Live Pace Car Unveiling

The Live show for the Pace Car announcement went off very well. The day before we did a test run with all of the equipment and internet connectivity. I have to say this was one of the few times I have arrived and the connectivity was already set up and working. This rarely happens.

The setup was done at the Indianapolis Convention Center for the 2008 Indy Auto Show. One cameraman was used with a direct line for audio.

One new thing we did was encode the show using a laptop instead of using the larger HP rack mounted servers.

It was exciting to see two Chevrolet Corvettes that will serve as Official Pace Cars for the 2008 Indianapolis 500: A Z06 E85 concept model and a 30th anniversary commemorative edition.

Thanks for everybody who watched the show!

Competing With Free

If you don’t have a wealthy niche market will use your subscription model to turn a decent profit for Live Events, then you are like the remaining 99% of us. If you want to get your product out to the masses and grow your customer base you have to show your event for FREE.

I can hear the moans and groans about costs. “How on earth can I afford this?” There are many ways to start looking at it. The cost will be less than what you think these days.

As always I will give you some examples of what I have experienced in this space. We use to have a subscription model to show the races for the Indy Racing League and the Indianapolis 500. The subscription model was mediocre at best. It quickly dawned on me that you can’t grow your customer base if you charge them for it. Fans won’t be able to share, comment or tell others “Hey click on this link and watch this with me”. That viral communication was instrumental in giving us the success we have today. The following year I found a company that had an ad supported player so we could begin the process of showing this to our fans for free. We did some trials with the wonderful members at TrackForum (A racing forum). They helped us worked out some bugs and continue to give us help to this day. The results were incredible. I was more impressed with the number of racing fans watching that were outside of our current fan base. This was the objective but didn’t expect immediate results. We then allowed fans to discover our site and participate in various other 2.0 applications. Needless to say our traffic increased over 100%.

-- Try to gauge the size of what your online audience will be. Consultants tend to dramatically overestimate this number to drive the costs up. Try things live posting audio or video clips up on your site. Check your stats on how many times that clip was downloaded over the course of a week. This will give you a good basis. I have used this method for years and have been within 10% each time. Your number may range from a few 100 to 10,000. (If you are over 100,000 and aren’t showing your product for free call me as you are missing a huge opportunity for growth).

-- The costs of streaming has dropped significantly over the past few years and will continue to drop thanks to P2P development. There are numerous streaming companies in this space. I currently work with WhiteBlox, Akamai, Limelight and Abacast. All have great solutions depending on your needs.

-- Advertisement. Obviously the only way to keep it free is to have an ad supported model. Advertisers want to know who your audience is so gather as much information about them as you can. This will be critical when presenting it to potential advertisers. Your fans actually enjoy relevant online advertisement and will engage with the ad.

-- Sell your event by the minute. When you set up your charges use the Cost Per Viewer Minute Model. This model is best for the advertiser and they will thank you for not overselling your product which happens all to much in the traditional media world. Basically advertisers will purchase how many minutes they want to sponsor with the option of buying more minutes. So if a fan only watches 30 minutes of your show then the advertisers only pays to those minutes viewed and nothing more. If not all minutes are viewed it can be applied to your next show or they get a refund.

-- Video cameras. Depending on what type of show you are putting on (a tech seminar or the Indy 500) lighting is going to be the key. Your cameraman will give you the best advice on this.

-- Audio. Make sure you have a good audio source. I can’t you how important it is to have good audio as users will become quickly annoyed if they can barely make out your program.

We had a great 2007 season and 2008 will be even better.

Take Down The Barriers

Data collection from users is an important goal for companies. What most companies forget to acknowledge is that people don’t want to give them personal information. Forrester research says that 87% of users will click away rather than view the information they are seeking when asked to give personal information. That is an enormous hurdle to overcome. I call this the Barrier Effect.

What companies fail to do is look at it from the consumer perspective. Even if you have a wonderful product or are showing a great live event, why would you put up barriers that the customer has to overcome? The response from companies is that we need to get information from the users. I completely understand that but here is what they are missing. The hardcore users will sign up because they have a passion for your product. Great but more than likely you already have their name in your email lists, giveaway lists, promotional lists, etc… Here is what you are missing and it is a big one. Your NEW customers.

Here is the scenario for the casual customer. A friend blasts out an email to a bunch of their friends that says “Hey check this out”. Wonderful, your Online dept should be proud because they have empowered a fan and that fan shares this information with their friends. By the way, approval from a friend is still the most powerful way to market your product on the internet. Once this potential new user gets to the page they are greeted by a Barrier. To add insult to this they are asked to give personal information before they can have the ‘privilege’ to see your product. As you can imagine this goes over like a lead balloon. This is where traditional marketing needs a wakeup call. It is hard enough in this new age to get people to your site. Why put up barriers once they get there.

Let me give you a real world example. When we were showing FREE live practice for the Indianapolis 500 during May we required users to register. We had a good amount of people sign up. This number leveled off after a week. After sending out many emails to casual fans to find out how they liked watching, the vast majority said they didn’t want to take the time to fill out the registration and give us their personal info. This was a real wakeup. The people who signed up were our hardcore fans. I quickly realized we would never be able to grow or even show our product to the casual customer when they are just one click away from the next form of entertainment. I quickly remove the registration for the second week of practice and viewer ship shot up over 400% the next day. Growth was over 100% each of the following days. It was truly amazing once we removed the barriers to get to the very product we are selling.

Based on my earlier results if users really wanted to view our content they would normally type in fake information and click on survey answers that would quickly get them to the content. Needless to say this would skew any accurate data we were trying to learn about our customers.

The challenge has become to figure out a way to gather data without making it intrusive for the customer. I set out emailing colleagues and friends basically ask them what can I do to get your personal information. The answer is surprisingly simple. You have to earn the trust of the customer. For example, I am a big believer in Apple Computers and their products. Along the way they have earned my trust as a company. It is the only company that I have given my personal email address to so they can basically spam me with the products. This was the same answer I received from various colleagues.

The next step was taking down all barriers and having users opt in to give data. The information has been more accurate because people volunteer the information. The data gathered came from less people but it was more accurate. The next step was to figure out how to gather more data. This has come from implementing various social media applications. When users start participating socially on the site, you start earning a certain level of trust if you don’t put up any Barriers. This means people can post information anonymously or under aliases. Usually about 60-90 days of participation the data collection grows dramatically. You start to earn the trust of the user and they in turn will provide you the data you are requesting.

Data Collectors Are Getting Worse

I have been hard on Online Data Collectors and won't be letting up anytime soon. Online Data Collectors are modern day telemarketers. There is nothing more annoying than trying to do something as simple as vote on a poll and be required to register your personal information. Once these data collectors get your info, you know you will be spammed until your 1 GIG mailbox fills up.

I understand the need to collect some personal data to help companies better serve the customer. The reality is that most instances only require a suggestion box. This suggestion box would require companies to actually sit down and address these issues. Instead, we get spammed into oblivion with opportunities to purchase hats and t-shirts.

Companies need to learn that they have to earn our trust. Over time, we will slowly give some personal information voluntarily. The information you receive from these customers will help your company. It is hard work but the rewards are well worth it.

Cyber Monday says who?

The Monday after the Thanksgiving has taken on the name Cyber Monday for online shoppers. By most accounts, this year has been the best to date for online retailers. Online shoppers are broken down into two categories.

The first is category is the traditional shopper. Cyber Monday is more for traditional consumers that brave the long early lines to get the best deals. They actually will shop for their gifts during the weekend getting all the deals they can. Then come Monday they will check out the deals online for merchandise they couldn’t get in the brick and mortar stores.

The second category is for the non traditional shopper and the crowd hater. This shopper is still looking for the great deals but isn’t about to stand in line to find out each store only has 3 ‘deal’ items per store.

For the last few years, we have seen an increase of deals exploiting this day for great savings. Amazon.com did a ridiculous promo that had you ‘vote’ on an item for a good deal over 6 days. Each day you would go back only to find out you didn’t get that deal. By the sixth day of Amazon telling you that you are a complete loser, you start to resent them. My guess is they wanted to make you have the same feeling as people who waited 6 hours in line for a Wii only to find out you didn’t get it.

I see the online ecommerce trend encroaching onBlack Friday. Why give your customer a chance to spend their money elsewhere and not with you. Walmart had exclusive online deals on black Friday. I thought this was a good move to hit their customers a chance to do both.

We did the same thing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway store. We turned on our holiday store the day before Thanksgiving followed with an email to give people something to talk about when discussing all of the other deals. The number of items ordered started to increase on Thursday. Interestingly enough, we had a huge spike in the number of customers visiting the site on Saturday.

Next year, look for more online retailers turning Black Friday in "Blow out Deal Friday" for everybody.

NBC Direct Beta

NBC Universal has been going all out creating new ways to get their content online with Hulu.com, NBC.com and now NBC Direct. I have been fortunate enough to be a beta tester for these new applications. While NBC plans to use many platforms to make their content available including iTunes, the move by NBC is essentially driven by the desire to cut out the middle man and deal directly with the viewer. By the end of the year, NBC Universal will be hitting online consumers from every direction.

NBC Direct allows you do download an entire show to your computer. Finally, portable no cost content from the networks has arrived. (It is important to note that NBC does not require you to give any personal data or even an email address. Kudos to them for figuring this out.)

Once you start to view a show, you have 48 hours to view it as many times as you want. After that the video will expire. All videos in the “select a video” are available for 7 days. After that they will expire regardless of when the show was downloaded or renewed. All of these rules sound absurd? Well they are. NBC is trying to find that fine line between controlling the rights and mass media online distribution.

They have created what amounts to Tivo-To-Go but have attached strings to it. 48 hours seems a little much but we all know that will change shortly.

Based on early reports, NBC used three development companies to create this application. ExtendMedia did the interface, YuMe sells the ads and Pando Networks is doing the P2P distribution.

Technical issues. NBC Direct uses Windows Media Player 11 so you are always greeted with a link to upgrade to the lasted security or DRM fix from outside of the player. Hopefully this will be resolved once beta development is over.

Now for the breakdown of the player:

• No timeline in the player unless you go full screen. Very odd oversight.
• Intrusive ads. NBC figured it out in Hulu.com so why put pre rolls in portable content?
• Decent video quality. VCR quality playback in the video. Very impressive.
• No social aspect. Hulu.com has a number of web 2.0 apps in it so why are they all left out here?
• No small portable video player. Maybe NBC thinks that most users will want to view this on a plane or in a car. The flexibility for portable media to be just that seems to have been overlooked here.
• Two tabs – Select a video and My videos. Nice straight forward information panels.
• Small Ad banner. The player has a small ad banner in the lower left that oddly enough doesn’t work when you click on it.
• Nice clean player design. All of the controls are straight forward and you don’t have to go digging just to start a show.
• Does not work in FireFox

All in all NBC Direct addresses the video on the go market. This is a growing segment in the industry. Even with all of the minor glitches and insulting regulations, it is good to see a network moving in this direction. NBC has made another great leap forward with Hulu.com. Once they combine the two, NBC will be the leader in the race for online viewership.