How much does cool cost? $1.1 billion if you’re Yahoo

When Yahoo officially announced it had brought micro-blogging site Tumblr on Monday (20^th May), it didn’t come as a real shock, as whispers of the impending deal first surfaced last week.

In the lead up to and since the buy-out, the Internet has been flooded with articles, discussions and outrage. Experts say the deal is part of Yahoo’s efforts to revive the struggling company by attracting a younger, trendier audience (Tumblr is strongest in the 18-24 age bracket). Not only does the deal give access to younger users but also a fast-growing number of consumers who are, in general, very engaged online.

Yahoo says it expects to grow Tumblr’s audience by 50% to more than a billion monthly visitors and to grow traffic by approximately 20%. The million – or should I say billion -dollar question is: how does Yahoo plan to monetize Tumblr? Something Tumblr itself has never done. Pre-Melissa Mayer (Yahoo’s CEO), the web pioneer had a miserable reputation of taking on new companies and doing nothing with them (think 2005 - Flickr and Delicious). Mayer has been proactive in addressing users concerns and preempting media backlash by releasing a statement on the same day via her newly acquired Tumblr account, promising not to ‘screw it up’ and even poking fun at the buy-out.

http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/50902274591/im-delighted-to-announce-that-weve-reached-an

However this hasn’t stopped 72,000 people exporting their Tumblr blogs to rival blogging site Wordpress on Sunday evening.

I think its safe to say we won’t be witnessing the birth of ‘Yahooblr’ but with a price tag of $1.1 billion (£723m), there’s no doubt there are some anxious shareholders waiting for answers on how to monetize the blogging site, and quickly. I expect it will take a similar route to YouTube, after Google bought them in 2006, with the introduction of advertising and other monetizing services onto the site. It’s been a commercial success for Google because content marketing is more accepted by young millennial users now - the audience that Yahoo is courting.

Yahoo would be stupid to storm in and make radical changes, this would only serve to alienate users in their masses, something they have promised not to do. Founder David Karp will remain at Tumblr as CEO. Karp has been quick to defend the buy-out by pointing out the benefits to users of joining up with the ‘original internet company’. According to Karp - Tumblr will only get faster and better.

It’ll be interesting to see Tumblr evolve. To me, there are two big, immediate challenges Mayer and Karp are going to be faced with: How to remain cool when you are owned by a less cool corporate entity and how to monetize Tumblr without alienating users?

Here are some of my favorite Tumblr responses: 

By Pema Seely

The meme takeover

The Harlem Shake and Gangnam Style spread like wildfire on our screens earlier this year. But are brands that are cashing in on these latest crazes being lazy or cleverly responding to a cultural phenomenon?

Everyone has jumped on the bandwagon – Topshop’s version of the Harlem Shake involved newest supermodel on the block, Cara Delevingne and reached over 1.4 million views on YouTube. Electric cigarettes brand, Elites, featured a baby taking his first steps before breaking into Gangnam Style and has been viewed 1.7 million times. 

Not everyone has got it right. Pepsi’s Harlem Shake edition was met with criticism for killing off the trend by making it too corporate and overtly promotional, whilst Wonderful Pistachio’s take on the dance craze, aired at the Super Bowl, was only the 20^th most shared advert of the event.

Memes are nothing new, but the increase of their online exposure is. Within three days, the amount of Harlem Shake videos online increased from 12,000 to 40,000 and had accumulated 175 million views. 

Memes also have a very short life span at when they are most effective. Brands that have come out on top have been quick to react to the latest trend and have captured the collective imagination as a result. Although Ask.com pre-empted criticism of their two-week late reincarnation with the pre-fix message, “Yeah, yeah, we know. We just couldn’t pass up the biggest meme of the week”, the 12,000 views generated hardly constituted viral success. 

A great advert doesn’t have to stem from a craze though. Take the Evian adverts for example. The inaugural edition of the award-winning ‘Roller Babies’ advert back in 2009 has a record 67 million views online – the most ever for an ad, holding a Guinness World Record. Now, there’s no such thing as an original idea, but what Evian did was no doubt clever and creative. Even the use of babies wasn’t new (Etrade babies golfed in adverts) but Evian’s was amusing, entertaining and puzzling – some could say some of the babies were slightly creepy.  

The water brand is hoping to beat its own record with this year’s advert ‘Baby & Me’. Launched a couple of weeks ago, the advert follows the same, fun loving approach as the 2009 ad, channelling the brand’s ‘live young’ strapline. A group of adults dance around in front of a reflective shop window and discover their reflections are, in fact, baby versions of themselves. The advert has received over 45 million views to date. It seems that, for the public, a good advert needs to be memorable, not meme full.

By Stephanie Rock 

Is PR in need of a professional remedy?

This week Ruth Wyatt asked PR Week readers whether Public Relations had been neglecting its own reputation. I would love to say of course not, that PRs are as loved as organic farmers and as respected as foreign aid workers, but that would be a lie (and therefore perpetuate the problem).

On announcing my profession, I’m often met with one of three responses:

• The Edina- Issued by those overly familiar with Ab Fab, this involves repeating what you’ve just said back to you in a loud, plumy accent, often with the addition of darling e.g  “Oh PRRRRR darling!”
• The back-away- Often the response of business owners, terrified that they’ll somehow succumb to your services. Yes it’s likely that our mental cogs are turning, but we don’t carry contracts in our handbags. Often.
• Incomprehension- Possibly the most irritating of them all, this leads on to a lengthy explanation of what we do which all too often concludes with the response “Ohhh, like advertising?” No. Not like advertising.

In her article, Wyatt goes on to offer a number of reasons why this may be the case.

First- Max Clifford. Yes he’s made the reputations of many a celebrity but the man has almost single-handedly slayed that of his profession. Thanks to his shameless self-promotion and desire to be known as media-puppeteer, we are now all suspected of vanity and Machiavellian tendencies. 

Wyatt also sites reoccurring fraud allegations as damaging for the PR profession. The most recent of which occurred in the last fortnight, with the sentencing of former Activision senior PR manager Kathryn Kirton and ex-Frank PR associate director Jamie Kaye.

Now we can kick and scream, protest that these are isolated incidents and therefore not indicative of the wider situation, but we are facing a crisis. It is now every agency’s responsibility to improve the reputation of our industry. So Ruth, in answer to your concluding question, Here are a few things that can be done:

• Industry transparency - We all know the importance of transparency and will emphasise this to our clients, yet we also can be guilty of opaque behaviour (be it intentional or not). Take industry jargon. On a daily basis we use terms that resemble Martian to the uninitiated. We need to speak English rather than PR or our clients will leave feeling blinded by science.
• Figureheads - Ask anyone for a famous PR and the only name on anyone’s lips is the aforementioned, virulent Max Clifford. The PR industry is changing for the better (an end to unpaid internships etc.), and there are plenty of great PR professionals. We need to get good spokespeople out there and singing our praises.
• Measurement– Any PR will tell you that the AVE (Advertising Value Equivalency) system is outdated but clients, quite reasonably, need some indication of their ROI. With an industry-wide standard a far-off ideal, it is essential PRs and their clients are clear on how PR services will be measured. We need to listen to our clients, find out their criteria for success and advise on their expectations. It is only through agreeing on targets that we can experience the satisfaction of them being met.

By Polly Robinson