with a growing number and smarter mobile devices that they carry everywhere. We envision a day-to-day, multimedia transactional business model that builds on the awareness of the customer location and acts upon personal triggers.

5. End-to-End Marketing: Agencies must orchestrate a creative suite of ads, content, incentives, and promotions across channels, track the online experience, and credit its influence on purchasing decisions.

 Comment: We believe that newly designed interactive content should work appropriately and purposefully across multiple customer touchpoints. Integrated metrics across print, TV, online, and mobile content must attribute purchases that occur later in a physical store or third-party site.

As the “Who” sang during this year’s Super Bowl half-time show, “Who are you?”  While as an industry, marketers and advertisers may know what their objectives are, with a new decade ahead of us, the question of how we execute our goals is proving to be a complex one.  The yin and yang that used to exist between media adverting partners and marketing programs have changed have quickly changed over the past few years.  Traditional approaches need to be tweaked in response to new market realities.

Print circulation continues to decline across both consumer and trade titles as more readers turn to their laptops, netbooks and mobile phones for the latest information.   The 24-hour news cycle that cable news channels ushered in during the 1980s is evolving with the expanding adaptation rate toward the fast and frequent sharing of news and information on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.  In fact, the marketing power of social media led one of world’s leading beverage companies, Pepsi, to pass on their tradition Super Bowl ad and instead invest those funds toward a user-generated campaign for bright ideas to create a better world with the Pepsi Refresh Project.

In an earlier television era, there were only three networks for advertisers to choose from and consumers had no choice but to sit though commercials or flip the channel.  Today, with DVR technology and on-demand subscription options, fewer viewers watch programming during the broadcast time slot, choosing to either record it or watch it online later on sites such as Hulu.com.

While the traditional print and TV mediums mature, tremendous opportunities are available in online advertising.   The four largest Internet advertising firms (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL) saw double digit growth in their online ad revenue in Q4 of 2009 led by resurgence in search advertising and display advertising.  As consumers spend more time at their computers, the potential to reach them with relevant banner and media rich ads continues to make gains within the marketing mix.

As John Lennon would say, “There are no problems, only solutions.”  This month’s Roundtable will feature conversation discussing what this changing landscape means for the marketers and advertisers of today.

Some of these topics include:

• The role of social media channels in the marketing mix
• The proliferation of online advertising opportunities across news and entertainment mediums
• The new opportunities to engage consumers in fun campaigns that drive positive brand experiences
• The use of social media for listening to consumers to understand opinions towards brands and products
• The growing potential to engage with consumers via their mobile devices via ads and branded apps

Written By: Ezra Rich / @EzraRich

Twitter Roundtable: October 29th, 2009.

Below is a quick synopsis of some of the topics that were discussed at the October roundtable.

How Twitter Changing Business

MN – as startup, single person, can’t cold call and get to blue ribbon companies like Hasbro, Disney, etc.  Her reputation as a trusted source within a specific niche had them find her.  Had time to “create my voice” – authentic, true, being on Twitter since August 07 to build that and then launching site August 2008.  Companies then know what they are getting with the voice.  She always discloses if sponsored; rarely sell CPM – sell package

DB – What metrics do you provide, # of exposures to tweet?

MN – Mostly bought by PR than traditional media, so look less at response rates and metrics than bigger picture.  There are the basic tweet metrics – # of potential views is followers * number of posts; bit.ly can help measure number of clicks; number of retweets;respond to retweets, so talking about the sponsored CONVERSATION vs. just the sponsor when someone says “yes I really love those guys too” I’m going to react to that

CM – Don’t know many companies who could duplicate what Melanie has done, the single voice and authenticity; most companies don’t know what they are doing; thus TweetMix can assimilate a lot of that and help shape it

JD – Companies don’t know what works, how to leverage Twitter

CM – They don’t have the luxury of doing

TH – There is significant pressure to do something; people now expect some feedback; brand that took a century to be build can be broken down now quite quickly; it’s a terrible time to be a CMO

RE– That’s what Tlists tries to do, bridge that gap between publishers and advertisers.  Publishers like Huffington Post are creating lists of people interested around different themes; advertisers want to reach contextually relevant, find the closes fitting groups talking about a theme.  The issues for advertisers is stil how to integrate themselves INTO those feeds

JS – Most business models out there are brands pay but don’t know value; plus they are scared what comes out of mouths of users.  So instead of creating Twitter business models that focus on being paid by ads, need to find businesses or ways of getting people to spend money – reviews platform is sold to people who are used to having review.  Media people don’t know how to buy anything except on a CPM basis

PP – there’s a pre-set mindset of how to market the brand; over time companies that don’t get it will either be pulled in against their will or have a very large PR problem.  With Stocktwits we get a lot of comments around the stock price, but a lot of comments on company fundamentals as well.  [asks Chris if he has some sort of orientation for companies he works with when he takes them on]

CM– If you walk in and they don’t get it, walk out.  As a startup you don’t have time to teach and drag along a client; Duke basketball team: wanted to have a human face, give players chance to express themselves; they are trusting people with their brand.  The view it as good for fans and schools, looking at potentially expanding to faculty.  Is there ROI – It’s super cheap ($1K per month) and its experimental – a Twitter aggregator destination site.  They can do merchandising off of it; not a big risk

RE – Cant make money work as effectively because less mass audience – now all niche audiences and have to figure how to get to them, and some don’t want to be reached.  What conversations will be there in the future?  Do they care for brands in the conversation and how would they be integrated?  How do you make business work within that environment?

Is $3 million budget easier to spend because you have niches vs. $100 million budget?

Roy – People can’t make mind up on what niches are; there is a critical mass in the US, but no critical mass in  Euro countries so more difficult

D – For an enterprise software company, B2B, can’t reason that when doing social – the upper management want concrete (read traditional) way of measuring social

EK – Twitter gives us access to customer, initial thought is driven by greed – how can we sell; instead go for free feedback, help debugging products from savvy customers; at this stage you can’t use ROI metrics, but use intuition.  How do you quantify something that brings a new product feature?  Spending $3-5 million to explore

MN – Thinking of how Kodak uses Twitter, its leadership that has personality as well, users get invested in it and are rooting for you; Mashable can bring traffic and value in one tweet the companies used to spend millions of dollars to achieve; leadership can’t be behind the ivory tower.  Great opportunity for CEO/CMO to talk directly to consumers like never before; plus completely democratic in people can choose to or not to follow.  Companies that are most sincere are going to win.

JS – But what you are doing can’t scale.  And Kodak spending $3-5 million out of a huge budget is not scale.  How do you build scalable, investible business model around social media?  Hasn’t happened in mobile yet

MN – There is scalability in influence of a brand

DB – biggest challenge of social media is to decouple from paid media

JS – What Kodak is doing is a one-off basis; getting media buyer to try something on a one off basis?  Good luck.  Not going to pay because its not tested compared to what they know works in mass media TV budgets; selling one-offs is an impossible task

PP – We’re in an early stage of buying a new communication media and its painful and ugly and startups will get run over

JS– we need innovation and business models for social media

JD – we’re not just bean counting.  We’re not a tech company, but a marketing research company.  By talking as market research company, brands have the understanding/concept of research and a market research budget they can tap; use us because they want to know what people are saying

JS—Movie studios spend 40 million on ads to launch a movie; if they blurt after the movie, putting on a 1-5 scale during a test launch; and we add mobile phone prefixes to see where the movie plays well and where it doesn’t, now can tap those very real budgets that exist, help them tap into audience feelings to adjust the budget – that adds value.

JD – Anticipation vs reaction, Bruno vs Hangover

The Twitter Effect and Bruno

DB – most of my friends taste on movies are crap

TH – The Twitter Effect study – is it real or just hype; Twitter is only used by 10-12% of movie attendees and its at the bottom of the list in terms of influence, so really a minimal effect, but studios can’t let go of it as a reality.

RE – Buddy Media went through several iterations of business model – started to be heavy app developer but it doesn’t scale – hand to hand combat with brands.  Then when agencies realized they had to staff up around social to offer, so we targeted agencies for a great feeder effect; then focused on the metrics and infrastructure, now creating templates for Facebook pages to manage experience, promotions, etc.  They pay X, you can count the clicks

DB – we weren’t sure for a while whether you were an agency competitor or not, now easier to work with you guys

D – from B2B stand, it takes six months for a sale; we’ll do a little bit but wait for the B2C guys to figure it out first; ideastorm by Dell turned complaints concept and framed it as a suggestion box to make the company better – so out of customer support into product development

I am happy to say that the first Founders Roundtable event went extremely well. In the end we had 11 participants ranging from startups, VC’s, and industry executives and the feedback that I have received has been extremely positive.

The beauty of the roundtable approach is that it lends itself to having a frank and laid back discussion as opposed to a formal format with a Q&A. At the roundtableeveryone was able to jump in and ask probing questions and follow up questions as needed. I had the privilege of moderating the first event and led off with the question of “How has the current landscape of online video evolved?”

The roundtable touched on a number of topics from video distribution- how it has picked -up over the past year and that more and more people are viewing videos online; staffing — how to find the most qualified person for an open position, the difficulty of sifting through the hundreds of resumes; CPM’s –  what are the going CMP’s and what they will be in the future, Copyright and legal issues — distribution of videos, copyright infringement; Marketing –  how to acquire users, marketing budget; Social Media — how they are embracing various methods to promote their brand and word via Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, etc.

It was interesting to see the dynamics between the executives from Google, HBO, and MTV as they were curious to hear about each others strategies on marketing, retention, revenue, and other topics. I was surprised that none of the founders or executives knew each other, it just goes to show you how big the industry is in general and in NY specifically.

As you can see many things were touched upon and the above list does not really encompass the entirety of the conversation. What I did take away from the conversation is that each company is coming into its own right and carving their niche. Partnerships are integral to their success and each company is reliant on ways to signing up partners so they can distribute their content or bring on partners that generate content. From the industry executive side they were excited to see how innovative the companies are and amazed to see the challenges that they face from building and leading a company to profitability.

Overall, it was a successful event and from what I have been told by the participants they expect some deals to happen from the roundtable. To me that is what I consider a successful event. Most of all I want to thank all the particpants for attending and making the event successful, it was a pleasure to meet everyone.

On that note I have already started working towards the next event which will be on September 30th and the focus will be on Social Media.

Details will be coming shortly.

Video is a trending (twitterology) topic these days and so I thought it would make for a fitting topic for our first roundtable event. From streaming, hosting, licensing, advertising, distribution, animation, creation, syndication, licensing, marketing, tracking, analytics, and much more video is now more popular than ever.

This trend is due to a number of factors, but a significant portion can be attributed to flash player technology, broadband access, and sharing of video by embedding code on blogs and web pages. In fact according to a recent report by eMarketer, a recent study conducted by Lightspeed Research states that “72% of US Internet users watched video clips monthly-making video bigger than blogging or social networking”. Truly an amazing stat and one that I would say goes somewhat unnoticed as video doesn’t create the same splash as social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

That is why we have 5 startups dealing with different aspects of video at our first roundtable event. The companies are @5min, @Aniboom, @Anyclip, @Bliptv, @Flixwagon, and potentially a few more startups will be joining in. The companies range from a movie clip database, mobile video broadcasting, virtual animation, web TV, and knowledge and instructional video. On the industry side we have executives from HBO, MTV, and Sony attending to discuss what they are currently doing and share some insight with the founders. Lastly, we have people coming from the investor side as we have Raj Das an active angel investor and CEO of Pom Partners a global digital media firm along with Phineas Barnes from Firstround Capital and Jeremy Levine from Bessemer Ventures.

The inaugural event will be full of lively discussions and insights as we have people from all sides talking about video and where it currently is and where it will be in the future. The founders are the ones that are leading the innovation and the Founders Roundtable is giving them a new platform to help them succeed.

It seems that every publication whether print or online seems to be talking about Twitter, and rightfully so. The latest numbers indicate that Twitter is getting roughly $50 million a month in media coverage which is nothing short of astronomical (it  equates to $600 million for the year).  What’s even more mind boggling is that Twitter’s founders have yet to make a dime off their innovation and they’re still working on a revenue model.

Don’t get me wrong, I am an avid tweeter (@fndrsroundtable) and understand the value of Twitter for the individual, small business, large corporation, organizations and pretty much anyone who want to leverage themselves or their business.  However, according to the latest reports 69% of adults have no clue what Twitter is or what a tweet looks like. That is a pretty high percentage but I will look at that as the growth potential Twitter has as the 31% of adults who are aware of Twitter are doing a bang up job on publicizing it virally .

To that end I do want to point out that Twitter just made a huge jump to reach all the masses with their new home page which brings the value of Twitter front and center,  that is “Trending Topics” which highlight what’s currently happening in the Twitterverse (Twitter Universe) – hence what I attribute most of the free media coverage to.

Twitter has allowed people anywhere in the world to share stories, news, and excitement with their friends and anyone else who cares to listen. From the Iran elecetion, US Airways crash on the Hudson, Michael Jacksons death and many more, the list keeps going. It brings the power of information to anyone who wants it, giving users the ability to discover and relate breaking news which now can be seen by anyone on the Twitter homepage. Until now the trending topics was only visible to those who have twitter accounts, now it can be seen by anyone and hopefully everyone who has yet to see the value in Twitter will start seeing what all the hoopla is about and see the value in it.

As I have been attending a number of networking events in the NY area for a number of years and they all seem to be somewhat of the same. One big event with a lot of networking, with little follow through and results. Now I am somewhat familiar with networking events and I used to run networking events back in th stone age of Web 1.0 called the J2J Network. As great as these networking events are it seems that there is still a disconnect on how much one can gain from them. That is why I have decided to start a more intimate method of networking in the NY area. This is not a new method as roundtables exist in NY, CA, and many other places and I am not ashamed to say I am copying similar models.

The purpose of networking events is to meet people who can ideally help you or your company. To that point i know how difficult it is to start a company and network effectively. From the initial idea, to fleshing it out, to discussing it with friends, writing a business plan, developing product, capital raising, customer acquisition, public relations, and so much more. As you can see the list is extensive and I have found that networking and speaking with other entrepreneurs, VCs, angels, and industry leaders has been a tremendous benefit to me.

That is why I am creating the FoundersRoundtable which will meet once or twice a month, and brings together entrepreneurs to have breakfast and network with experienced peers, investors and others. The mission is to bring together startups from various sectors and have a sit down with VCs, angels, PR companies, marketing experts, and other leading high tech firms that can help a startup’s trajectory to success.

To that end the Founders Rountable fosters the following concepts:

Exchange: Open discussion with active participation from all attendees.

Intimacy: Select companies and individuals invites, approachable, accessible, and intense networking.

Content: Strong focus on fresh, current, and trending topics in high tech.

Experience: Helping companies succeed by using members experiences, networks, and knowledge.