Let’s look at the facts:

• Unemployment in America is staggering
• This Week Obama Recognized Small Business Needs Help
• Google dominates the market (aka – no need for brand marketing)
• 2010 Super Bowl ads went for 2.6 milion for 30 seconds
• You can be an idiot and still derive value from Google.
• The Super Bowl Has Little Significance outside of North America

Super Bowl 44 provided sports fans what they expected.  Sunday February 7th gave viewers nail biting sports drama, nostalgic music, and a line up of commercials for all to enjoy.  One of those commercials was the first Super Bowl commercial ever produced by Google.  Upon its airing, Twitter lit up with energy and the blogosphere proclaimed that Google had produced the greatest commercial of Super Bowl 44.  The problem is that Google failed America.  Here’s why.

Google dominates the Internet.  So much so that they can actually entertain an action that no American business has ever considered–pulling out China.  While Americans are being displaced from their homes in the largest foreclosure market to hit the United States in decades and small business owners struggle to operate in the worst credit conditions since The Great Depression, Google employees are bathing in stock options and bonuses that were last seen in the dot.com bubble.  Don’t get me wrong as I think it is great that Google is doing well as a business and that the careers of their employees are secure.  Still, when you decide to spend 2.6 million dollars, you would think that Google would make some sort of attempt to connect with the reality in this country.  It is a Web 2.0 kind of thing to do.

Google’s Super Bowl ad accomplished the equivalent of a “How To Use Google” in the context of finding services in Paris, France.  Let’s work through the facts again:

• Paris has nothing to do with the Super Bowl and Americans really can’t afford to go Paris this year.
• People use Google by default and with suggested search they need no additional help
• At .44 cents per stamp, Google sent letters to every small business in the country trying to explain their Local Business service.

Let’s skip forward to the last point.  Google had the opportunity to highlight its Local Business service during Super Bowl 44.  The 2.6 million dollars it would have cost to accomplish this would have been a fraction of the price tag it cost to “snail mail” letters to every small business owner in the United States.  In doing so, they could have inspired small business owners to update their listings and at the same time educated consumers as to how to search for local services.  They could have also focused on searches, products, and services that were relevant to the Super Bowl’s host city Miami.

The Super Bowl has historically been the advertising platform for advertisers to mark their place in brand and creative history.  With a brand that is as solid as “Kleenex” and creative that is becoming of a company full of mathematicians, one has to ask what Google’s Super Bowl 44 advertisement accomplished.  A naysayer would quickly point out that they are filthy rich and that 2.6 million dollars is a drop in the bucket.  My response would be that their approach was very Web 1.0.  Google shouted at people versus providing them with information that they needed.  Somewhere in New Orleans there is a small family owned business who is faced with an invoice from a telephone company who is trying to impress upon them that the phone book is their avenue to connecting with customers.  In their Sunday afternoon attempt to take a break from the reality of business in a tanking economy, Google could have provided them with insight that could have changed their small business course tomorrow morning.

Google Marketing, you failed America on February 7, 2010.

Marucci Baseball Bats

Name a company these days that doesn’t have to market?  There aren’t many.  Even the toll road system in the State of Texas is advertising and marketing.  One that isn’t and has seen a 45% increase in sales this past year is Marucci, a baseball bat company out of Baton Rouge.

I learned about this story through an episode on NPR’s Marketplace called “High Def A Home Run Bat Maker“.   The angle on the story was that Marucci doesn’t advertise.  However, they are used by a long list of major league players and with the onset of High Definition Television, views can now see the logo and names on a baseball bat.  Yes, viewers are that in tune.  In an industry that is now selling advertising space on practice jerseys, free advertising real estate such as this is an exception to the norm.  On television that is!

Google’s unified search provides natural search engine results that includes both video and images.  This advertising is free!  Here are my recommendations for taking advantage of this:

• Have your web developer use ALT tags on all of your images with a one, two, or three keyword pair. (e.g. Marucci Baseball Bats)
• Name the actual file after your keyword with images (e.g. marucci-baseball-bats.jpg)
• Create a hologram version of your images that includes something such as a phone number or web address.
• Try placing your images on your website as well as others (E.g. vendors, article directories, flickr, press releases, etc)

Images do catch the human eye and they do sell.  Not all of us can be as lucky as Jack Marucci; yet, most of us can still take advantage of Google images today!  For more information, see Matt Cutts official post and video on the topic of images and search.

Within hours of each other, both Microsoft and Google announced agreements with Twitter which will allow them to provide more timely, micro-blog based information in their respective indexes.  The magnitude of this is best exemplified by how the major search engines struggled to be current in light of Michael Jackson’s death.

When TMZ.Com broke the story on their website, it had proliferated throughout Twitter through a series of retweets that accelerated to the point of bringing down the service.  When I saw my first retweet on Twitter, I immediately began to Google the topic looking for the time delay in a Google News result.  This took over 2 hours.

To Google’s credit, during that two hours there was a lot of debate on behalf of major news sources as to whether to confirm the story with the only source being the “edgy” TMZ.Com.  Still, it is a known fact that in light of Twitter, Google, Bing, and other search engines lack timeliness in the indexing of information.  That is why the literal simultaneous announcements regarding the Microsoft – Twitter agreement and the Google – Twitter agreement are significant.  Still, as all of the news focuses on the headline, the world needs to take a look back to headlines of the past to understand why Microsoft might have a leg up in the future of search as access to Twitter was commoditized today.

If you examine a list of Microsoft acquisitions, you will see one of the major keys to the future of their success search with the October 2, 2007 purchase of JellyFish.Com.  JellyFish.Com was Wisconsin based startup that was the CPA (cost per action) site of its kind.  The site created a win-win model between advertisers and consumers by only charging advertisers based on actions and providing consumers with cash back for purchases.  JellyFish.Com was eventually shut down and incorporated into Microsoft’s search real estate.  They have actually ventured into some advertising in their recent Bing campaigns.

This is the point in this post where I have to disclose that I worked in management at Microsoft for 10 years.  Yet, this post, which actually ventures into speculation, is simply a product of me thinking like a Microsoft versus any insider information.  Moving on . . . .

Prior to today’s announcements, I was in the middle of writing this post taking an angle that the timeliness of Twitter would drive more users to the micro blogging site and its API partners for relevant news and reduce the role of search engines to more static information searches including that of products and services.  Even though today’s announcements provide the search engines a much needed boost of instantaneous information, it is still unclear as to whether their tapping of Twitter’s API’s will customize results for search engine users based on the “following” lists and taxonomy (hashtags) preferences that they establish in other applications such as TweetDeck.  So, I will go with the assumption that both Microsoft and Google have a long way to go in making their indexing of Twitter data relevant to users and that the real competition will continue in the space of more static informational search.  This is where Microsoft’s JellyFish.Com acquisition becomes significant.

Consumers will do funny things if they think there is benefit.  They’ll buy locally on Tax Free Day when they could pay no taxes 365 days a year by purchasing online and probably get a more competitive price.  They’ll also base purchase decisions on whether or not they can get “flyer miles”.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve used more than my fare share of flyer miles but THE LAST THING you want is a “receivable” with an Airline and that is exactly what a flyer mile is.  As a marketer to you learn to not fight consumer behavior rather you cater to it and that is what Microsoft is doing.  And, in a down economy where consumers are looking for benefit, it just might very well be able to sway consumers to use Bing for commercial searches.  This will eventually bring advertisers big and small along with them.  Still, Google’s dominance will likely require them to make some mistakes or have a strategic set back to provide Microsoft some sort of window.  I doubt Google will release the search engine equivalent of Windows Vista; yet, a major legal set back isn’t out of the question.

One area where Google is creating a situation for its advertisers is venturing into the social media space on the same real estate its advertisers pay for placement.  Their recent revelation of SideWiki creates exactly that situation.  Big advertisers will spread their bets if given the opportunity and Microsoft’s CPA program that provides consumers with cash back might very well give them that option.  Of course, Google is carefully evaluating similar models but has a major legacy pay per click system which will add complication to any strategy shift.

Though behind on search, Microsoft is no stranger to data.  One thing often overlooked about the underdog Microsoft is that they have years of R&D invested in processing of data in terms of multi-dimensional data warehousing and data mining.  Back in 1995 Microsoft began to bolster its minds and technology arsenal in this space including hiring the late data industry legend, Jim Gray.  The sad thing today is that search engines are still single dimensional.  If you search WINE in Google you get a limited list of websites, paid advertisements, and local business listings.  Why a multi-dimensional data set starting with regions, varietals, ages, and other suggestive search based characteristics aren’t provided to a user with drill down tools is a mystery to me.  I am sure this is coming but one has to concede that Microsoft has been researching and making acquisitions in this space for over a decade.  Whether Microsoft will go there is yet to be seen and my thinking here is mere speculation.

In my opinion, Microsoft does have a leg up; yet, they will have to get over bad habits if they want to succeed.  The biggest bad habit they have to “kick” is marketing above the heads of their consumers.  Though Crispin Porter is the bomb of advertising and doing amazing things with the brand in light of Apple, I have yet to meet a consumer who truly understands what the cash back message on the Bing advertising really means.  They are going to have to get down to consumers level if they want to convert on the advantage that they have.

The future of search is healthy and I am excited to learn of today’s Twitter announcements.  I’m also excited to watch search engines be forced to change based on the disruption of small startups versus using their large cash positions to dictate how consumers should get their online information.  What do you think?  What will search engines look like 5 years from now and will Twitter change the face of them or simply refine their definition?

While on a few long international flights the past few week, I got caught up on my podcast listening.  Unfortunately, I got a bit behind on blog reading.  So, when I got back to my reading, I definitely felt a bit behind when I caught the news about Google’s Sidewiki on Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategy blog.  Needless to say, the post immediately caught my attention.

Jeremiah is spot on with regards to this Google feature being a catalyst for the transition of power from corporations to consumers.  His strategy advice is also very accurate.  If you believe the statement, “Google is your new home page” then you’d probably concur that Sidewiki has just transformed your home page into an unregulated forum.  I have contrarian though, however.  I think Google will fail with this initiative long before it becomes relevant.

The following are 5 reaons why Google will fail with Sidewiki:

1. Where’s The Authority Component – Social Media is based on authority.  Whether authority is measured in followers in Twitter, friends on Facebook, or even Google’s own page rank indicator, today’s social media relies on it.  When social media concepts lack an authority component, they quickly become inundated in SPAM and irrelevant content.
2. First In First Out (FIFO) is for Accountants –  Sidewiki’s commenting system is based on a first in first out queue.  In layman’s terms, the first to comment gets the top position.  This is how comments work in most blogs and news sites.  Still, this simplistic approach significantly limits the dynamics of comment relevancy and recency.   Though this aspect of Sidewiki is very easily changed, it goes to show that Google has not thoroughly thought this one out.  (Editor’s Note – Post research has revealed that FIFO is not the case but Google is applying an algorithm to this.  I will still argue that this is far from social and we are already getting emails with tricks for beating the algorithm)
3. Name A New Idea Google Has Followed Through On – Google has a lot of ideas.  They really don’t follow through however.  Whether it be their half baked effort in the offline advertising space or their attempt to compete with Microsoft with a wordprocessor that still doesn’t support DOCX and a spreadsheet that barely rivals the functionality of DOS spreadsheet packages, Google wants to compete from operating systems to social media concepts and they’ve shown very little focus or follow through.
4. Advertisers Pay The Bills – Google makes its money from advertising.  When you open up a free for all on the very results page that corporate advertisers are pay for placement, big spenders will draw the line.  You can’t have it both ways.
5. Google’s Legal Department Can’t Keep Up – Sidewiki can only survive with the protections provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.  Still, CDA is being activity tested in the courts due to the abuses from sites such as RipOffReport.Com.  It is only a matter of time before holes are poked in this federal law.   In the meantime, Google’s legal department has gotten to the point of not even returning DMCA takedown notices nor attorney inquiries to orders from state courts regarding content in their index.  Sidewiki will open the legal flood gates to the point to where the class action law firms will begin to package individual complaints into legal maneuvering that cannot be ignored.

I wish Google were a bit more social.  I’d simply like to see a “view count” on search results similar to the way YouTube provides them.  Or maybe even an indexing of tiny URL’s that were associated with retweets in Twitter.  Sidewiki, however, lacks a true social media foundation.  Google should stick to indexing content including that produced by true social media sites before it goes on to try and make its flagship search service a social media platform.