Save Jericho: Tactical Marketing
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Watching the folks at "Save Jericho" continues to be of great interest. They're getting attention from all over the world, and they appear to be making history. They've even had some possibly good news with whispers from the producers of the show that they're having a positive effect and things could break loose soon.
But, as with any organization, there are controversies about direction. They seem to be trying everything at once, but unlike a business they don't seem to have a quantifiable method of measuring their success. Is success measured by the number of tons of peanuts shipped? The amount of money raised for good causes? The number of emails sent? The number of letters sent? The number of voicemail boxes clogged?
No, of course not. Success will be measured by whether or not they get their show back. It won't matter if they send 100 tons of peanuts if CBS is able to remain intransigent. It won't matter if CBS executives are forced to eschew email and use of the telephone forever. All of these activities are tactics executed within a broader strategy designed to achieve the desired result.
I'm going to step back and do a little tactical analysis of their marketing effort. I'm also making the assumption that the resolution of this situation is weeks and months away, not next week. If CBS announces that the show is back in the next week, then no amount of marketing analysis will make any difference. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Any tactical marketing plan will at least consist of Products, Markets, Promotions, Distribution, and Pricing. In the business context these have slightly different meanings than in a social movement, but not much. Marketing is a science and methods can be applied. You can get much better explanations of the concepts I'm going to discuss by looking at any marketing textbook, but here's the Cliff's Notes version.
What is their Product? From what I've seen, most people think their product is a backlash against CBS for canceling their show. They're trying to get people to "buy" their product by joining, and trying to get CBS to "buy" their product by changing their behavior. I think there's a problem with this product, because the market segment it appeals to is smaller than it needs to be.
Which leads us to Markets. A market consists of the group of potential buyers for a product. A single product can appeal to many different groups of people. The analysis of these appeals is called segmentation. The segments you're engaging will require different promotions and pricing. If a company sells diamonds, they'll have segments including fine jewelry and industrial cutting tools. Industrial buyers could care less about how much they sparkle, and brides-to-be won't care about how sharp the diamonds are. You have to tailor your message to your segment.
If the product is "Bring Back Jericho", the market segment consists of those people that miss the show. Presumably that's some percentage of the 8M viewers they had. Some people will have watched it and not cared that it's gone. A lot more people never watched it, cared about it, or even knew it existed. But almost everyone has had a show canceled on them, and there are a huge number of people sick of lowest common denominator TV with reality shows. Therefore, if instead of "Bring Back Jericho" their product is "Let's make the networks respond to the viewers," they've got a much larger market for their product. They also have many different segments to address, and each will require different approaches.
You want your product to be "Delicious Sushi!", not "dead fish, cold."
So what are the segments for the "Save Jericho" movement? Here's a few I can think of:
The Core Rangers. This is small group of highly committed people - they're the ones sending multiple shipments of nuts and hitting the message boards day and night. They're fanatics. From what I can tell, there's only about 1,000 people at this level. I'm basing this on the difference in web traffic we saw at Find The Boots when some of the Jericho articles came out. Anybody that's willing to grind through multiple long winded articles from me must be in the core. Unfortunately, 1,000 people is not enough advertising revenue to CBS to pay for one of Nina's lunches.
Slightly Engaged Rangers. These are the people that are in the movement, but aren't devoting their lives to it. They probably bought nuts or contributed to the ad campaigns, but they're not living and breathing the movement. My guess is there's about 3,000 of these people, judging from the money that's been raised.
Petition Signers. These are people that are upset enough that they've signed the petition, but they haven't done anything more. They may not know what else they can do, or they may not care.
Potential Rangers. These are people that don't know about the movement, and may not even know that the show was canceled. If they found out, they'd move into "Slightly Engaged." They'd certainly become Petition Signers, and they might even move into committed. This group is at least 8M people (the ones that regularly watched the show), and is probably half the population of the US if you include the offer of making the networks responsible. This is what marketers dream of -- a large and untapped market.
Non Rangers. These are people that aren't interested at all in anything the movement has to offer and will never be a help.
One of the keys to segmentation is to figure out where your best bang for the buck is. In other words, which segment can you get the most profit out of (revenue for the least amount of cost)?
Clearly, that's the Potential Rangers market. There's not much to be done with Core Rangers other than to keep them motivated so they don't slip down into Slightly Engaged. It would be nice if the Slightly Engaged could be moved into core, but part of that is market momentum -- the more people becoming Slightly Engaged, the more that will move into the Core Rangers as they see success.
Next comes Promotions. What promotional methods can be used to target the Potential Rangers, without wasting time on the Non Rangers? So far the movement has used:
The Nuts Campaign and related press coverage
Greensburg Kansas and related press coverage
Advertisements in Trade Magazines
Internet Advertisements
Radio Shows
Press Releases
Flyers
Word of Mouth
I'm sure there are others, but these are the major ones. The Nuts campaign has had by far the most amount of money spent on it (~$50K), and this has been responsible for most of the press coverage, both in old media and on the internet. The trade advertisements, the Greensburg campaign, and Internet advertisements round out the top in costs. Radio Shows, press releases, flyers, and word of mouth are pretty much free -- and a lot of that is a result of the 4 expensive efforts.
A lot of people have made the claim that "Nuts brought us this far, we should stay with it!" There's a lot to be said for that -- dancing with the partner that brought you to the dance is always a nice thing to do.
But when you're headed for a cliff, full speed ahead isn't always the best tactic, even though you may have come very far. You have to see what's ahead. In the case of the nuts campaign, I think they've accomplished what can be accomplished. The campaign was absolutely brilliant. It had great pop -- it was a quick sound byte the media could latch onto. It got them a ton of coverage. In fact, it's probably the single reason the movement was able to get such a gargantuan Google footprint so quickly -- "CBS Nuts" is over 1M pages right now.
But frankly, CBS knows about the movement. They've been sent their message. When the CEO has to take questions about the cancellation of the series at an unrelated trade conference, it's safe to say they've gotten the message. The massive shipments aren't even putting a strain on CBS's infrastructure -- they're just cross shipping it to the charities. CBS can look at the nut shipments and conclude that it's still just a small group of crazed fans. My advice would be to declare the campaign an outlandish success and move on. The press story can then be "Jericho fans sent over $50K worth of peanuts to CBS." The press hates an old story. And in the world of a 24-hour news cycle, this is now an old story.
Back to the segments. If someone was a Potential Ranger or a Petition Signer and hasn't heard about the nuts campaign, they're probably not going to hear about it from what's being done. They just aren't being exposed to the channels that are carrying that message. Large volumes of nuts shipped may make the Core and Slightly Engaged Rangers more motivated, but it's not going after the most important segments.
My advice would be to set a final date for shipment of the nuts to CBS, and then roll a small part of their funding into the Greensburg Kansas campaign. There is still lots of mileage to be had there, but they'll have to be careful to make sure that the message remains about Jericho. The movement can't afford to be known as a group of people trying to save a town in Kansas, they need to be a group of people calling attention to the problems of television by helping out this town. It won't matter how much money is raised, just that there's an altruistic movement that exists.
That leaves internet advertisements. I think a strong push on banner ads on major websites would be a productive endeavor. In fact, I'd put the bulk of my effort into that. What if the banner on the Yahoo! home page was for the "Save Jericho" movement? There are no doubt many Potential Rangers that could be contacted that way, and bringing in internet users will be key to the growth of the movement. It would be great to bring in people that don't use the internet, but frankly it's much harder to get them to donate money, send emails, or make phone calls. And they probably aren't in the demographic that matches the segment. Furthermore, internet users can act much more quickly and what the movement needs most right now is fast growth. The other benefit of internet ads is that you can adjust your tactics in real time, rather than waiting for weeks to get a print/radio ad into play.
I'm not so sure about context ads. I see context ads on the Jericho movement appearing on Find The Boots. What's the point? I appreciate the revenue for Find The Boots from anyone clicking on the ads, but anyone reading this context is no longer a Potential Ranger -- they've moved up at least a notch. It's just a wasted click.
I also don't see the point of advertisements in the trade magazines or Stars and Stripes. The first ads were great for getting the attention of the press, but the story is already out. As for Stars and Stripes, God bless the military (this blog is VERY pro-military), but they're underpaid and don't have a lot of money to spend on fixing the problems with television, nor do they have much free time on their hands. That would be a good market to go for at a later date, but right now the movement needs to concentrate on growing their ranks with people that can provide further resources to grow their ranks.
I do think they should continue Radio Shows, Press Releases, Flyers, and Word of Mouth. These don't cost any cash and have a strong effect. They only require labor, which we'll talk about in Pricing. I also suggest hitting a few major markets with print and radio advertisements, but those will only be effective if used in combination with an internet strategy. Few people copy down a URL from the newspaper or radio. It's much more of a case of hearing and seeing the same message multiple times before they act upon it.
The next element is Distribution. How do you get your product to your market? Right now, their distribution methods consist of a series of web sites and message boards. They're moving ideas through their distribution system. The newsletter, which I mentioned in an earlier post, is an evolution of this distribution system. The movement needs to work on its distribution, because right now they can only handle a small number of people. They don't have an easy way for product to flow to the customers. They need to think about how they can make it easy for Potential Rangers to become Core Rangers. You always want it to be very easy to do business with your company.
Finally, we have Pricing. How much does the product cost? Are there different costs for different segments? Just like with the diamond company, the price for a piece of jewelry will be very different than the industrial application.
As I see it, the movement has four prices for its product. The customer can pay any or all of them. The first price is to make a donation to one of their campaigns. It's pretty simple and straightforward -- if the customer sees something they like, they fund it. The next price is labor. Instead of sending money, customers can send letters, emails, faxes, stage protests, wear signs, pass out hand bills, do radio interviews, etc. The third price is to sign the petition. It's pretty inexpensive, but there's still a price involved. They have to click on the site and enter and email. The fourth price is to join the newsletter. The customer has to be willing to hand out an email address.
Your marketing efforts should be geared towards getting the highest price for your product, with the lowest cost. For the highest price, you're looking for affluent people that can afford to make donations. For lowest cost, you're looking for the greatest reach at the lowest cost. Now you should be able to see why I focussed on internet banner ads as the best method. I'll also advise that the banners should be a mix of "Save Jericho" and "Fix TV" messages. And they need to be on sites that cover more than just the Core and Slightly Engaged Rangers.
If you can't get the highest price, then be willing to settle for the others. But your strategy should be focussed on hitting the biggest bang for the buck. Getting another 100,000 people to sign the petition won't do much good if you can't get more money to make more noise. The only chance the movement has is to keep the snowball rolling. That means raising money to get more people to raise money to get more people and so on and so on.
So there you have it. I've briefly laid out a marketing plan for the movement. I clearly don't understand everything that's going on in the movement and don't have access to information that others have. But I do have a professional background in how to get a product to people. Instead of just trying everything and seeing what sticks, I think the community would be better served if they came up with a cogent strategy and set of tactics.
As Johnston told Jake, "Make sure you do it right."
But, as with any organization, there are controversies about direction. They seem to be trying everything at once, but unlike a business they don't seem to have a quantifiable method of measuring their success. Is success measured by the number of tons of peanuts shipped? The amount of money raised for good causes? The number of emails sent? The number of letters sent? The number of voicemail boxes clogged?
No, of course not. Success will be measured by whether or not they get their show back. It won't matter if they send 100 tons of peanuts if CBS is able to remain intransigent. It won't matter if CBS executives are forced to eschew email and use of the telephone forever. All of these activities are tactics executed within a broader strategy designed to achieve the desired result.
I'm going to step back and do a little tactical analysis of their marketing effort. I'm also making the assumption that the resolution of this situation is weeks and months away, not next week. If CBS announces that the show is back in the next week, then no amount of marketing analysis will make any difference. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Any tactical marketing plan will at least consist of Products, Markets, Promotions, Distribution, and Pricing. In the business context these have slightly different meanings than in a social movement, but not much. Marketing is a science and methods can be applied. You can get much better explanations of the concepts I'm going to discuss by looking at any marketing textbook, but here's the Cliff's Notes version.
What is their Product? From what I've seen, most people think their product is a backlash against CBS for canceling their show. They're trying to get people to "buy" their product by joining, and trying to get CBS to "buy" their product by changing their behavior. I think there's a problem with this product, because the market segment it appeals to is smaller than it needs to be.
Which leads us to Markets. A market consists of the group of potential buyers for a product. A single product can appeal to many different groups of people. The analysis of these appeals is called segmentation. The segments you're engaging will require different promotions and pricing. If a company sells diamonds, they'll have segments including fine jewelry and industrial cutting tools. Industrial buyers could care less about how much they sparkle, and brides-to-be won't care about how sharp the diamonds are. You have to tailor your message to your segment.
If the product is "Bring Back Jericho", the market segment consists of those people that miss the show. Presumably that's some percentage of the 8M viewers they had. Some people will have watched it and not cared that it's gone. A lot more people never watched it, cared about it, or even knew it existed. But almost everyone has had a show canceled on them, and there are a huge number of people sick of lowest common denominator TV with reality shows. Therefore, if instead of "Bring Back Jericho" their product is "Let's make the networks respond to the viewers," they've got a much larger market for their product. They also have many different segments to address, and each will require different approaches.
You want your product to be "Delicious Sushi!", not "dead fish, cold."
So what are the segments for the "Save Jericho" movement? Here's a few I can think of:
The Core Rangers. This is small group of highly committed people - they're the ones sending multiple shipments of nuts and hitting the message boards day and night. They're fanatics. From what I can tell, there's only about 1,000 people at this level. I'm basing this on the difference in web traffic we saw at Find The Boots when some of the Jericho articles came out. Anybody that's willing to grind through multiple long winded articles from me must be in the core. Unfortunately, 1,000 people is not enough advertising revenue to CBS to pay for one of Nina's lunches.
Slightly Engaged Rangers. These are the people that are in the movement, but aren't devoting their lives to it. They probably bought nuts or contributed to the ad campaigns, but they're not living and breathing the movement. My guess is there's about 3,000 of these people, judging from the money that's been raised.
Petition Signers. These are people that are upset enough that they've signed the petition, but they haven't done anything more. They may not know what else they can do, or they may not care.
Potential Rangers. These are people that don't know about the movement, and may not even know that the show was canceled. If they found out, they'd move into "Slightly Engaged." They'd certainly become Petition Signers, and they might even move into committed. This group is at least 8M people (the ones that regularly watched the show), and is probably half the population of the US if you include the offer of making the networks responsible. This is what marketers dream of -- a large and untapped market.
Non Rangers. These are people that aren't interested at all in anything the movement has to offer and will never be a help.
One of the keys to segmentation is to figure out where your best bang for the buck is. In other words, which segment can you get the most profit out of (revenue for the least amount of cost)?
Clearly, that's the Potential Rangers market. There's not much to be done with Core Rangers other than to keep them motivated so they don't slip down into Slightly Engaged. It would be nice if the Slightly Engaged could be moved into core, but part of that is market momentum -- the more people becoming Slightly Engaged, the more that will move into the Core Rangers as they see success.
Next comes Promotions. What promotional methods can be used to target the Potential Rangers, without wasting time on the Non Rangers? So far the movement has used:
The Nuts Campaign and related press coverage
Greensburg Kansas and related press coverage
Advertisements in Trade Magazines
Internet Advertisements
Radio Shows
Press Releases
Flyers
Word of Mouth
I'm sure there are others, but these are the major ones. The Nuts campaign has had by far the most amount of money spent on it (~$50K), and this has been responsible for most of the press coverage, both in old media and on the internet. The trade advertisements, the Greensburg campaign, and Internet advertisements round out the top in costs. Radio Shows, press releases, flyers, and word of mouth are pretty much free -- and a lot of that is a result of the 4 expensive efforts.
A lot of people have made the claim that "Nuts brought us this far, we should stay with it!" There's a lot to be said for that -- dancing with the partner that brought you to the dance is always a nice thing to do.
But when you're headed for a cliff, full speed ahead isn't always the best tactic, even though you may have come very far. You have to see what's ahead. In the case of the nuts campaign, I think they've accomplished what can be accomplished. The campaign was absolutely brilliant. It had great pop -- it was a quick sound byte the media could latch onto. It got them a ton of coverage. In fact, it's probably the single reason the movement was able to get such a gargantuan Google footprint so quickly -- "CBS Nuts" is over 1M pages right now.
But frankly, CBS knows about the movement. They've been sent their message. When the CEO has to take questions about the cancellation of the series at an unrelated trade conference, it's safe to say they've gotten the message. The massive shipments aren't even putting a strain on CBS's infrastructure -- they're just cross shipping it to the charities. CBS can look at the nut shipments and conclude that it's still just a small group of crazed fans. My advice would be to declare the campaign an outlandish success and move on. The press story can then be "Jericho fans sent over $50K worth of peanuts to CBS." The press hates an old story. And in the world of a 24-hour news cycle, this is now an old story.
Back to the segments. If someone was a Potential Ranger or a Petition Signer and hasn't heard about the nuts campaign, they're probably not going to hear about it from what's being done. They just aren't being exposed to the channels that are carrying that message. Large volumes of nuts shipped may make the Core and Slightly Engaged Rangers more motivated, but it's not going after the most important segments.
My advice would be to set a final date for shipment of the nuts to CBS, and then roll a small part of their funding into the Greensburg Kansas campaign. There is still lots of mileage to be had there, but they'll have to be careful to make sure that the message remains about Jericho. The movement can't afford to be known as a group of people trying to save a town in Kansas, they need to be a group of people calling attention to the problems of television by helping out this town. It won't matter how much money is raised, just that there's an altruistic movement that exists.
That leaves internet advertisements. I think a strong push on banner ads on major websites would be a productive endeavor. In fact, I'd put the bulk of my effort into that. What if the banner on the Yahoo! home page was for the "Save Jericho" movement? There are no doubt many Potential Rangers that could be contacted that way, and bringing in internet users will be key to the growth of the movement. It would be great to bring in people that don't use the internet, but frankly it's much harder to get them to donate money, send emails, or make phone calls. And they probably aren't in the demographic that matches the segment. Furthermore, internet users can act much more quickly and what the movement needs most right now is fast growth. The other benefit of internet ads is that you can adjust your tactics in real time, rather than waiting for weeks to get a print/radio ad into play.
I'm not so sure about context ads. I see context ads on the Jericho movement appearing on Find The Boots. What's the point? I appreciate the revenue for Find The Boots from anyone clicking on the ads, but anyone reading this context is no longer a Potential Ranger -- they've moved up at least a notch. It's just a wasted click.
I also don't see the point of advertisements in the trade magazines or Stars and Stripes. The first ads were great for getting the attention of the press, but the story is already out. As for Stars and Stripes, God bless the military (this blog is VERY pro-military), but they're underpaid and don't have a lot of money to spend on fixing the problems with television, nor do they have much free time on their hands. That would be a good market to go for at a later date, but right now the movement needs to concentrate on growing their ranks with people that can provide further resources to grow their ranks.
I do think they should continue Radio Shows, Press Releases, Flyers, and Word of Mouth. These don't cost any cash and have a strong effect. They only require labor, which we'll talk about in Pricing. I also suggest hitting a few major markets with print and radio advertisements, but those will only be effective if used in combination with an internet strategy. Few people copy down a URL from the newspaper or radio. It's much more of a case of hearing and seeing the same message multiple times before they act upon it.
The next element is Distribution. How do you get your product to your market? Right now, their distribution methods consist of a series of web sites and message boards. They're moving ideas through their distribution system. The newsletter, which I mentioned in an earlier post, is an evolution of this distribution system. The movement needs to work on its distribution, because right now they can only handle a small number of people. They don't have an easy way for product to flow to the customers. They need to think about how they can make it easy for Potential Rangers to become Core Rangers. You always want it to be very easy to do business with your company.
Finally, we have Pricing. How much does the product cost? Are there different costs for different segments? Just like with the diamond company, the price for a piece of jewelry will be very different than the industrial application.
As I see it, the movement has four prices for its product. The customer can pay any or all of them. The first price is to make a donation to one of their campaigns. It's pretty simple and straightforward -- if the customer sees something they like, they fund it. The next price is labor. Instead of sending money, customers can send letters, emails, faxes, stage protests, wear signs, pass out hand bills, do radio interviews, etc. The third price is to sign the petition. It's pretty inexpensive, but there's still a price involved. They have to click on the site and enter and email. The fourth price is to join the newsletter. The customer has to be willing to hand out an email address.
Your marketing efforts should be geared towards getting the highest price for your product, with the lowest cost. For the highest price, you're looking for affluent people that can afford to make donations. For lowest cost, you're looking for the greatest reach at the lowest cost. Now you should be able to see why I focussed on internet banner ads as the best method. I'll also advise that the banners should be a mix of "Save Jericho" and "Fix TV" messages. And they need to be on sites that cover more than just the Core and Slightly Engaged Rangers.
If you can't get the highest price, then be willing to settle for the others. But your strategy should be focussed on hitting the biggest bang for the buck. Getting another 100,000 people to sign the petition won't do much good if you can't get more money to make more noise. The only chance the movement has is to keep the snowball rolling. That means raising money to get more people to raise money to get more people and so on and so on.
So there you have it. I've briefly laid out a marketing plan for the movement. I clearly don't understand everything that's going on in the movement and don't have access to information that others have. But I do have a professional background in how to get a product to people. Instead of just trying everything and seeing what sticks, I think the community would be better served if they came up with a cogent strategy and set of tactics.
As Johnston told Jake, "Make sure you do it right."
posted by Anonymous | Permalink |
23 Comments:
At 5:44 AM,
Tom Mosier (falconr10) said…
Doggie, you're beyond amazing, and beyond professional graciousness. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I hope that our leaders are able to harness the power of your message, freely given to us,and your other, non-Ranger subscribers - (I shudder to think what all of your advice would have cost, had we hired you) ; )
I think that we need to land a "celebrity" to take our movement to the next level....in addition to everything else that you have blueprinted for us. Like a Howard Stern, or a David Letterman (both of whom are receiving a quantity of tasty legumes, in the very near future). Call me crazy, but I believe that we will land such star power, somehow.....either through the Commanders media contacts, or through sheer happenstance - as said celebrity has an epiphany, and realizes that during the slow summer season, being part of history might just be a GOOD thing. I am hopeful...how many times have we been blown away by the Monster??
Stay tuned, Doggie...I can promise you, the fodder for your blog is far from depleted.
NUTS to you, CBS - Save Jericho!!!!!!
At 7:43 AM,
Sweet Tea said…
Thank you Doggie. Your ideas & thoughts are amazing. I hope all Rangers read this & heed your advice.
At 9:36 AM,
melissa said…
Thanks for keeping an eye on the campaign and offering insight!
At 11:11 AM,
Anonymous said…
Right on!!! Boondoggie strikes again! *Golf Clap* Thanks so much for continuing to give us ideas on how to become even more successful in our fight to SAVE JERICHO! You're brilliant and your advice is being taken to heart! I got my first NEWSLETTERS this morning! We are prepared to go the long haul and now I'm intent on reaching out to the general public to alert them to what we are up to, with the message of...if you are tired of YOUR FAVORITE SHOW being cancelled, this is YOUR FIGHT. If you are sick of REALITY TV, then this is YOUR FIGHT! If you want to MORE quality TV programming, then this is YOUR FIGHT! If you think that current ratings methods are outdated and networks need to WAKE UP and count all of differently, then this is YOUR FIGHT! Jericho is quality tv programming at it's best. THIS IS WHY WE FIGHT!!!!
P.S. I heard Matt Drudge said he wishes he were as SMART and SAVVY as you are!!!!
At 12:22 PM,
kystorms said…
great article as usual...
the biggest problem that I think we face, is getting our message out to the main stream...the idea of posting in public areas such as walmart is great, but I think we have wasted a week concentrating on the nuts, and did not pay attention to getting other areas up for attack with some kind of publicity. This is why I was posting everything to twitter, because if set for web post, lets the entire group of users see your message all at one time! Since that is my only way of interacting right now, I will keep doing that.
I like how you describe the need to think about the product we are selling the public - this is really about getting viewers to understand they do have rights when it comes to what we see on television and we should be capitalizing on that kind of message as well.
At 12:30 PM,
Sauceman said…
Great article!
You didn't mention billboards? Where do you think they should fit into our overall plan?
At 2:26 PM,
Unknown said…
Thanks everybody!
falconr10 - A celebrity would be a huge win. It's a shame the actors from the show can't get involved, but that would probably be a career limiting move on their part.
I'm a Howard Stern fan, but I think he carries some negatives with a lot of people.
Sauceman - I don't really have an opinion on billboards other than I think that while they generate awareness, they're not a good call to action. It's hard to click on a billboard while you're in the car. Companies that succeed in billboard advertising are usually businesses that can put together a good call to action, such as "left at the next exit to eat here." Otherwise, they're a fourth or fifth level type of message -- they can reinforce a message you've already heard, but they're not a good lead.
There was a great billboard campaign back in Silicon Valley a few years ago. Two database vendors started buying the billboard space across from each others headquarters. I'll never forget the "Dinosaurs Crossing" billboard on Hwy 101. But I wonder how many sales they got out of that -- it was more a case of two high profile CEOs having jabs at each other.
If I were running things, instead of a billboard ad I'd issue a car magnet to every ranger. That's a lot of moving billboards, and likely to strike up conversations in parking lots. But either way, I'd concentrate on internet ads first.
I saw a comment over in the CBS forum that my article is long winded and too much for the average reader to take away any action. I couldn't agree more. I'm providing analysis and advice here. How the movement acts upon it is your job. You people have all the information, I'm just dropping in and lurking from time to time and writing these articles based upon my business background.
And btw, It's BoonDoggie, not Doggie! :)
At 3:00 PM,
Unknown said…
Thanks for your comments. They have pretty much been in tune with what several of us have been saying for a while now. But you summed it up much more eloquently.
I do have a question for you. Actually more of a request for an opinion.
Every successfully renewed TV show has had some form of physical protest or picketing near their main base of operations. Several of us have been trying to drum up support for an actual physical protest on cbs. Nothing crazy or illegal. But a peaceful protest with several hundred ( or more hehe ) people. Having the people dressed in their SAVE JERICHO tee-shirts and hats. Even having a few individuals dressed as peanuts. We could have everyone holding their save Jericho and nuts to cbs banners. We could do this in both NY and LA ( preferably on the same day. ) So far the idea has been pretty much ignored besides a few diehard fans.
In the past, these forms of “viewers going on strike against a tv network” have always gotten media attention and have brought new blood into the campaigns. Do you think such a thing could work for the save Jericho campaign?
Do you have any thoughts on this…. Any suggestions? We really do need to reach the everyday normal tv viewers. They are those who do not subscribe to the high end entertainment magazines. The people who do not read blogs or news sites. Do you have any suggestions on how to try to reach them.
Thank you for all the time that you have invested on reporting about this campaign. Your thoughts and suggestions have been well appreciated.
At 3:47 PM,
James said…
BoonDoggie,
Your post is again right on. I tried to post some suggestions, since I am in entertainment production, but they fell off Jericho page so quickly they were missed. If the Save Jericho campaign organizes in the next week bulding a PR machine instead of NUT donation machine prior to the SAG "actors" strike, I say we have a chance on the shows return. Otherwise, CBS is likely to make no decision and stay quiet.
Shades...
At 3:58 PM,
James said…
BD, In support of my own comments, I posted a simple banner/link on my company website, asking people to make a vote for quality television programming and sign the onlinepetition on 5/17/07.
And it has done well (as we can track next visited url), as well as much positive feedback
Shades...
At 4:12 PM,
Unknown said…
Hi Again Everybody!
Renee - I have absolutely no experience with physical protests. Luckily, none of my businesses have gotten their customers so energized against them!
But from the standpoint of a business, if the protest is just 20 people in t-shirts, it just reinforces the message that it's a small group of crazy fans. If you can get 500 people to show up, then you'd have something newsworthy. And I wouldn't make the protest about Jericho, I'd stick to the changing TV message. I'd also make sure you get all the appropriate permits -- both LA and NYC have a permitting process for public assemblies. You don't want Jericho protesters being hauled off to jail to become the story.
I think that's all premature. If there are only 3,000 rangers across the country, it's not likely you could put together a big enough crowd in NYC or LA. I'd stick to building up the ranks of rangers before trying things like this. If you had 100,000 Rangers, you could easily drop 500 of them on an HQ.
James - I'd be very interested in the click through rates you're getting on that banner. Email me if you don't want to post them. I've asked one of the commanders for that data from the campaign and have not gotten a response.
At 5:17 PM,
Unknown said…
Thanks for your reply. Yes it is true that we have a low number of people currently involved in the campaign.
I think that is why we are starting to struggle a bit. The nuts were great as a message to cbs. But there are so many different conflicts on what to do to reach the normal viewers. We definitely need more of a core unified group before we do anything like a protest. That is why we are desperate for ideas.
Do you have any suggestions that we can use that are a cost effective way to reach the everyday non tech savy viewers? Those who are completely unaware that the show has even been canceled?
There are just so many of us from different backgrounds and most of us haven't tried reaching a massive amount of people before.
Again thanks for taking the time to give advice and suggestions. We are humbled and honored by it. Without people like you, our campaign wouldn't have gotten off the ground.
At 5:51 PM,
Rich said…
Doggie,
You know I've become a fan, but for you and me, it seems, sometimes the devil of any minor disagreements are in the details. :) And naturally, I think we all know I've fallen for these fans ... what is not to love? They're smart, polite, diverse, and nice. What more can one ask for?
But alas, I have to point out that protests are not products. And consumer complaints are not strategic communication problems, at least not for the consumers.
There are many things right about what you wrote, and plenty of good ideas to boot. Its hard to say too much without distracting from that fact so I won't say too much.
History will judge the protest by the measure of nuts, signatures, dollars raised for advertising, and even the money raised for Kansas. But stopping shipments would be a mistake. It's a identity that has become part of the overall brand.
Where you are right, of course, is the real measure of success for the fans is, ultimately, seeing the show returned — somewhere, anywhere. But there is a secondary success to be gained simply in driving home the effort.
Ergo, I also think the fans have succeeded in beyond the base of their audience, attracting friends and family members to watch the show online (or download it on iTunes); secured "fans" of the fans, people who want to see them win just because they worked so hard to do it; etc. and so on and so forth.
That said, if they have a product, its pretty simple. Its networks making better decisions, and not necessarily basing those decisions simply based on Nielsen ratings, which is what Veronica Mars fans and others can relate too.
If we look at our own measures, there is an interest beyond the baseline Jericho fans. Our marketing post, for example, drew the 5-10 times as many interested people than the usual post. So I think the interest is much deeper than might be imagined by even me.
I think their direction is fine and any offshoots of ideas are welcome too. And I'll tell you why ... volunteers sometimes need to pursue their own take on the story. So, the best course of action, is to let them while the main body presses forward with what works and has been working.
In sum, keep what works working and add on new ideas along the way. At the end of the day, if CBS does not want them, I suspect someone will. Long shot or not.
So, net, net, good stuff but let's not forget ... most protests are all about bell curves. If you can tip even 5 percent of the 80 percent who have not made of their mind, you can change anything under the sun. I think these folks have or are very close too to doing it. Oh, and keep writing. :)
All my best, Rich
At 7:10 PM,
Unknown said…
Hi Rich -
You're right, our disagreements are fairly minor. But I guess we do disagree on a few points.
But alas, I have to point out that protests are not products. And consumer complaints are not strategic communication problems, at least not for the consumers.
I don't think the "Save Jericho" movement is just a protest or a consumer complaint, or perhaps we're seeing protests and complaints evolve in a very new way on the internet that makes them much more like products. They're organizing, communicating, and recruiting in ways that go far beyond just a protest. If what they're doing isn't an attempt at mass communication, then I don't know what is.
Either way, I think using the basic tools of marketing, especially segmentation, promotion, and pricing, is an extremely useful tool in their process. They have different target markets, different means of reaching them, and different calls to action.
I think this is a lot closer to a political campaign than a consumer complaint. And the same tools we use for marketing products in business apply to political campaigns.
History will judge the protest by the measure of nuts, signatures, dollars raised for advertising, and even the money raised for Kansas. But stopping shipments would be a mistake. It's a identity that has become part of the overall brand.
Five years from now I don't think anyone will remember whether it was 20 tons, 50 tons, or 100 tons of nuts shipped. They'll just remember whether or not the show was renewed and that a lot of nuts went to CBS.
I don't see how they'll lose that identity if they cut back on the peanuts and channel their resources into growing the base. The story will still be there. Nothing will change the fact that they've made history with the largest legume drop on a network.
And the fact that you're referring to this as a "brand" points to the idea that perhaps you agree with me that they're selling a product. :}
If we look at our own measures, there is an interest beyond the baseline Jericho fans. Our marketing post, for example, drew the 5-10 times as many interested people than the usual post. So I think the interest is much deeper than might be imagined by even me.
The numbers at Find The Boots weren't nearly that impressive. The typical article draws about 1,000 distinct visitors beyond what we normally get, so I'm assuming those are Jericho people. I may be losing some regular readers by posting so much Jericho stuff, so perhaps my number is a little low. We do get 10,000 page views extra, but one must conclude that some of the same people are coming back a few times to read the comments.
I think their main problem is that the movement just isn't big enough to tip the scales. Even if they've got 10,000 people fired up to boycott CBS, that's not enough to get a network to make a decision. If the network loses $0.50/viewer in advertiser revenue they're not going to have to cut even one of those lavish upfront dinners. $5K/hour is peanuts to CBS.
Therefore, I think they need to concentrate on growing their ranks. I'm not sure how shipping another $50K in peanuts will do that -- the story is old and they aren't getting new media coverage out of it. They aren't even making any further impact on CBS with it.
Imagine the impact they could make if they got 250,000 people onto their newsletter and did a blast saying "Ok, everyone buy nuts today!" But they've got to get to those big numbers before they can really flex any muscles.
If they had 1M people that promised to boycott CBS they'd have some leverage. $500K/hour in lost revenue will get their attention.
I think their direction is fine and any offshoots of ideas are welcome too. And I'll tell you why ... volunteers sometimes need to pursue their own take on the story. So, the best course of action, is to let them while the main body presses forward with what works and has been working.
You're completely right. Instead of in a command-and-control environment where there is a formal hierarchy and rules of conduct, in this movement everybody does pretty much whatever they desire. It's a distributed agent effect, and the outcomes are not predictable other than that good ideas will tend to go further as positive feedback increases.
It looks like the movement is already cutting back on peanuts -- the real time tracker is not racing ahead the way it was last week. I don't think movements like these can make conscious decisions, no matter how hard the "leaders" try to control them. Things just happen according to how the monster turns.
The folly of offering the movement advice, of course, is that in a sense we're trying to control the monster. And I've already written several times that it's impossible!
At 7:13 PM,
Unknown said…
Hi Renee -
Do you have any suggestions that we can use that are a cost effective way to reach the everyday non tech savy viewers? Those who are completely unaware that the show has even been canceled?
The four low tech methods I offered in the article are what I think are the way to go.
Radio Shows
Press Releases
Flyers
Word of Mouth
Think of this like a political campaign. Get out and press the flesh. If 3,000 people told 10 people, and they told 10 people, and so on ... everybody would be a Ranger by next month!
At 8:50 PM,
socaljeffy said…
Thank you so much for the comments, Rich! As the Save Jericho movement is Internet based, our advertising / promotion base shuould be the same!
At 9:41 PM,
Sweet Tea said…
Question: Your ideas are excellent but we're having a problem with our " leadership". Many people are terrified to do anything without a cry of, " What does the leadership think?" Don't get me wrong- they've done some good things but we didn't vote on them being leaders & we don't get to vote on, for example, implementing many of your excellent ideas. So. while many of us would like to follow certain of your suggestions how can we?
At 9:58 PM,
Julie and Janet said…
Great advice. Thanks for making the effort.
At 10:29 PM,
Unknown said…
Thank you for your wonderful articles. They have been an inspiration.
At 2:47 PM,
Rich said…
Doggie,
Well, I guess we do disagree a bit more than I thought, but I'm still a fan anyway. Just don't underestimate the numbers of this group.
Sure, JerichoRallyPoint has about 2,000 core Rangers. The core is just a sliver. The dedication is huge, considering more than 200 signed up on blogger just to leave their demos on our blog Sat. That just does not happen. I had no idea it would be that many. It's nuts in the best possible way.
It's also why I have not published any numbers as to what I think the core group is ... etc. There is just no way to know. But what I do know is Internet activity is usually just a single digit percentage of huge numbers.
All my best,
Rich
At 4:08 PM,
Unknown said…
Hi Rich -
You may be right on the numbers. I've been looking for some way to quantify them and the best that I can come up with is somewhere in that 2,000 to 5,000 range.
I agree that normally internet activity is just the tip of the iceberg, but part of their campaign has been to comment on blogs, so the comment to page view ratio is quite a bit different than normal. Therefore, more of the iceberg maybe above water than we suspect.
It's hard to tell, and frankly it doesn't matter. What matters is how much they can grow. They've clearly got enough people for critical mass, it's up to them to start the explosion.
At 9:51 PM,
Unknown said…
It is time to start acting like it is a real war. As I posted before on the cbs jericho forums and it mysteriously got "deleted" and my account was unusable for a few hours.....
A network survives and flurishes because of the viewers. If there are no viewers, there are no sponsors. If there are no sponsors.... the network stocks fall. When the stockholders bail out.... the company folds. ( not exactly a perfect analogy, but hopefully people get my meaning )
Therefore the viewers hold the ultimate power. So far in tv history, the viewers have acted like we were at the mercy of a network. That we should just be thankful for whatever they do give us. The only real times that there has been any change.... is when the viewers uprose against the networks. Example: tv show renewal protests, protests over like the regan movie, and so forth).
We need to start acting like we hold all the power. Because we do. The networks don't fear us because they don't think we realize that. Then they don't feel that we can get enough people banned together to do something about it. So they continue along their merry ways doing whatever they please.
WE need to rise up and show them that we realize we do have the power and we are going to start using it. It is time that we make not just CBS, but all networks start fearing and listening to the fans.
These executives at cbs ( and the head of their pr department and security department who are singing and bashing us ) and other networks wouldn't have those jobs if it wasn't for the viewers.
When the audiences start trying to take control and actually learn how to wield their power..... only then will real change occur. And with this protest, I think they are beginning to see signs of that. FOX and NBC started saying that they will look at more than just nielsen numbers. Nielsen is trying to now find ways to move into the new technology. Cbs was trying to pacify us with a 2 hour movie idea. They are now holding their peace hoping we go away and fail.
We started something here with this protest. It is time to start making use of that. We are in a war. It is time to start getting troups together and act like warriors. Otherwise stuff like this jericho thing and all the reality tv and the mocking and bashing of viewers is just going to continue.
At 5:06 PM,
Lolagrrl said…
BD, you are my marketing guru HERO!
I have a degree in PR but I work in marketing but from a PR point of view, you totally win the prize. You are 100% right!
It's time to end the "Nuts" campaign in order to refresh the story in the media. Call an end and let the media know how much was spent (it's an IMPRESSIVE number!). Then, follow that up by redirecting funds towards the Greensburg campaign... because it's an automatic tie in!! The media barely mentions Greensburg anymore! It's dropped off the radar just like "Jericho" has to the masses. By redirecting your efforts there, you are giving a DUAL message. We won't forget "Jericho" and we won't forget the people of Greesburg!
Keep up the fight!
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